Mauritius Shores Under Pressure; Public Beach Access Faces Daily Disputes

That encounter — a woman confronting Mohamed as he passed a camp, demanding to know what he was doing on her property — was recounted by the minister to Parliament. It captures the daily friction Mauritians face along their own coastline. His statement on June 25, 2026 reaffirmed a longstanding legal principle: all beaches in Mauritius remain public domain, freely accessible for walking, sitting, picnicking, and swimming. Both the wet sand zone between low and high water marks and the dry sand zone extending to the authorized building limit constitute public property. Hotels, camps, and state-leased coastal properties do not change that.

The gap between principle and practice is wide. Aggressive dogs, exclusionary signage, insulting behavior, and outright bans from hotel beaches have become routine complaints. The Law Reform Commission addressed this directly in a June 2024 report titled “Criminalisation of denial of access to public beaches in Mauritius,” proposing amendments to the Beach Authority Act that would criminalize denial of public beach access, with penalties up to Rs 100,000 and imprisonment up to two years. That proposal has not advanced.

The legal framework itself remains unsettled. After his June 25 press conference, Mohamed introduced qualifications, noting that authorization did not extend to tent pitching, barbecues, or loud music. He indicated he would consult with the Attorney General about two amendments needed to clarify the law, and acknowledged that hotel and camp operators had raised concerns about the straightforward nature of their leases. Determining the exact boundary between public and private zones is difficult in practice. The Pas Géométriques, the official state-owned coastal band measuring precisely 81.21 meters wide from the high water mark, cannot be sold but may be leased, and that boundary has shifted considerably due to erosion and rising sea levels.

Mohamed announced concrete operational steps: requesting the police commissioner to prosecute those illegally restricting beach access, instructing competent authorities to identify and halt illegal encroachments, warning that structures blocking public access would be dismantled, and launching a national audit of beach access points to evaluate their condition, legality, and accessibility. The ministry also plans to map all official beach access routes, including those obstructed, privatized, or improperly occupied, and create a public-facing system to locate them.

Meanwhile, the underlying geography is shrinking. Of 322 kilometers of beaches, hotels occupy 90 kilometers, private residences occupy 60 kilometers, and only 48 kilometers are officially publicly accessible. That is barely 15 percent of the total coastline, and the figure faces further contraction.

An Operational Study of Coastal Risks, financed by the French Development Agency and released on the Environment Ministry website in November 2025, provides the scientific basis for that concern. Coordinated by BRGM with expertise from Météo France and universities in Limoges and the Mascareignes, the study maps erosion and coastal flooding across three timelines: current conditions, 2050, and 2100. Its findings are stark. By 2050, coastal retreat could reach 30 to 60 meters. In some island regions, that figure could climb to 100 or even 200 meters by 2100. Within 24 years, substantial portions of the coastline could be submerged.

Advocacy group Aret Kokin nou Laplaz has long argued for ceasing leases at the high water mark and maintaining a clear coastal buffer zone. That buffer serves two functions: it protects public access and acts as a natural shock absorber, allowing the shoreline space to shift and retreat. Walls and embankments built close to the water accelerate erosion and destabilize the coast further.

The access dispute and the erosion crisis are not separate problems. Enforcement actions, legal clarifications, and mapping exercises address the political contest over existing beaches. They do not address what happens to those beaches by mid-century. Whether the audit, the proposed amendments, and the prosecution requests translate into functioning public access, before the coastline itself retreats, is the question the ministry’s implementation record will eventually have to answer.