Beach law in the anthropocene

Abstract

There is an urgent need to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, including climate change and sea-level rise. However, responses can be challenged by legal and institutional frameworks. In the context of sea-level rise, ownership structures for beaches and coastal areas can either facilitate or hinder effective responses. In this paper, we analyse ownership laws for beaches and coastal areas across many of the world's legal traditions. We find that laws relating to the coast are dominated by a focus on the protection of private property rights and economic interests over that of environmental and Indigenous values, although public rights, such as access, present a more mixed picture, with arguably stronger protections in civil law jurisdictions. Legislators can redesign entrenched traditions through focusing on the systemic implications of their decisions. To enable the transformations required to address the challenges of the Anthropocene, reconstruction of what ‘ownership’ means (private and public) will need to be underpinned by a future-oriented set of legal principles based on notions of environmental justice.