Planning for a Sustainable Environment

Andrew Blowers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134160815
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Stadtplanung & Landschaftsgestaltung

This study explains how, confronting ever-greater environmental pressures, we can plan for and achieve a sustainable environment. The book focuses on urban development, as population and resources and often the most severe environmental problems are concentrated in cities. It looks at the nature of environmental planning and at the main areas where changes have to be made: in energy policy, waste disposal and pollution control, construction, transport and infrastructure. The book concludes with chapters on planning a sustainable city and on how to bring the necessary changes and institutional arrangements about.

1
The Time for Change

Andrew Blowers

A thousand years ago, as the first millennium approached, there was a widespread fear – or hope – of the Second Coming by which divine intervention would bring to an end the earthly existence of human beings. As we approach the second millennium, in a more secular age, there is a growing concern that life on earth is imperilled by the destruction of nature wrought by human intervention. While the menace of nuclear warfare has (perhaps temporarily) receded it has been replaced by the threat of environmental global catastrophe.

The prognostications of disaster if present global trends continue are now familiar, although the precise causes and consequences are much debated. The hole in the ozone layer threatens a substantial and widespread increase in cancers and cataracts and a major impact on food production. There is the prospect of global warming bringing drought, floods and climatic hazards that will vary over time and place but that may fundamentally alter the natural resource base for human activities. There are the unpredictable and unknown problems that may result from the loss of biodiversity. The dangers of radioactive and hazardous wastes present problems for current and future generations. With the world’s population expected to grow from the present 5 billion to 8 billion by 2025 – with 90 per cent of that increase being in the developing countries – there will also be immense pressure on energy, food, forests and other natural resources.

Meanwhile, the richest countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – with only 16 per cent of the world’s population – consume about eleven times more energy per head and create half the carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, three-quarters of the industrial waste and four-fifths of the hazardous wastes. Such conspicuous consumption must be greatly curtailed if environmental catastrophe is to be avoided. As one writer has observed, ‘We are sawing through the branch that is holding us, and if we carry on as before, it may break and bring us crashing down with it’.¹

There are wide contrasts in the use of resources and the quality of the environment between rich and poor, between East and West, and between North and South. In the developing countries the struggle for survival is paramount: ‘Poverty reduces people’s capacity to use resources in a sustainable manner; it intensifies pressure on the environment’.² But there is also the need to reduce the corruption and gross maldistribution of wealth which is rife in many countries. In the East, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet system has revealed the massive environmental pollution, degradation and dereliction that was the price paid for the rapid exploitation of resources in the effort to industrialise.

Within the affluent West, air pollution has caused acidification affecting seas, rivers, lakes, trees and buildings. Although there have been reductions in sulphur dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), particulates and lead in the atmosphere, the burden of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide is rising. There has been an overall improvement over time in water quality but in many areas soil quality is deteriorating. There is ground water pollution and a loss of habitats. Locally, in cities, towns and the countryside, pollution, noise, litter and congestion testify to the waste of resources and the impact of this on the environment.

Environmental problems are both widespread and localised. Social inequalities are often reflected in the environmental squalor of the decaying inner cities or in the risks borne by those living near hazardous or polluting industrial plants.

By the end of the 1980s the environment seemed to have become a major political issue at local, national and international levels. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 established a detailed agenda (Agenda 21) for future international action. The conflicts between the natural world and human development, between conservation and growth, and between rich and poor were firmly established as issues for political concern and action. The need to achieve social and economic development without detriment to the environment is clear. But this is a long way from securing political commitment among conflicting interests to defend the environment in the common interest. Appropriate action will involve fundamental changes in both attitudes and behaviour. Human activity must be organised in ways that are socially and environmentally sustainable.

Within this broader global context this report focuses on the UK and seeks to take into account the economic, political and social changes that will be required if sustainable development is to become a reality. There can be no doubt that major changes will be required; but the nature and extent of change will only be revealed by experience. Our report concentrates on the range of responses which we anticipate will be necessary. We have focused on the practical problems across the range of policies and on actions that need to be taken now to achieve a sustainable future.

