Anguilla, like other small island states in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has a very small and fragile ecosystem. It totals 90 square kilometres (35 square miles) of flat, developable land both inland and coastal. Islanders often boast of having 32 beaches, almost one for each square mile. Our beaches we boast with pride are some of the best and most pristine in the Caribbean, maybe, even in the world. The coast plays an important role in island life and economy and as a result, almost every economic sector has a strong stake in the coastal zone, each attempting to use the coast simultaneously and wanting a bite of the golden egg. Therefore, if we were to destroy even one of our beaches, (our white gold) or sacrifice one on behalf of development, it would in fact, represent a significant percentage of our island’s natural resources, our bread and butter.
Due to this dependency on the coastal zone, it is impossible to allocate the use of the coast to a single economic sector for development or to give one sector priority over another. Hence, there are always arising conflicts and struggles amongst private (quasi-private) property-based operations on the shore, and public (common) property-based activities in the coastal waters. There are also conflicts between regulatory agencies and developers wanting to do as they wish in coastal areas and also between regulatory agencies and elected members of government wishing to ignore various regulations and policies in the name of development and short-term financial gain. It light of this, it is essential that there is a coastal management process in place that has a mechanism to cope with conflict prevention, mediation and resolution.
This paper aims to introduce some of the coastal management conflicts in Anguilla and outline methods previously undertaken to deal with them. It also attempts to explore possible resolutions to these problems.