This post was co-authored by Yamilín Rivera-Santiago.
Y el político grueso
nos convida al progreso,
trayendo la amnesia total;
sustituye el alma
por concreto, con calma,
trayendo la amnesia total.
-Roy Brown, Yo no sé cual es la verdad
The Caribbean, particularly Puerto Rico, is grappling with intersecting crises in climate, energy, economy, and politics. These issues are not separate; they dynamically interact, leading to increased vulnerability and displacement for people and communities due to structural factors. Some crises are colliding: in 2024, climate-induced extreme heat impacted nearly all affordable housing residents in Puerto Rico with several days of hazardous heat. By 2050, a significant number of crucial infrastructure assets essential for Puerto Ricans’ daily lives could be submerged at least twice a year due to sea-level rise. This severe climate scenario is compounded by the historical context of colonial subordination, where key decisions affecting Puerto Ricans have been made externally for over a century.
Currently, a proposed bill in the Puerto Rican legislature poses a threat to the cultural and constitutionally protected coastal heritage of Puerto Ricans. This legislation could limit public beach access and encourage maladaptive private coastal development, despite the pressing need to protect coastal resources amid climate, energy, and housing crises.
The climate and energy crises in Puerto Rico cannot be ignored
Sea-level rise, intensified coastal erosion, and severe hurricanes due to climate change are transforming Puerto Rico’s archipelago. Coastal and inland flooding are becoming common, posing threats to homes, infrastructure, and ecosystems. These changes have direct impacts, including the displacement of communities, loss of habitable land, aquifer contamination, and impacts on fisheries and food security, along with compromised evacuation routes during emergencies.
Additionally, the reliance on fossil fuels for energy generation worsens these crises. Burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change and imposes social and economic burdens, such as high electricity costs, grid instability, and ongoing vulnerability after extreme weather events.
After Hurricane María in 2017, Puerto Rico faced substantial property devaluation, especially in vulnerable areas. This, alongside a significant exodus of Puerto Ricans, created conditions conducive to accelerated land and property acquisitions.
Beaches and other coastal zones: a new front of dispossession
While real estate investors—both local and foreign—and “digital nomads” acquire property on the island, Puerto Rican government policies favor external investors, disadvantaging Puerto Ricans and distorting the real estate market, thereby increasing barriers to affordable housing. A new legal challenge in Puerto Rico threatens to deny Puerto Ricans access to their coastal zones and accelerate their dispossession.
Historically, coastal zones in Puerto Rico have been public, accessible to all, and culturally important, providing protection from climate impacts. These areas are now contested between communities and investors, with the government often prioritizing investors over Puerto Rican welfare. Conflicts over coastal areas are linked to worsening social and economic conditions following María, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2019-2020 earthquake sequence. As living costs, especially for housing and energy, rise, Puerto Ricans face displacement, exclusion from decision-making, and real estate speculation.
Puerto Rico’s House Bill 25 (PC 25) aims to redefine and diminish the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone (MTZ), effectively transferring public land to private owners. This bill, driven by a demand for luxury coastal developments, seeks to alter legal protections for public beach access. Authored by the Puerto Rico Builders Association, PC 25 surfaces amid growing climate impacts and pressure for coastal development, turning coastal areas into zones of contention over access and control.
What is the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone?
The Maritime-Terrestrial Zone (MTZ) is a coastal asset under Puerto Rico’s public domain, protected by the Commonwealth’s constitution. Defined by a 1968 law, it includes all land reached by tides and waves from tropical storms. The MTZ:
- Encompasses all land affected by tides and storm waves
- Is public property, not subject to private use
- Cannot be bought, sold, or seized
Moreover, there are restrictions on permanent construction inland from the MTZ to provide buffers against climate impacts.
Currently, the MTZ covers the coastline affected by tides and storm waves. The Puerto Rico Department of Natural & Environmental Resources (DRNA in Spanish) manages the conservation and protection of the MTZ and sets its boundaries concerning private property. Puerto Rican law also mandates a series of easements extending 50 meters inland from the MTZ where no permanent structures can be built (see this planning law blog for a detailed explanation in Spanish).
The Maritime-Terrestrial Zone provides social, economic, ecological, and climatic benefits
The MTZ enables Puerto Ricans and visitors to freely enjoy and utilize the archipelago’s beaches, rivers, and coastal areas. Free navigation, tourism, and food security from fishing and other economic activities in Puerto Rico’s blue economy (valued at $2.3 billion in 2022 according to NOAA!) are possible due to the MTZ. Mangroves, coral reefs, and other natural barriers help mitigate climate impacts like erosion and storm surges, protected by the MTZ. It safeguards Puerto Rican shorelines from reckless development, and archaeological sites along the coast are also protected from development by the MTZ.
PC 25 ignores climate science to reduce the MTZ
PC 25 seeks to alter the MTZ’s legal definition by relying on astronomical tide reach, based on NOAA’s tide gauges, and excluding wave reach during cyclonic storms. This change would limit the public domain of the MTZ to where the tide meets the shore, typically marked by debris like seaweed. If enacted, beachgoers could only use the wet sand touched by tides. This reduction poses broader risks beyond beachgoers, like reduced flood protection from storm surges, sea-level rise, and erosion, potentially leading to privatized coastal access with adverse effects on public beach access, housing affordability, tourism, and the blue economy.
