Single law that holds back concrete tide from coast of France

French Seaside Development: A law passed to stop over-development on France's coastline celebrates its 20th birthday this year - and a coastal conservation group has received extra funding. But is it enough to hold back a tide of construction, asks Alva MacSherry

Development pressure on the coastline of France is heavy, and growing. One law and numerous environmental groups hold back a concrete tide, and debate can become heated - phrases like "robber-baron" and "the rotting carcass of good intentions" are freely bandied about, even in this cradle of diplomacy.

The stakes are high - some of the richest sites for flora and fauna in Europe, versus some of the richest prizes in the building industry.

Two stalwarts in the defence of France's remaining unspoiled coastline celebrate milestones this year - a law called the Loi Littoral and a body called the Conservatoire du Littoral which is charged with preservation of the coastline.

The first, passed to manage development along France's coastline, celebrates its 20th anniversary; the second is 30 years old and has just had an increase of 40 per cent in its spending-power.

The concurrence has sparked a flurry of summertime reflection in France on "whither the coastline".

The Conservatoire received its special birthday present from Jacques Chirac in mid-July, when he gifted it the boat-registration tax, worth €9 million a year. This brings the organisation's total budget to €35 million a year, up from €26 million.

What is remarkable is that on this paltry budget the Conservatoire has to date bought - and within its limits manages - 73,360 hectares along France's coastline, divided among 300 sites: that is, 10 per cent of the total, or 860 km of coastline.

Armed with its new budget - almost enough to buy, say, two acres in Ballsbridge - the Conservatoire intends to increase the amount of land it buys from some 2,500 hectares a year to about 3,500 hectares.

"Our objective is to safeguard, by 2050, a third of the national coastline - 270,000 hectares, DOM-TOM included," explains the administrative and financial director of the Conservatoire, Bernard Gerard, referring to the French overseas territories,

This is only possible because of the low price fetched by land on the coastline - and the price of land on the coastline is kept low by the Loi Littoral: any slackening of the law would send property prices rocketing. The Loi Littoral famously prohibits building within 100 metres of the shore, but also severely limits, for instance, the building of new roads within 2km of the shore.

The law has many staunch defenders - and it needs them. Local councils and landowners would also stand to benefit from easing of the restrictions.

The law's defenders largely refuse even to contemplate tweaking the law, on the grounds that any modification will weaken it.

Sadly, there are grounds for their fears: legal experts hold that 1985's Loi Montagene, passed to govern development in the fragile high mountains, has since been modified beyond usefulness.

The Loi Littoral is seen by many to be holding back three tides - residential, tourist, and economic - and whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on where you stand.

But in fact it was intended more as a management scheme than as a dam, its aim to avoid anarchy rather than to halt development. There is still 3.7 million square metres of construction each year on the French coastline.

This includes, this year, the building of 600 new dwellings at Sete, the largest fishing port on the Mediterranean, where the largest coastline project on the Mediterranean has just resulted in a new beach 1.5km long and 200 metres wide.

The local authority pulled back an old coastline road, which was periodically flooded and covered in sand, and looped a new road behind a beach with a gentler slope, a series of embankments and a screen of vegetation to avoid erosion, leaving room in the loop for the development.

"I think it's an example of what one can do to develop tourism in preserving the environment," explained the minister for tourism, Leon Bertrand, when he opened the plage last month.

France's coastal population is set to grow in the next decade by nearly 6 per cent for full-time residents (the French like to retire to the seaside) and by 20 per cent for holiday homes, so there will be plenty of demand for the development in Sete and everywhere else along the French coastline.

Neither the Loi Littoral nor the Conservatoire will be enjoying time off to celebrate its birthday.