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Damages to property resulting from erosion affect both security and integrity of property which are located on coastline. The absence or the lack of intervention of the public authorities in charge of administrative police has been criticised by the citizens who claim for a better enforcement of administrative police. The applicable rules to the implementation of administrative police in case of coastal erosion are determined by analogy following the law applicable to similar situations (avalanche, floods, rockslide). While an adequate enforcement of the powers of administrative police is expected from citizens, it should be used with moderation. The issue of the financial burden is nowadays significant. The failure of public action have material consequences and the fact that administrative police is free of charge restricts its ability.

The maritime public domain is delimited on the land side by a physical criteria: the criteria of the "highest flow". Evolving, this criteria has for consequence to include in the public domain lands which were covered by sea because of erosion; this leads de facto to the deprivation of owners who are victims by the coastal erosion. Then, the owner has limited safeguard since he cannot fix the delimitation of the natural maritime public domain, neither claim for compensation grounded on expropriation. Indeed, the legislator has not really dealt with this issue. In addition, the administrative judge opted for a compliant interpretation of the so-called theory of the "natural" dimension of the maritime public domain, which reduced any possibility to be granted with compensation.

While the authorities' awareness of the risk of erosion is recent, it has not been limited to the introduction of new legal tools aimed at preserving the hazards of goods and people (ZART, BRILI). Indeed, the debate quickly moved towards the necessity of an adaptation of the littoral law. This adaptation, although necessary, is not free of risks of drift. It is especially the case law relating to the criterion of extension in continuity of villages and agglomerations that is pointed out.

The coastal erosion and the submersion of low relief terrestrial territories are two phenomena that affect all parts of the World, in variable proportions. The main issues and challenges are human, environmental, technologic, economic and political. The United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea rules the delimitation of maritime areas through the principle that the Land dominates the Sea. The Convention doesn't take into consideration these phenomena as main issues while recognizing its impacts on the areas concerned. However, the Convention doesn't contain provisions related to the delimitations already done. Beyond the consequent legal insecurity, a question arises related to the impacts of the difference between the geographical reality, the established delimitation and the survival of the most exposed States.`np pagenum="058"/b

The struggle against coastal erosion has been the subject of increasing mobilization by a number of international organizations since the 1990s, as evidenced by several declarations and programs created by them. Erosion is generally described as a global phenomenon that poses a major challenge to international society, particularly for coastal or developing States. In practice, the action of international organizations to combat erosion is mainly carried out through three categories of activities: project financing; knowledge-sharing through the production of reports and guides; and the coordination of joint actions by several States or international organizations. Nevertheless, while international organizations are adequate forums for exchange, monitoring and technical support, they can also, in some cases, contribute to the aggravation of coastal erosion.

The fight against erosion in International Law is recent and limited. There is a lack of universal international standards for erosion. It is therefore useful to expand the approach to a dual perspective, universal and regional. From a universal point of view, it is necessary to determine the texts, declarations, and general or customary legal principles which make it possible to limit the erosion, even in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, and from a regional point of view, it is necessary to establish which specific principles are aimed at coastal erosion in some maritime areas, including the Mediterranean sea. In this context, the system of the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean and its Protocol adopted in Madrid in 2008 is not just an exception, but a real model in International Law.

In the "Signal" building case (Soulac-sur-Mer), the French constitutional Court has approved, the 6th of april 2018, the Barnier Funds' constitutionality with regard to the "principle of equality", despite the fact that it excludes compensation for the buildings affected by coastal erosion, contrary to other coastal risks such as marine floods. As a consequence, the Barnier Funds doesn't take into account all the types of vulnerabilities to coastal risks, not only because it doesn't deal with coastal erosion, but also because it has restrictive eligibility criteria. Positive law enhances a short-term management of littoral risks which is not considered globally, doesn't anticipate the long term and maintains inequalities. In response, multidisciplinary approaches suggest legal solutions which take into account various coastal inhabitants vulnerabilities.

In his contribution Serge Gutwirth presents Sara Vanuxem's article both from the perspective of her specific approach, as with reference to the ontologies she contrasts.

This`np pagenum="116"/b text attempts to interpret ecological compensation in a perspective that could be qualified as a-modern. The first part focusses upon the principle of ecological compensation as such, considered as a mechanism to compensate for the desecration of land by the sanctuarisation and preservation of other lands, located in the periphery. The second part deals with the first two modes of execution of such clearing obligation: when the debtor executes his/her obligation directly or through a third party, everything happens as if biodiversity was repaid for the violations perpetrated on one fund by the fruits produced in another fund. The legal bond between the damaged earth and the reserved land then recalls the antichrese, this right in rem ensuring the payment of a debt, known from antiquity and the Middle Ages. The third part is devoted to the last mode of execution: the acquisition of compensation units on natural sites distant from the places of desecration. Natural sites are then analyzed as temples or funds for biodiversity administered by their human stewards.

The various and diverse cases, presented in this chronicle, reflect the dynamism of the European Court of Human Rights in dealing with environmental disputes and offering promising prospects to concrete and effective guarantee for environmental human rights.The European Court of Human Rights puts most attention on considering the reality of concrete situations which increasingly creates an obstacle to a mechanical application of the general rules. This trend has been confirmed by the relaxation of the environmental protective rules, especially in the sphere of forests. It also has gone against the rules which ignore the situation of victims of environmental damage, specifically in the event of industrial disasters. Lastly, the right to the enforcement of judgments in this area also demonstrates its vitality.

Procedures for ensuring public information and participation are still being reformed. In 2018, the main evolutions concerned the single environmental authorization created in 2014 and reformed in 2017. On the one hand, the Council of State specified in two opinions in the spring and autumn the modalities to regularize posteriori an irregular public inquiry. On the other hand, the law n. 2018-727 of August 10, 2018 for a State in the service of a society of trust allowed on an experimental basis to replace the public inquiry by the electronic consultation provided for in Article L. 123-19 of the Environment Code when prior consultation has already taken place. This experiment, which can be explained by the desire to avoid the redundancy of the procedures, nonetheless represents a decline in guarantees for public participation. The solution could be to relax the terms of the public inquiry when a consultation has already taken place, as the two opinions of the Council of State seem to allow.

In 2018, the first cases law applying the new environmental single permit rules were tried concerning the specific provision governing the judges' prerogatives. Combined with the traditional specificity in this matter, the latter becomes more sophisticated.Interesting perspectives appear for towards the reinforcement of the law in the field of pollutions and nuisances. This goes through administrative case law (waste, luminous nuisances) and judicial courts (water pollution). These perspectives also concern the standstill obligation and the compensation for environmental damages. Finally, the field of law shows that it is grappling with global issues.

The common point of the recent legislative development related to the protection of the living conditions is to provide for significant breach to the current applicable legal framework. For instance, advertising legal framework was amended in order to take into consideration the organization of the Olympic and Paralympics Games in summer 2024. Their object is to derogate to the principle of prohibition of advertising during the Olympic games. At the same time, the so-called "loi ELAN" softened the restrictions imposed by Coastal Law while providing for new building possibilities in the non-urbanised areas of coastal cities. The litigation related to advertising law was not very significant this year. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning one of the first cases where the judge reviewed the legality of the advertising regulations adopted following the Grenelle II legislation. The enforcement of the provisions of the Coastal Law questions the possibility whether a camping could, by principle, be an existing agglomeration or`np pagenum="188"/b village. When a local urban plan sets up provisions comparable to Article R. 111-21, the administrative judge apply them similarly to the latter.