The concept of a harmonious relationship between people and their surroundings has been an enduring concern of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) since its foundation nearly a century ago. The ideal of the ‘social city’ was delineated by Ebenezer Howard and, in modified form, was put into practice in the early garden cities.³ The social city requires an interdependence between settlements and surrounding countryside that neither depletes resources nor harms the environment. Its physical design is planned in order to create a healthy environment and encourage social equality and participation. The increase in land values through development is used to enhance the city region rather than for private profit. The self-sufficiency of the social city as envisaged by Howard is obviously incompatible with greater mobility and the global economy which has broken the close links between town and country that he envisaged. But the principles of conservation, balanced development, environmental quality, and social equality secured through public investment, participation and planning that were inherent in the social city are equally relevant today. Contemporary concern about sustainability makes this a propitious moment to demonstrate the part that planning can play in achieving sustainable development.

A Propitious Moment

There are many examples in the UK of political action by communities to prevent environmental hazards or protect environmental features. They may fail, as celebrated cases such as Twyford Down demonstrate. But there have been notably successful campaigns. Although sometimes dismissed as expressions of self-interest (the Not In My Back Yard – NIMBY – response to environmental threat), some campaigns have combined local protectionism with more altruistic concerns, as the example in Box 1.1 demonstrates. Increasingly, environmental campaigns are challenging the necessity, not simply the location, of locally unwanted land uses.

There are grounds for believing that political action on environmental issues can be successful at all levels. At the grass roots level there are many examples of successful campaigns to prevent environmental hazards or to protect valued environmental features. While many of these have been motivated by NIMBY and have simply protected certain areas at the expense of others, other campaigns have combined self-interest and more altruistic concerns, as the example in Box 1.1 demonstrates.

BOX 1.1 The Battle of the Dumps

During the 1980s proposals to build repositories for the disposal of radioactive waste were opposed by local communities. In 1983, Elstow in Bedfordshire was chosen by the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive (NIREX) as a site for a shallow repository for low-level wastes and a disused anhydrite mine in Billingham on Teesside was selected for a deep repository for intermediate-level wastes. Billingham fought a campaign uniting all groups in the community against the proposal, which was dropped in early 1985.

Bedfordshire also opposed the plans and persuaded the government to undertake a comparative evaluation. As a result, three additional sites – South Killingholme on Humberside, Fulbeck in Lincolnshire and Bradwell in Essex – were nominated. In each community, action groups cutting across class and party lines led the opposition and the four communities combined with Billingham to form Britons Opposed to Nuclear Dumping (BOND) backed by the expertise of three of the county councils acting in coalition.

The campaign culminated in the summer of 1986 when blockades of local people (dubbed by The Times as ‘middle class, middle-aged hooligans from middle England’) prevented contractors entering the sites to undertake exploratory drilling. Although entry was eventually achieved, subsequent critical reports and continuing adverse publicity led the government to withdraw its plans on the eve of the General Election in 1987. It was decided instead to seek a site for the co-disposal of intermediate and low-level wastes in a deep repository.

NIREX undertook a consultation which revealed a general lack of enthusiasm to host such a facility. There was less hostility in the two ‘nuclear oases’ of Sellafield and Dounreay which were (predictably) selected for investigation. Sellafield was eventually chosen as the site most likely to be publicly acceptable. But it still has to be proved to be technically feasible to satisfy stringent safety requirements.

This example shows the ability of communities to mobilise across conventional social and political divides and to form a united front with other embattled communities. The opposition was not simply motivated by a desire to avoid the repository, it also argued against the principles of the policy and the way it had been imposed without adequate consultation. In the end, the successful resistance of the four communities reduced the options and made the choice of Sellafield the inevitable and expedient choice.

Source A full account of the case is given in Blowers, A, Lowry, D and Soloman, B (1991) The International Politics of Nuclear Waste, Macmillan, London

There are, too, hopeful signs that behaviour can shift in response to environmental concerns. In many countries the separation of waste streams at source is becoming an accepted practice. When environmental concerns combine with health issues, quite radical changes in behaviour can result. For instance, organic farming is becoming more popular in response to the demand for healthy eating and a sustainable environment. Sunbathing, especially in Australia, has been much reduced as a result of fears of skin cancer through depletion of the ozone layer. The increase in cycling and walking indicates a shift towards healthy and environmentally benign transport. These changes in behaviour are at present largely confined to a relatively well-off and environmentally conscious minority, but they may spread as people become more aware of the dangers to health and well-being inherent in existing life-styles.

