This article was written in collaboration with Yamilín Rivera-Santiago
And the hefty politician
invites us to progress,
bringing total amnesia;
replacing the soul
with concrete, calmly,
bringing total amnesia.
-Roy Brown, I don’t know what the truth is
The Caribbean—and Puerto Rico in particular—faces intersecting crises: climate, energy, economy, and politics. These crises are not isolated; they dynamically feed into each other, structurally increasing the population’s vulnerability and disconnection from their natural environment.
Some of these crises are stark: in 2024, extreme heat driven by climate change exposed nearly all residents in affordable housing in Puerto Rico to dangerously high temperatures for many days. By 2050, a significant number of essential coastal infrastructure facilities that Puerto Ricans rely on daily will be underwater at least twice a year due to rising sea levels. This challenging climate reality is compounded by Puerto Rico’s historical colonial subordination, where decisions affecting its citizens have been made externally for over a century.
A new legislative proposal in Puerto Rico aims to strip the public of its constitutionally protected coastal landscape. If passed, this proposal would limit public access to beaches and facilitate private coastal development, precisely when the climate, energy, and housing affordability crises demand the protection and conservation of coastal resources.
Climate and Energy Crisis in Puerto Rico
Rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and fierce hurricanes exacerbated by climate change are reshaping Puerto Rico’s archipelago. Coastal, riverine, and inland flooding have become common, endangering lives and homes, as well as essential infrastructure and ecosystems. Visible consequences include displaced coastal communities, loss of habitable land, contaminated aquifers and sanitation systems, impacts on fishing areas and food security, and endangered evacuation routes.
At the same time, reliance on fossil fuels for electricity generation worsens the crisis’s many facets. Burning fossil fuels not only contributes to emissions causing climate change but also imposes high and unequal social and economic burdens: high energy costs, instability in the power grid, and ongoing vulnerability during and after extreme weather events.
After Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico experienced a sharp real estate devaluation, particularly in the most vulnerable areas. This was coupled with a mass exodus, creating conditions for accelerated land and property transfers.
Colonial Exploitation of Beaches and Coastal Areas
While both local and foreign investors and so-called digital nomads acquire properties, the Puerto Rican government implements public policies favoring investors, disadvantaging Puerto Ricans by distorting the real estate market and complicating access to affordable housing. This situation opens a new legal front threatening to limit coastal access and accelerate coastal exploitation.
In Puerto Rico, the coast is a public asset with a long tradition of public domain, offering public access and enjoyment while providing cultural significance and protection against climate impacts. These coasts have become battlegrounds between Puerto Ricans and investors, as the government prioritizes investor interests over those of the people. The struggle for coastal use is tied to the social and economic crisis post-Hurricane Maria, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2019-2020 earthquake sequence. As living costs—especially housing and energy—continue to rise, Puerto Ricans are displaced, excluded from decision-making, and at the mercy of real estate speculation.
The House Bill 25 (HB25) proposes redefining the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone (MTZ), significantly reducing it and granting public domain to private property owners. This bill is driven by the growing demand for luxury coastal developments, whose developers and investors seek to evade constitutional protections ensuring free and public access to beaches and other coastal areas. Notably, the Puerto Rico Builders Association drafted the bill. HB25 emerges amid rising climate impacts and pressure to increase coastal development. Coastal areas are no longer merely ecological or recreational spaces. They have become sites of colonial exploitation, where access, control, and belonging are shifting.
What is the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone?
The Maritime-Terrestrial Zone is a public domain protected by the constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is defined by a 1968 law as “the space of Puerto Rico’s coasts bathed by the sea in its ebb and flow, where tides are noticeable, and the highest waves during storms where tides are not noticeable, including land gained from the sea and riverbanks up to where they are navigable or tides are noticeable.” This means that the MTZ:
- Includes the part of the coast touched by tides and waves from tropical cyclones.
- Belongs to everyone, not subject to private use
- Cannot be bought, sold, deeded to individuals, or seized.
Additionally, protections prohibit building permanent structures inland from the MTZ, providing protection against climate impacts.