Why is relying solely on tides problematic for redefining the MTZ? Puerto Rico’s coastal environment is microtidal, with a minimal vertical range of 0.3-0.4 meters, contributing little to coastline shaping. Contrarily, waves, swells, tropical storms, storm surges, and climate variability—processes with more significant impacts than tides—are the real influencers, as noted in testimony by Dr. Miguel Canals, director of the Center for Applied Ocean Science & Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. An MTZ defined solely by tides would expand private property boundaries, facilitating coastal development—a goal of the Puerto Rico Builders Association, authors of the bill. This redefinition would legally shrink the MTZ, turning it into a maritime zone without a terrestrial component. The underwater portion would be unsuitable for most users, including beachgoers who typically avoid wet sand and homeowners who risk losing properties to the sea.
Excluding cyclonic storms from the MTZ definition means ignoring wave height and storm surges, which could penetrate further inland with sea-level rise. This proposed redefinition disregards the significant impact of climate change on Puerto Rico’s coastline. A study noted that most beaches lost elevation and width after María in 2017. PC 25 also neglects future sea-level rise projections (estimated for Puerto Rico to range between 0.33-3.75 meters by 2100 across emissions scenarios) and coastal erosion.
PC 25 says it intends to conserve and protect—but does the opposite
PC 25’s invocation of Regulation 4860 of the DRNA to justify excluding specific scientific data is perplexing. Regulation 4860, adopted in 1992, guides the MTZ’s administration and conservation, emphasizing updates according to “scientific breakthroughs, environmental public policy, and current needs related to conservation and preservation of the MTZ” (our translation). However, PC 25 does the contrary by excluding the latest science on climate-worsened cyclonic storms, misaligning with the constitutional principle of natural resource preservation, and ignoring the current and future need to protect the entire MTZ from climate impacts.
PC 25 could significantly affect coastal management and development under a changing climate. This proposed change demands thorough discussion involving experts and community members from diverse civil society sectors. However, the bill lacks input from key scientific voices, and multiple Puerto Rican scientific institutions and professional societies have expressed concerns about the inadequate scientific data in PC 25.
Who benefits from reducing the MTZ? The Puerto Rico Builders Association’s authorship of the law is telling. An MTZ redefined as proposed in PC 25 would enable maladaptive coastal development by private developers, who would profit from selling coastal investments destined to be flooded, eroded, and eventually submerged by rising seas.
The MTZ needs to be expanded, not reduced
The proposed reduction of the MTZ by PC 25 ignores scientific evidence of climate change and contradicts the basics of climate-resilient planning. It also violates the Puerto Rican constitution’s directive to protect natural resources, exposing communities and common resources to greater risk.
Building infrastructure in coastal zones that will be overtaken by the sea will lead to investment losses and potential loss of life. Puerto Rican geomorphologist and UPR professor Dr. José Molinelly Freytes recently stated that the MTZ should be extended inland due to severe coastline losses from climate change. Similar views were shared by Pedro Cardona-Roig, an urban planner formerly with the Puerto Rico Planning Board: “What is being proposed is reckless and illogical, because what we should be doing is the exact opposite: enlarge the [MTZ] space to create a buffer zone and ensure that encroaching waves do not affect life and property.”
The MTZ should be viewed as a dynamic boundary, not a fixed line, with its definition incorporating sea-level rise projections, storm surge potential, erosion rates, flood risk assessments, and adaptation needs for critical infrastructure.
Civic organizations are mobilizing to stop PC 25
Scientific societies are not alone in opposing PC 25. Community-based organizations like Murciélagos Beach Defenders (MBD)—dedicated to ensuring public and free access to Puerto Rico’s beaches—have outlined a set of justice-oriented recommendations for responsible policy:
- Review and adapt the definition of the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone to expand and conserve it
- Guarantee public, free, safe, and equitable access to Puerto Rico’s coastal zones
- Establish binding community participation in all public policy decisions
- Require the use of scientific criteria and empirical evidence, including climate impacts, in policymaking
- Adopt a comprehensive, multidisciplinary planning approach in environmental policy, legislation, and land-use and permitting regulations
These recommendations are essential to protect lives, local economies, and ecosystems. Research and advocacy by the Union of Concerned Scientists echo this sentiment, emphasizing that resilience is unattainable without justice. In Puerto Rico, this means:
So: let’s recap. Why is this bill bad?
- Restricts the coastal public domain, dispossessing Puerto Ricans of their constitutionally protected beaches and other coastal areas
- Increases the potential for maladaptive private coastal development, likely to be chronically flooded in a few decades, exacerbating sea-level rise and storm surge flooding, which are worsening due to climate change
- Does the opposite of what is needed, which is to increase the MTZ to create buffers that will protect the coast from worsening climate impacts.
The evidence is clear: meaningful resilience is unattainable as long as structural inequalities in access to land, coastal areas, energy, and resources persist. Puerto Rico is at a pivotal moment. Decisions made today regarding coastal management, energy systems, and land use will determine not only our ability to adapt to climate change but also the nature of the society that emerges. The question is not whether the territory will continue to change; that is already happening. The question is who bears the costs and who benefits from those changes.
The coast is not a commodity. It is memory, sustenance, protection, and the future. To defend it is, fundamentally, to defend life.
If you live in Puerto Rico, take action here to say NO to PC25.
