The Shoreline between Nature and Society, a Changing Heritage - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 200

away from those submerged areas. None of these elements come into
conflict with the heritage policies we are about to explain; on the
contrary, these still need to be integrated within the development
process.
5.4. Management models for the protection of coastlines
The situation described above undoubtedly appears very bleak. It
cannot be otherwise given all the types of pressure exerted on these
environments, with consequences that require attention. The concerns
were for a long time rather focused on heritage, proper to a western
society dominated by elites of birth or fortune. The emphasis was on
the heritage values of landscapes, for instance, of sites, monuments
without going beyond and recognizing the shorelines and oceans
for what they were, in their specific character. From the 1960s,
this perspective changed as the attention was borne onto sites that
should be conserved for their high heritage value but, more broadly, it
was the natural environment that became the common human heritage.
The shorelines and seas are also part of this new logic [MIO 93,
MIO 09].
5.4.1. The stages of the realization
The realization was slow and progressed, as the various stages and
types of degradation were noted, with incidentally, a growing trend, in
some places, to exaggerating the effects of the process. With the rise
of coastal tourism, local organizations of residents started reporting,
not without some ambiguity, the high pressure on the coasts and the
degradation effects that have often resulted from it. The slow
continuous erosion of the shoreline was often revealed after the local
residents who were suddenly confronted with the sea, not just to
admire it, rose together to demand protection. This realization
essentially marked the brutal overturn of a farming society that was
indifferent to the sea, except in the case of dikes for the protection of
marshes and polders, toward an urban society, with their characteristic
hedonism, which would welcome the image of stormy weather on the
winter coasts as long as the villas are not damaged. Few went as far as