Currently, the MTZ includes the portion of the coast affected by tides and waves from tropical cyclones. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in Puerto Rico is responsible for protecting and conserving the MTZ. The DNR also determines the boundaries (or limits) separating the MTZ from private property. Puerto Rican law establishes a series of easements from the MTZ boundary 50 meters inland, where constructing permanent structures is prohibited (this article provides an excellent explanation.)
The MTZ Provides Socioeconomic, Ecological, and Climate Benefits
Thanks to the MTZ, the people of Puerto Rico and tourists can freely enjoy and use many beaches, rivers, and coastal areas of the archipelago. Free navigation in bodies of water, tourism, and food security through fishing and other activities in the blue economy on coasts and rivers (valued at an estimated $2.3 billion in 2022, according to NOAA) is possible thanks to the MTZ.
Mangroves, coral reefs, and other natural barriers protect the coast from climate impacts like coastal erosion and storm surges—also courtesy of the MTZ. The MTZ protects the Puerto Rican coast from privatized coastal development that is rushed and misaligned with Puerto Rico’s climate adaptation needs. Archaeological sites and amphibious species habitats along the coast are also protected from development by the MTZ.
HB25 Ignores Climate Science
HB25 proposes using the “greatest horizontal displacement of the astronomical tide during equinoxes” based on NOAA tide gauges as a criterion to change the legal definition of the MTZ, eliminating the second criterion in the existing definition that includes wave reach during cyclonic storms. This change would end the MTZ’s public domain where the tide wets the sand, usually where sargassum, seaweed, or other debris are washed ashore by the tide.
If this proposal becomes law, the part of the beach where beachgoers can place their chairs would be in the sand wetted by the tide. This is not just an inconvenience for beachgoers; it would also deprive Puerto Rico of essential protections against storm surges, sea level rise, and coastal erosion, potentially leading to the privatization of coastal areas. This would have harmful consequences for free beach access, housing access, tourism, and the blue economy.
What’s the issue with using only the tide level to redefine the MTZ? Puerto Rico’s coast is micromareal, with a vertical range of just 0.3-0.4 meters, so it doesn’t significantly affect coastal morphology. The factors that truly change Puerto Rico’s coastline are waves, tropical cyclones, storm surges, and climate variability—processes with much larger amplitudes than tides, according to testimony submitted by Dr. Miguel Canals, director of the Center for Applied Ocean Science & Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, and expert in tidal dynamics.
In a world without climate change, powerful hurricanes, disastrous storm surges, and without coastal flooding or erosion, an MTZ defined solely by tides would increase the size of private coastal property, as the bill’s authors (as mentioned—the Puerto Rico Builders Association) undoubtedly hope, to facilitate coastal development. But we live in a world with an altered climate that causes the sea to swallow the coast, so redefining the MTZ solely by tides will legally reduce the MTZ, eventually turning it into a maritime zone—without a terrestrial component. The submerged portion will not be easily usable. For example, beachgoers usually don’t place their chairs on wet sand. Those who buy, and then lose, properties built by the same developers who wrote the law will also be disadvantaged.
Excluding cyclonic storms from the new MTZ definition deliberately ignores the real impact of climate change on Puerto Rico’s coastal morphology. For instance, a study found that most beaches in Puerto Rico lost elevation and width after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Projections of sea-level rise for Puerto Rico (between 0.33-3.75 meters by 2100 based on a range of low to extremely high emission scenarios) and coastal erosion—which will change the MTZ—were not included in HB25’s draft.
HB25 Claims to Preserve and Protect—But Does the Opposite
Another unsettling aspect of HB25 is its mention of the DNR Regulation 4860 to justify the arbitrary use of data and climate reality. Regulation 4860 concerns the management and conservation of territorial waters, submerged lands, and the MTZ. It was adopted in 1992 to update the MTZ according to scientific advances, environmental public policy, and current needs related to MTZ protection and preservation. But as we’ve seen, HB25 does the opposite: it ignores scientific advances in climate science by omitting cyclonic storm effects from the MTZ definition, doesn’t align with the constitutional principle of preserving and conserving natural resources, and overlooks current (and future) needs to protect the MTZ from climate impacts.
