*The coastline of Alvarado, in the Gulf of Mexico, covers 86 kilometers of coastline divided into eight coastal blocks, of which three have undergone erosion, with the sea gaining between 30 and 100 meters of beach.
*Scientists warn that erosion is caused both by climate change and by poorly planned coastal infrastructure.
*In Alvarado, the disorderly growth of the Riviera Veracruz has allowed the construction of almost 60 subdivisions, buildings and shopping malls on coastal dunes, without adequate land use.
*Localities in the municipality have shown signs of erosion and residents are seeking federal protection to respect their right to a healthy environment.
By Flavia Morales
In the town of Las Barrancas, in the municipality of Alvarado, coastal erosion has displaced dozens of inhabitants. “There are people who lost their only heritage. We do what our strength allows us to protect ourselves: barricades, sandbags, stones, but nothing stops the sea from advancing,” says Nancy Ochoa, who chairs a cooperative of 40 fishermen and leads a group of women with a fish processor.
Although your community is the most affected, it's not the only one. Scientists warn that coastal erosion in Alvarado, facing the Gulf of Mexico, is the most serious in the state of Veracruz. Other towns, such as Antonio Lizardo, Playa Zapote, Paso Salinas and Playa Arbolillo, have lost between 30 and even 100 meters of beach. The main culprits of the problem, experts say, are the rise in sea level caused by the climate crisis and the disorderly growth of infrastructure.
The construction of real estate developments on dunes and the installation of breakwaters, a work made with stones placed at the bottom of the sea and along the coast, have altered the natural flow of sand, accelerating the disappearance of beaches.
As erosion progresses, advertisements continue to promote the coastal corridor as an exclusive paradise. According to data from the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) reviewed by Mongabay Latam and Causa Natura, 58 of the 82 requests made to build subdivisions, towers and squares in Alvarado have been approved in 19 years. Others are still under evaluation. For now, nothing seems to stop the real estate boom in the area, although in 2023 scientists from the National Institute of Ecology warned about erosion and recommended regulating land use changes and protecting ecosystems.
Experts warn that this territory, rich in dunes, mangroves and low jungle, is being altered without considering its value as a biological corridor and in accordance with an obsolete urban planning regulation, from 16 years ago.
Faced with the crisis, communities organized to demand, through federal protection, respect for their right to a healthy environment.
The beaches that swallowed the sea
Coastal erosion is a natural process that has multiple causes, such as hurricanes, storms, changes in sea currents, sediments and the melting of glaciers, explains Edgar Sánchez, a researcher at the National Institute of Ecology and part of the team of scientists who conducted research on the impacts of sea level on the Mexican Atlantic coast. However, one of the most serious, in his opinion, is the rise in global sea level and the growth of poorly planned coastal infrastructure.
In the municipality of Alvarado, there is a buoy from the Mareographic Service of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) that has calculated a rise in sea level of between 1.8 and 2 millimeters per year.
“This rise in sea level exacerbates coastal erosion because, in extreme events such as hurricanes and northernals, rising sea levels, plus storm surges, have a greater impact on the coasts,” explains Sánchez.
In Las Barrancas, the coastal community whose images of houses falling apart have been widely reported in the media, the sea has gained more than 70 meters of beach in a decade and has destroyed at least 15 houses, as well as land and palapas.
Researcher Edgar Sánchez has been a student of the effects of climate change. Photo: Óscar Martínez.
Researcher Edgar Sánchez points out that in this place, the rise in sea level may be higher than in the rest of the area: “The rise in sea level is not even across the globe and depends a lot on the geomorphology of the place. If we could put a buoy in Las Barrancas, surely the local relative increase there would be greater than that recorded by Alvarado and recorded by the port of Veracruz. The problem is that there are few buoys to measure this impact,” he explains.
Pedro Sánchez, a fisherman from Las Barrancas, remembers that before this beach could fit up to three lines of cars, baseball games, carnivals, palapas, but that's over.
“Now where we roam (with the boats) we have to pay a rent for the land,” he says, and that has affected his economy. “We don't have a beach where to leave their boats, many had to sell their nets and boats,” he laments.
The problem is not unique to Las Barrancas
Carlota Zamudio recalls that 20 years ago she distributed fish to various locations along the Mata de Uva beach line, another of the communities affected by erosion in Alvarado. Today, this task is impossible because the coastal strip has disappeared in several sections.
