Protecting the natural environment
The natural environment is being degraded in many ways. Rural tranquillity is becoming increasingly difficult to find and the facility for the natural landscape to provide restorative leisure for people is being diminished. Urban open spaces are being lost or damaged. Noise and light pollution are getting worse and, in some areas, transport and other emissions are a hazard to health. Soil fertility and its ability to capture and store carbon are being lost. The marine environment is being damaged by aggregate extraction, inappropriate fishing methods, and rubbish dumped at sea.
The land use planning system provides one key to protecting the environment. However, it currently operates without any clear context for the overall effect of decisions on the natural environment. Basing substantive spatial decisions for development on the environmental capacity of the competing sites could greatly enhance the ability to protect environmental resources. However, a lack of data - especially in commercial waste and biodiversity - currently inhibits informed decision making.
With the introduction of the draft Marine Bill, the government is at last recognising the need for action in this area. While the proposal to set up a Marine Management Organisation (MMO) and enable the designation of Marine Conservation Zones are welcome, there is no provision for coastal communities to play a role within the MMO and no clarity about how the extent of the conservation zones is to be designated or timescales for action.
Soil quality is essential to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable agriculture and forestry and healthy urban green spaces. In 2004, Defra produced the first Soil Action Plan for England. Although weak in certain key areas, implementing the Plan would begin to provide the framework necessary to protect soil quality. An alternative approach is the use of voluntary land care partnerships between farmers, local authorities, government agencies and advisers; however, concern has been expressed by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology that these lack the necessary rigour to address the fundamental causes of long-turn soil degradation and inappropriate land use.
There is also a need for action to urgently reverse the destruction of the world’s rainforests, which is being driven by the global market for timber, meat and biofuels. The damage is immense, for the rainforests are home to the world’s richest biodiversity, as well as being a significant carbon sink. Controlling the demands that lead to rainforest destruction and rewarding local people for conserving their environments require international action.
Air quality in the UK has improved but there are still pollution hotspots, generally in heavily-trafficked urban areas. The headline measures to tackle these have been congestion charge areas and low emission zones (LEZs). However, LEZs only deliver substantial emission reductions if they are tough enough. There are other ways to reduce air pollution such as switching off bus and train engines when in a terminus and minimising on-ground emissions from aircraft by towing them to the runway threshold and only then starting the engines.
Emissions from shipping also need to be tightened. Shipping emissions are having a major effect on some coastal and port areas. Although the English Channel and the North Sea are now Sulphur Oxide Emission Control Areas, shipping in these areas can still use fuel with 1.5% sulphur content, compared with just 50ppm allowed for land-based transport. Shipping could be forced to switch to lower-sulphur fuels and, when in port, to plug into on-shore electricity supplies.
Flooding is an issue both inland and on the coast. The frequency and severity of flash floods is likely to increase. Hard defences that try to drain water away are likely to be overwhelmed and there is a need to switch back to using the natural environment to absorb stormwater and then allow it to flow away slowly. This means that flood plains and wetlands must be protected and, in some cases, reinstated. Sustainable urban drainage systems must become the norm for new developments and, where possible, be retrofitted in vulnerable areas.
There is a widespread recognition that hard sea defences are not sustainable around our entire coastline. However, the current approach of allowing defences in many areas to decay can lead to a disproportionate impact on undefended areas and great unfairness to those who lose homes or land. Without any scheme of compensation when homes are lost, blight can set in as soon as decisions are made – even if the threat is years away. We need to ensure there is confidence to invest in these communities.
Evidence from Norfolk suggests that the scale of the losses when land and buildings are abandoned to the sea is currently underestimated; we must urgently review the cost benefit analysis. It is essential that public policy accepts the need for social justice when developing a strategy for the coast - it is unacceptable that those on the front line of the impact of climate change carry the entire burden.
Planning policies also need to concentrate more on enabling people to live with higher summer temperatures. Building regulations and planning policies must ensure that buildings have sufficient thermal mass, shading, and natural ventilation to keep them cool during the day.
Issues to consider:
- How do we balance the competing needs for protected green space and affordable housing, particularly in the South East of England?
- Does the current system of landscape and biodiversity protection provided through SSSIs, AONBs, etc need strengthening?
- How can we ensure we protect valuable green spaces within urban environments, currently classified as ‘brownfield’?
- How can the MMO been made a democratically-accountable body?
- What policies are needed to ensure that the Marine Protection Zones provide genuine protection as soon as possible?
- Should the protection of soil quality be left to voluntary action or be subject to regulation?
- What action should be taken internationally to prevent major deforestation?
- Should pollution controls/standards be extended to include such products as mowers, farm machinery and construction equipment?
- Should EU legislation be tightened to reduce emissions from shipping?
- What changes to national planning policies are required to minimise inland flooding?
- How can we compensate those suffering economic loss from flood management measures?
- What changes are needed to the building regulations and/or planning policies in response to higher summer temperatures?