Government and industry are also giving greater emphasis to environmental initiatives. At a local level, many councils have developed environmental charters, initiatives, audits, programmes and action plans. There is a new emphasis on recycling, conservation of habitats, improvement of landscapes and planting of woodland. The UK government has undertaken fundamental reforms in pollution control through the Environmental Protection Act (1991) and published a major white paper (1990)⁴ that includes a commitment to the publication of annual monitoring statements. The EC has promulgated over a hundred environmental directives and drawn up its fifth environmental action programme focusing on sustainable development.⁵ Although there have been long delays, action has been taken to reduce acid rain, to clean up beaches, to reduce pollution in the North Sea and to regulate international trade in toxic and hazardous wastes.

At the worldwide level, there have been agreements to phase out CFCs to protect the ozone layer and various agreements to restrict the trade in hazardous wastes. At UNCED, a Declaration on Environment and Development containing 27 principles was adopted and over 150 nations signed a Framework Convention on Climate Change and a Convention on Biological Diversity. Rio was a process in which more governments participated than ever before and which drew in 6500 non-governmental organisations attracting 15,000 participants to their own global forum. Despite its failures (the USA’s refusal to sign the Convention on Biological Diversity and the inability to secure a convention on forests), Rio confirmed that environment and development were inseparably linked issues for global international action. Outside government, the business community has proclaimed its commitment to sustainability at the Second World Industry Conference on Environmental Management in Rotterdam in March 1991, while individual companies have changed production processes, initiated new products, reduced pollution and undertaken environmental audits in the effort to introduce cleaner practices.

It is tempting to exaggerate the changes in policies and practice. There is a natural tendency to postpone difficult choices which impose costs and hardship, especially if the changes appear to be unnecessary. After all, the threat to the environment from global warming or ozone depletion may be invisible, something that can be ignored for the present. Political horizons are relatively short, often five years or less. Governments are aware of the need to deliver economic goods and security, although the environmental consequences may be severe. Environmental problems tend to be relegated, especially in the face of economic pressures and problems. Restraint on the use of cars, on energy, or on agricultural production – whether through controls, prices or taxation – are inherently unappealing to politicians..

There are other obstacles to political action on the environment. One is the difficulty of apportioning blame and allocating costs. Another is the distribution of the costs and benefits of policies. A third is the problem of gaining agreement on policies and on effective machinery for implementing them. Part of the difficulty of dealing with the environment is the fact that environmental processes cut across physical (land, water and air), political and policy-making boundaries.

These political obstacles to action are considerable but, in our view, not insurmountable. As the consequences of inaction become more obvious, so the need for policies for sustainable development will become urgent. This report presents proposals that the TCPA believes would both encourage ways of living that are sustainable and would be politically realistic and feasible to implement.

The Meaning of Sustainable Development

Since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, sustainable development has achieved widespread popularity. It is easy to dismiss the concept, as some have done, as too vague to be useful. There has been a tendency to use sustainable development as a device for mobilising opinion rather than as an analytical concept for developing specific policies. But it is becoming clear that sustainable development is not simply a passing fashion but, rather, a fundamental goal. If we are going to propose policies for achieving sustainability, it is important that we have a cl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgement
• Copyright
• Contents
• Sustainable Development Study Group
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 The Time for Change
• 2 The Planning Background
• 3 Ecosystems and Natural Resources
• 4 Towards a Sustainable Energy Policy
• 5 Pollution and Waste – A Sustainable Burden?
• 6 Building the Sustainable Environment
• 7 Getting Around: Public and Private Transport
• 8 A Sustainable Economy
• 9 Planning the Sustainable City Region
• 10 Making it Happen
• Epilogue
• References
• Suggested Further Reading
• Index