“From my house, which is in front of the beach, I walked 100 meters. I never imagined that water would reach there. The sea gained ground until it hit the walls of the properties. And that's where our ordeal began,” he says.
Remains of houses in Mata de Uva. Photo: Óscar Martínez.
A document from the Government of Veracruz updated in May 2024, which analyzes erosion along the State's coasts and presents proposals to promote resilience in the face of these events, warns that erosion in the municipality of Alvarado is serious and increases from north to south, with rates ranging from 0.1 to 5 meters per year.
For people in these communities, erosion has not only brought flooding and displacement due to the loss of homes and land, but also uncertainty and a high economic cost for fishermen who need to protect their boats.
“A lot of people have decided to sell their properties and, as a result, a lot of people have migrated and are no longer here. This has forced others to abandon fishing and look for work maintaining housing units,” says Ochoa.
Real estate expansion continues
To try to solve the problem of erosion in Mata de Uva, the state government decided to build a breakwater in 2013. Although the decision allowed them to temporarily recover part of the beach, erosion continues to progress.
The fact is that the placement of breakwaters serves to protect a property, not the beach, warns Patricia Moreno, a researcher at the Institute of Ecology (Inecol) and member of the external evaluation committee of the Institute for Ecosystem and Sustainability Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
It happens that breakwaters, piers, walls and other infrastructures, including real estate, create obstacles to the natural movement of sand that occurs on beaches due to the action of wind, waves and sea currents. When something interrupts that natural movement, the sand is redistributed irregularly. In other words, it can accumulate in some areas and disappear in others, Moreno explains.
“If you put in a hard structure, you prevent the movement of sand. This is how we arrived at Las Barrancas, which lost an entire line of houses and is already on the second line,” says the expert, who adds that the accelerated loss of dunes and beaches has also altered the ecosystem. Coastal erosion, he says, affects the habitats of species such as turtles and shorebirds.
A study published in 2023 and prepared by Inecol, warns of the loss of 77 kilometers of beach in Alvarado due to coastal erosion, as well as 500 hectares of dunes.
The report, which includes a specific analysis of the municipality of Alvarado, warns that most of the dunes have been deforested and converted into areas for agricultural activities or for tourism and housing developments.
The dunes that are still conserved - about 14 hectares - are in deteriorated condition and 75% of their surface is occupied by human settlements, the study says.
According to Moreno, in the case of Barrancas, the changes in sediments caused by the expansion of the Port of Veracruz, located 55 kilometers away, as well as the infrastructure built to protect private land are largely responsible for erosion.
“Those who build structures such as breakwaters don't look down. They do not analyze that a breakwater affects after several years. If we look from the port of Veracruz, there is a row of breakwaters, one after the other. This structure serves to protect property, not to protect the beach”, he warns.
Mata de Uva, a town of 500 inhabitants dedicated to fishing and tourist activities, was the first of several communities to experience accelerated coastal erosion.
“The beach began to disappear, many people lost ground, others surrounded their houses with rocks and sacks as a barrier to stop the impact,” Zamudio says. However, none of this will stop the sea, experts say, especially since the threats that intensify erosion do not stop.
Both in the community of Carlota Zamudio and in the rest of the municipality, the growth of houses continues. In the corridor of the Riviera Veracruz there are dozens of advertisements inviting you to live in front of the sea: “Live in paradise. The most exclusive in the Gulf of Mexico”, “Build Your Future by the Sea”, reads on large banners.
From 2005 to date, 58 subdivisions have been approved by Semarnat, according to data published by that organization. Several built houses facing the sea, on the coastal dunes and the low jungle. To protect their properties from erosion, these developments erected at least six breakwaters and breakwaters in the coastal strip. The problem is that doing so increased erosion in nearby areas.
Although projects of this type have not been approved in recent years, experts are concerned that subdivisions continue to occur without an updated urban planning program.
Of the 58 subdivisions approved so far, nine were authorized between 2020 and 2024 and another four are still under evaluation. Among those recently approved, there are so-called “urban complexes”, that is, large housing condominiums that include commercial and service infrastructure.
Of these projects, four are in coastal ecosystems. One of them plans to build 160 apartments on land that includes low jungle and coastal dunes. In 2020, Semarnat conditioned its construction to an environmental mitigation and reforestation plan.
Another housing complex that plans to build 285 oceanfront family lots is built on coastal dunes in the El Bayo ejido. The development of Playa Pelicanos is planned in front of Mata de Uva beach, one of the areas most impacted by coastal erosion, according to scientific studies.
