For more than three decades the government and business community have recognized that this natural resource cannot be taken for granted. Beaches are like endangered species. If not protected and reinforced, they may disappear, in some cases as fast as a single day, because of an event as drastic as a storm or as subtle as a shift in tide and current.

Tia Browne: "A storm doesn't necessarily have to be a hurricane to threaten a beach. An ocean swell can also be a threat."

“A beach is a very dynamic system,” says Tia Browne, a project engineer for the Barbados Coastal Infrastructure Program. “A storm doesn’t necessarily have to be a hurricane to threaten a beach. An ocean swell can also be a threat.”

In 1983 the government began to prepare a systematic strategy and plan for preserving the country’s beaches, a process that required new laws, training and hiring of engineers and administrators. Publicity campaigns made average citizens more aware of the importance of conservationand investing in beach stabilization.

Known as Integrated Coastal Management, the shore protection program takes into account the impact of commercial and housing development, drainage, ocean tides and currents, storm and hurricane probabilities, coral reef ecosystems and the rising sea level caused by global warming. The owners of shoreline properties and other interested parties are regularly consulted and encouraged to participate in the coastal preservation system.

Measures for protection and enhancement of selected beaches have their own language: “headlands” are artificial rock promontories; “spurs” are rock jetties, smaller than the headlands; “revetments” are piles of boulders on shore, behind the beaches; “groynes” are large barriers, often of cement blocs, that trap sand; “nourishment” is new sand that reinforces an eroded beach.

Aerial view of Crane beach.

On a single 1.1 kilometer strip of beach on the southwestern coast, from Rockley to Coconut Grove, shoreline rehabilitation requires the construction of five headlands, one major revetment and five spurs. The revetment requires 30,000 tons of granite boulders imported from Canada, while beach nourishment will absorb 18,000 cubic meters of sand dredged from a Barbados harbor. The procedure is guided by a scientific model developed by an international technology firm in Canada.

When the rehabilitation is completedthe program includes construction of a boardwalk along the beach and public bathing facilities─the government will have invested $9 million in a 1.1-kilometer strip of shoreline near Bridgetown, the capital and main city.

This and other investments have succeeded in basically stabilizing the Barbados coastline, says Browne, but the rehabilitation and shoreline protection process is continuous, and the possibilities of setbacks are a constant menace.

A Coastal Zone Management Unit has been established to carry out and monitor the shoreline protection program, guided by the Coastal Zone Management Plan. Three laws were enacted to enforce Integrated Coastal Management: the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Marine Pollution Control Act and the Town and Country Planning Act.

The IDB supported the establishment of Integrated Coastal Management from its inception in 1983 by providing financial assistance for technical studies and research. These resources were later supplemented by funding for training technicians and for demonstration projects. The Bank financed the drafting of new environmental legislation and aided in the establishment of the Coastal Zone Management Unit and in the drafting of the Coastal Zone Management Plan.

An IDB loan of $17 million approved in 2002 financed the rehabilitation and protection of selected, priority beaches, including the celebrated beaches of Rockley and Crane, and provided resources for training and strengthening of the Coastal Zone Management Unit.

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