He said the Authority would oversee of sanitation, quality of beaches, and fight haphazard structural development, sand winningand other destructive activities along the coast to make Ghana more competitive in the coastal tourism industry.

Prof Mensah, with the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Cape Coast (UCC), made the call when he delivered his professorial inaugural lecture on Wednesday on the theme: "Evolution of Coastal Tourism in Ghana, Paradise Found, Paradise Lost, or Paradise Regained?"

Furthermore, he pressed for a specific legislation that would be punitive enough to deter people from destroying the coastal environment and making them unattractive for tourism.

Acknowledging existence of general laws on environmental management, he said there was the need for a special law, maintaining that the Beach Obstruction Ordinance which was amended in 1951 was too old to deal with contemporary challenges.

The professor observed that coastal tourism had become the focus of the global tourism industry, making it the fastest growing industry in the sector.

In view of that, he said it was critical for Ghana to diversify its tourism attraction base, insisting that it was not enough to have castles and national parks.

He noted that the industry thrived on the attractiveness of the beaches which was dependent on the quality and calmness of the water, sanitation, a sense of awe, among other qualities.

But in Ghana, Prof Mensah observed that a lot of the beaches were filthy, polluted and degraded through sand winning, open defecation, among other activities.

He added that the country was losing an alarming 1.12 metres of its 560-kilometre coastal stretch annually through the same destructive activities, which had resulted in the loss of vegetation and erosion along the beaches.

"There are unauthorised beach facilities springing up everywhere and most of these facilities do not have parking lots, urinals, toilets, and other important amenities."

Prof Mensah thus stressed the need to make a conscious effort to make Ghana's beaches attractive to tourists for the country to benefit from the industry.

"Just as we have the Forestry Commission that has helped us to protect some of our forests, we also need to set up a coastal or beach authority to protect certain portions of the beach and ensure that people don't go there and mine for sand dump rubbish and defecate over there, he maintained.

"Legislation is not enough that is why we need an Authority," he stressed

The tourism professor further intimated that there must be measures put in place to protect the beach from further erosion through engineering.

"Construction of sea defence walls is good, but should all our beaches be constructed with rocky sea defence walls?

"For certain aspects of the beach, we could import sand from other parts of the country to fill up and widen the areas

that are used for recreational purposes," he proposed.

Prof Mensah said because the destructive acts along the coasts were perpetrated by the people in the community, it was important to educate and involve them to know the importance of tourism and have them feel the benefit of it.

"If we involve them, then they will have the sense of ownership and would want to help safeguard the beach," he noted.