The Shoreline between Nature and Society, a Changing Heritage - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 201

thinking about the implications of this. This regarded the local scale:
the gestation period for the need to take environmental health into
account was very long. It is in fact from the top that the movement
was initiated, as much in the United States as in France as they both
became implicated in the 1970s. The paths followed by these two
countries were different in the short term, but ended up converging.
Both aim to preserve the quality of the environment and the coastal
environment without constraining the means to economic
development too much. Of course, the conservationist ambition was
deeply rooted if we look at the secular history of the British National
Trust. However, its purpose was more anchored in the conservation of
the heritage (of monuments) rather than of nature itself, and it was a
long time before the creation of the Heritage Coast included coastal
sites and enhanced them for the public.
So, coastal and marine protection is a new construction, and it is
still difficult to dissociate it from oceanic coasts, both for political
reasons (the position of the States toward their coastal zone) and
cultural reasons (the populations living on the coasts form a minority,
whatever statistics and maps say: we can live 10 km away from the
coastline without ever looking at it; the “attraction” of the coast often
needs redefining, especially in France).
5.4.2. The implementation of the Coastal Zone Management Act in
the United States
It was in the United States of America, at the end of the 1960s, that
determining steps were taken for the protection of coastlines. The
Stratton report, Our Nation and the Sea , was commissioned by
President Richard Nixon and defined the framework within which
the various partners involved progressively built a policy both for the
protection and development of coastal zones. The Coastal Zone
Management Act was approved by Congress (the Senate and Chamber
of Representatives) and became federal law on October 27 1972 when
Nixon ratified it. The law in itself appeared to have been imposed
through a top-down approach and to be contrary to the coastal States'
interests, as these were always very proud of their autonomy. In
practice, everything turned out differently.