On a hot, cloudless day in February, tourists sunbathed on Cancun’s brand new beach. Five million cubic meters of white sand had been poured onto the shorefront, expanding the previously storm-scoured strip between the line of hotels and the sea from the width of a two-lane road to that of a football field. Cancun is hardly a natural paradise. Over 40 years, the city has been built for tourism, its resort hotels and nightclubs every bit as prominent as its sun-bejeweled shore. Among the impacts has been beach erosion, which experts attribute in large part to development that has destroyed vegetation on the beach and blocked the natural movement of sand along the coast. That’s why last February, a consortium of local... [Log in to read more]