Making Space for Public Property in the Mauritius Blue Economy

The purpose of the study is to examine whether Mauritius is equipped with a sufficient legal structure suited for the consideration of public property at sea. The Mauritian legal system is suffused with a mixture resulting from both the civil law of France and the common law of England. The British-tradition laws include the sea in the definition of ‘land’ and are more likely to draw parallels to land-use management when characterizing marine space, while the French-tradition laws target the functional spatiality of specific coastal areas. A thorough analysis of the legislation and relevant case law relating to the coastal areas of Mauritius allows for an assessment of the historical instrumental role of public property in protecting those areas. The paper further envisages the potential role of one of the incarnations of public property, that is, ‘domaine public’ legal fiction, vis-à-vis contemporary institutional practices, such as marine spatial planning. The paper concludes that the Mauritian legal métissage context offers fertile ground for the fiction of ‘Domaine public’ to be considered both in case law and in soft law as a protective tool for the coastal areas that are now facing the challenges that the blue economy governance poses.