**1. Introduction**

Most of us love coastal areas and want to access them freely. Today, an estimated 40% of the global population live within 100 km of the coast [1]. However, will they have access to enjoy the seashore or beaches? (In the context of this paper, we use the terms "seashore" and "beaches" interchangeably.) In many countries, the public's expectation to have the right to access the beach is embedded in ancient tradition or law. Accessibility is today also part of the broad conception of integrated coastal zone management—ICZM [2,3] (*ICZM Protocol to the Barcelona Convention* and the *Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council* ... *Concerning the Implementation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management in Europe*). However, heightened beach access rights inevitably entail more anthropogenic disturbances to the ecosystem. With the growing threats of sea level rise, tensions between beach access rights and urban sustainability are growing [4]. In this paper, environmental sustainability will play in the background, to be addressed again when it appears in legislation or court decisions regarding beach access rights.

A daily and highly visible arena of conflict surrounding coastal areas is caused by their attributes as prime real estate locations [5]. Attempts to extend public access rights will likely encounter opposition from private real estate interests and from government

**Citation:** Alterman, R.; Pellach, C. Beach Access, Property Rights, and Social-Distributive Questions: A Cross-National Legal Perspective of Fifteen Countries. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 4237. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14074237

Academic Editors: Harald A. Mieg and Miguel Amado

Received: 3 December 2021 Accepted: 26 March 2022 Published: 2 April 2022

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financial and political interests. As Thom [6] argued, beach access is inherently a highly contested issue. Conflicts might occur between landowners on or near the beach and public groups arguing "the beaches are ours"; between the wealthy who can purchase apartments with a sea view and those whose view is blocked; and between socio-economic groups who can pay high beach access fees, and those who cannot afford to do so [7]. The rising commodification of real property potentially exacerbates such conflicts. If one adds the special challenge of enabling beach access for people with disabilities, the potential for clashes among competing objectives becomes even higher. How should such clashes be resolved?

There are no globally consistent answers. This paper does not propose specific normative rules but, rather, presents the many different legal and regulatory approaches among a large set of countries. The readers are challenged to rethink their own countries' coastal access rights now through the prism of what could be learned from other countries—whether positively or negatively. We also try to go beyond the usual legal frameworks and highlight relevant social-distributive issues that might arise. The paper concludes with some thoughts about emerging trends towards international convergence and how these might be enhanced.