HB25 could have severe consequences for coastal management and development in a Puerto Rico facing its challenging climate reality. The changes proposed by HB25 require thorough discussion, including input from scientific experts and community members from all sectors of civil society. But the bill’s draft lacks the expertise of key scientific voices—many scientific and professional institutions have expressed concerns about the lack of adequate scientific criteria in HB25.
And who would benefit from MTZ reductions? It’s telling that the Puerto Rico Builders Association drafted the bill. An MTZ redefined as proposed by HB25 would facilitate reckless coastal development (misaligned with climate adaptation needs) by developers who would generate substantial short-term profits from selling coastal properties that will be chronically underwater in a few years and swallowed by the sea in decades.
The MTZ Should Be Expanded—Not Reduced
The reduction of the MTZ proposed by HB25 ignores scientific evidence of climate change and contradicts the most fundamental principles of climate-resilient planning. Furthermore, it violates the constitutional mandate to protect and conserve natural resources in Puerto Rico.
Building infrastructure in coastal areas that will be consumed by the sea will result in material losses and possibly human lives. Puerto Rican geomorphologist and UPR professor Dr. José Molinelly Freyes recently said the MTZ should expand inland because Puerto Rico is losing more of its coasts due to climate change. Pedro Cardona-Roig, an urban planner who previously served on Puerto Rico’s Planning Board, offered a similar opinion: “What’s being proposed is imprudent and illogical because what we should be doing is the exact opposite: expanding that space to have a buffer area and making sure wave energy doesn’t affect life and property.”
We should think of the MTZ as an elastic and changing boundary, not a fixed line, whose definition should incorporate projections of sea-level rise, potential storm surges, the pace of coastal erosion, flood risk assessments, and climate adaptation needs of essential infrastructure.
Civil Society Rises to Stop HB25
Scientific institutions aren’t the only ones taking action to stop HB25. Grassroots organizations like Murciélagos Beach Defenders (MBD), whose mission is to protect free and unrestricted access to Puerto Rico’s beaches, have created a series of recommendations focused on social and environmental justice that should be integrated into responsible public policy creation:
- Review and adapt the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone definition to expand and preserve it
- Ensure public, free, safe, and equitable access to Puerto Rico’s coastal areas
- Facilitate binding community participation in all public policy decisions
- Require the use of scientific criteria, including evidence of climate impacts, in public policy formulation
- Adopt a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to environmental policy, legislation, and land use permitting.
These goals are not aspirations; they are essential for protecting lives, local economies, and ecosystems.
Research and management by the Union of Concerned Scientists emphasize that climate resilience cannot exist without justice. In Puerto Rico, this means the following must be done:
- Transition to electricity generation based on renewable sources
- Center social equity in post-disaster recovery
- Integrate community-based and feminist frameworks in planning
- Align public policy with science that informs how climate change alters our present and future
In Summary: Why is HB25 so Harmful?
- It reduces the coastal public domain, depriving Puerto Ricans of the use and enjoyment of their constitutionally protected beaches and coastal areas.
- It increases the likelihood of private coastal developments misaligned with climate adaptation needs, which will still chronically flood in just a few years or be swallowed by the sea in decades.
- It does the opposite of what’s needed, which is to expand the MTZ to create thresholds that protect the coast from worsening climate impacts each year.
The evidence is clear: Puerto Rico’s resilience to climate change will be out of reach as long as inequalities in access to land, energy, and other resources persist. Puerto Rico is at a critical crossroads; decisions made today on coastal management, energy generation, and land use will define not only the capacity to adapt to climate change but also the type of society that will emerge. The question is not whether the archipelago will continue to change—that is already happening. The question is, who bears the cost and who benefits from those changes?
The Puerto Rican coast is not a commodity. It is memory, sustenance, protection, and future. Defending it is, above all, defending life.
If you live in Puerto Rico, take action here to say NO to HB25.
