Coastal management and the political-legal geographies of climate change adaptation in Australia

Abstract This paper connects critical legal geography and coastal climate change adaptation. It is particularly interested in the role that complex political ecologies and legal geographies have played in underpinning a decade of idealised integrated coastal management in New South Wales, Australia. In attending to the political-legal nature of coastal management through the lens of legal geography, this paper illustrates the complexities of law’s role as both a driver and a barrier to coastal climate change adaptation, through a detailed review and analysis of repeated legislative reform between 2009–2018. This not-yet-documented analysis serves to highlight a shifting legal landscape and the politics of coastal climate change adaptation. It also illustrates how private property rights have been used as both a sword and a shield to advance dominant interests. The paper offers specific examples of ways private property discourses have been used to muddy the waters of adaptation responses, and how private property discourses can pervade, dissuade, and undermine land use management policies even as such policies aim to achieve more harmonious coastal management.