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Abstract
Access to marshes is a prerequisite for neighboring communities to benefit from the rich array of services provided by these ecosystems. Although marshes are ostensibly public property in South Carolina, USA, the reality of coastal access is much more complex and influenced by the distribution of coastal infrastructure and the forces that drive development. In this dissertation, I employ an integrative framework to critically investigate the environmental justice dimensions of public and private water access infrastructure (Chapters 2 and 3) and coastal armoring (Chapter 4). I found that both private docks and coastal armoring were concentrated in majority White areas, suggesting that White South Carolinians possess greater private access to marshes. Additionally, I present a detailed case study of a proposed ecotourism resort on Bay Point Island (Chapter 5) to analyze how knowledge claims are woven into contesting narratives on the socioecological impacts of the proposed resort and how these narratives are metabolized by the governance structure of Beaufort County, South Carolina. I found that the Beaufort County government favored knowledge claims that fit within the bureaucratic structure of the county’s development code, which limited debate over meaningful questions related to access to Bay Point.