Marbella: an urgent call to recover the public coastal area
January 26, 2023 | Dany Villalobos, FECON geographer (Translated by MVM)
- Institutions must protect Marbella’s public area
- The public area has lost 60% of its original territory
- This must be replenished in order for the communities to manage the public space
Issue introduction
In 2023 Costa Rica is facing an enormous challenge. Due to legal flaws in government administration, the coastal zone has been gradually losing public property, especially in areas taken by real estate property deals.
The Santa Cruz coastline in Guanacaste features several cases at the beaches of Pinilla, Avellanas and Marbella. The shores of Guanacaste have become focal points for the greed of real estate tycoons who have arrived at the province to buy cheap lands in order to enrich themselves selling high priced properties, mainly to wealthy foreigners.
In this short article I will explain the current problems through the Marbella case study. On January 12, 2023 I toured the local beaches to retrieve GPS data within the actual public area and the coastline. After mapping and processing the information, I can now demonstrate an evident fact: the public area is disappearing.
According to Article 10 of Costa Rica’s 6043 Shoreline Area Law of 1977, the Public Zone (ZP) is a 165 feet strip that corresponds to total public use starting at the high tide line. Its progressive reduction compromises current dwellers and tenants at the Restricted Zone. The people of Marbella have witnessed beachfront developments with distrust, and consider foreign business owners have been invading the public area ever since the beginning of their activities on the coast.
The Tiki-Hut restaurant and other beachfront properties are owned by foreigners who came to Marbella in recent years seeking to make easy profits throughout the land. Albasud has thoroughly reported the names and schemes of these tycoons, whom I refer to as “real estate hawks” because of the wide range of irregularities they benefit from.
FECON has encouraged Marbella’s local residents to expose cases such as the construction of a bridge without required permits in the riverbed of the mangrove between Frijolar and Coco Beach. They have also requested the Santa Cruz Town Hall to verify if buildings on the beachfront comply with local regulations or if they are trespassing the Public Zone legal dispositions due to their proximity so the sea. The answers never arrived, even after the Constitutional Court ordered to act upon it. Clearly, local authorities have no interest in taking action on the issue, sparking discouragement and outrage within the community’s struggle to defend their beaches.
FECON’s efforts
Considering the lack of an institutional response, FECON has been trying to find support in order to visit the coastal areas of Santa Cruz where these issues are still happening. Thanks to the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA), several trips have been done to fully document the conflicted zones.
Due to the fact that beaches are public patrimony, local communities in Guanacaste require professional assistance and support from local environmental organizations. Recent data has posed multiple questions regarding the current situation on the Shoreline Area’s 657 feet.
Why is the Public Zone strip disappearing?
There are two main factors I believe are causing this to happen in Marbella. The first one is related to historic-environmental aspects: the change in the high tide line outside the strip. The second factor is the unchecked privatization within the restricted zone. As the sea stretches in from the outside, private businesses threaten the original limit from the inside, reducing the public strip to the actual levels shown by the mapping.
Change in sea levels and coastal erosion
High tide line changes are detectable by observing the shore’s geomorphology. At some places the sea’s inland incursion is clear, reaching into the street that marks the public areas’s limit. This means that the sea is wiping out the 165 feet Public Zone in these locations, just as the following satellite images show:
¿How much public area has been lost?
Marbella’s Public Zone beaches have lost 56% of their initial territory, according to the geographical information processed after touring the place on January 12. This percentage increases particularly up to a 62% territorial loss of the Public Zone at Coco Beach, which states the need for an open discussion about recovering this legally established strip of public land.
In order for an institutional response to be effective, the Geographic National Institute (IGN) must update the determination for the exact position of the current high tide line for 2023. The people of Marbella have been witnessing the expansion of seawater reaching into the street in front of the Tiki Hut restaurant every day. There is no doubt that the remaining Public Zone is now roughly 50 feet between the street and high tide shoreline, especially at Coco Beach.
The need for updating the Public Zone area
Beyond the 165 feet public area lies another 493 feet strip belonging to the Restricted Zone, which is also considered public property under local municipality management. Development Master Plans could allow licensed authorizations for constructions in this zone. However, Marbella’s local authorities have not yet created a plan. Thus, no license has been approved.
Meanwhile, unregulated management of the area by settlers who dwell within the Restricted Zone continues. It is known for a fact that current occupiers of the area are not people who have historically lived at Marbella (no ownership prior to 1977). This means they have no entitlement over the land. Their fences now border the street across the beachfront at Frijolar and Coco.
I don’t know if there is any legal interpretation that prevents updating the high tide line and relocating the public area to where it should currently be. According to my research, between IGN’s Boundary stone #178 and the northern side of the digital line (2010) at Coco Beach, the public area has lost more than half of its territory, with only 40% of the initial zone still standing.
In order to recover the 165 feet of public zone along the beachfront’s 3281 feet area we analyzed, the boundary line would have to be relocated inwards. This would successfully repossess the public area’s 98,426 square feet that have been lost. This way, the State economy would also prevent the loss of public property valued around 1,500 million colones (considering the ₡50.000/m2 market price), currently owned by unlicensed dwellers.
Conclusions
There seems to be outdated technical specifications regarding the real rising tides at Marbella, which brings uncertainty to legal cases along this strip. Hence, there are always some people who deny the invasion of the Public Zone, even when the facts point out otherwise.
Poor public management is also holding back possible solutions to the issue. We have constantly exposed ongoing buildings and illegal settlements via SITADA public report system, and still have no answer. Beachfront businesses expand their properties unregulated with no regards to licensing or lawful permits to exploit the coast of Marbella.
As long as the Geographic National institute updates data regarding current rising tide levels and shoreline area strip measurements according to the law, there should be no major issue. Boundary stones were placed several decades ago, and actual geographical information technologies now let us observe real changes within the initial 165 feet zone.
According to the law, there must be a mapped zone starting with a 165 feet public area measured during high tide, with a 493 feet area under strict public management right next to it. This estimations have no reason to remain as they were in 1977. The shoreline area is public property, which makes any State loss to hace an impact on public interest.
Coastal lands are by law considered public property, and the general interest on behalf of local communities must be prioritized over any local management. Marbella’s local associations could intervene in a sustainable governance of the strip, which is something that works in other districts across the country.
Disregarding national law and exploiting legal loopholes, foreign investments continue to appropriate more land. Answering to no one but themselves they refuse to follow any license or regulations within the coastal zone. They have relocated boundary stones, constructed buildings, removed lands to build parking areas, built bridges and placed lamp posts, in spite of Costa Rican Congress’ 6043 Act:
Article 12.- Exploitation of existing wildlife, boundary relocation by any means, construction building, cutting down of trees, product extraction, development, business and activity of any kind without due legal license authorization is forbidden within the coastal zone.
Without Development Plan regulations there is absolutely no entitlement over the land by current owners throughout Marbella’s shoreline area. This means they have no valid claim against surrendering public property.
The people of Costa Rica should not lose public zones to foreign real estate investments who only seek to profit from exploiting local beaches and shores that are public property.
We believe the local community of Marbella can sustainably manage the Public Zone in a way that economically benefits the people of Guanacaste, empowering local communities in sustainable tourism and overcoming the excessive dependency on foreign investments that only seek profit at any cost.
This is our goal at FECON, calling on other local communities throughout the country to rise up and recover the Shoreline Area just as in Marbella, confronting real estate territorial misappropriations on the nation’s coastal zones. If we don’t defend what is ours now, we may have no land to live on in the future.