An outdated urban system
Despite real estate pressure, Alvarado does not have an up-to-date planning program. The most recent is the Urban Planning Program for the conurbated area of the municipalities of Veracruz, Boca del Río, Medellín and Alvarado, which was last updated 16 years ago, in 2008.
Later, in 2009, a specific program was developed for the Boca del Río-Antón Lizardo Tourism Corridor, but since then there have been no new updates in the territorial planning, says researcher Patricia Moreno.
The scientist recalls that in 2012 a legislative proposal was submitted, but it was rejected by the City Council. Currently, there is another proposal pending approval by municipal officials.
The absence of a planning program has caused a disorder in coastal construction.
Inecol researchers warn in the article Urgent Challenges of the Mexican Coasts , that it is necessary to design comprehensive public policies that regulate coastal land use with scientific, environmental and social criteria. They also highlight the importance of ensuring that existing environmental legislation is complied with and that there are clear consequences for those who destroy coastal ecosystems.
“Permits are granted on a discretionary basis or without considering the vulnerability of the terrain,” Moreno says. “Nobody wants to be behind the dune, they want to be on the seashore, and if you have a big dune, you dig it up. The problem is that it is this sand that mitigates erosion when the north and hurricanes arrive,” he explains.
Tips from the experts
In 2023 and 2024, scientists and experts from the Secretariat of Civil Protection of the Veracruz government made recommendations to reduce the risk of erosion disasters in coastal areas of Veracruz. Among them is the preparation of a census of the area and the population at risk.
The experts also recommended establishing with environmental authorities a protected area in the area with the greatest geomorphological and botanical wealth, including the hollows of the dunes for nesting and resting birds.
“Priority must be given to the conservation of the dune fields that feed the beach where tourist activities take place and protect against northerly winds,” experts say.
For the coastal area of the municipality of Alvarado, it was recommended not to allow the construction of breakwaters, breakwaters, wooden piers or ports, and to monitor the operation of breakwaters. They also suggested looking for alternatives to recover the beach, which could include relocation or the removal of infrastructure.
In addition, given the current rise in sea level, they proposed that the buildings be located 20 meters behind the front dune.
Another tip from the experts is not to allow any type of temporary or permanent construction in the field of transgressive dunes due to risks to infrastructure and the population. It is also recommended that buildings above the beach be built on piles.
However, these recommendations have not yet been established in any law or legal system that requires compliance. Meanwhile, communities are knocking on doors to recover their beaches and prevent migration, but have received no response.
For this report, the version of the civil protection secretariat of the state government of Veracruz was sought, but they indicated that they are giving interviews.
Semarnat and the municipal government of Alvarado, for their part, did not provide answers to the questions sent until the publication of this report.
“As long as there is no long-term vision for coastal development, this will be a disaster: a great economic loss for developers who believe they can sell anything and increasingly problems of erosion, salinization and flooding, until at some point everything has to be stopped,” Moreno warns.
Academician Edgar Sánchez highlights the importance of having an ecosystem vision. “We should not see separately the reefs, the dunes, the beaches. Everything is connected and the best way to deal with climate change, rising sea levels and coastal erosion is with ecosystems that can withstand shocks.”
A dossier on the crisis
Nancy de Ochoa, resident of Las Barrancas. Photo: Óscar Martínez.
Meanwhile, Nancy Ochoa, together with Carlota Zamudio de Mata de Uva and Evelyn Salgado, a resident of Playa Zapote, another of the affected communities, formed an association for the recovery of beaches in the communities most impacted by erosion.
They prepared a file with the damage in their communities and toured dozens of dependencies in search of help. His case reached former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to whom the documents were handed over. “Sir, our sea is eating away,” they said.
The former president sent personnel from the Secretariat of the Navy to tour the coastline and learn about the effects, but they did not offer a solution.
“They tell us, why did you go to make your house there, if the sea was already there? The answer is that the sea wasn't there when we arrived,” says Nancy Ochoa.
The three women of the Terravida organization are seeking federal protection this year to respect their right to a healthy environment. “We don't know what will happen in 40 years,” says Nancy Ochoa. “Maybe we'll disappear if we don't find a solution. Maybe our grandchildren no longer see the community the way we do, when we were traveling miles of beach.”
* This text was made possible thanks to the financial support and editorial support of Mongabay Latam and Causa Natura Media.
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