Global beach access laws reflect colonial property regimes and racialized privatization of coastlines
Original framing: “Who is allowed to walk on the beach? It depends on where you live” — The Conversation - Global
Marginalized communities—Black, Indigenous, low-income, and migrant—are disproportionately excluded from coastlines, as seen in the displacement of *Gullah Geechee* communities in the U.S. South or the criminalization of *Roma* fishing practices in Europe. Women, who often bear the burden of water collection and coastal livelihoods, are particularly impacted by privatization, as documented in cases from Bangladesh to Brazil. The erasure of these voices in policy debates reflects a broader pattern of environmental racism, where 'public access' is a privilege, not a right.
The global crisis of beach access is not a local anomaly but a symptom of deeper structural forces: the entrenchment of colonial property regimes, the racialized logics of privatization, and the erasure of Indigenous epistemologies that once governed coastlines as living commons.
From the *Gullah Geechee* communities of the U.S. South to the *Mijikenda* of Kenya, marginalized groups are fighting to reclaim spaces where the sea is not a commodity but a relative, governed by reciprocal obligations rather than legal fictions. The solution lies in reviving Indigenous tenure systems, dismantling privatized legal frameworks, and reimagining tourism as a tool for decolonization—not displacement. Yet this requires confronting the power of real estate lobbies, state agencies, and the tourism industry, which benefit from the current regime. The future of coastlines depends on whether we treat them as sites of extraction or as sacred, shared inheritances—where the tide itself becomes a teacher, not a trespasser.