Call for ‘radical rethink’ of land use to take account of climate change impacts

Environment secretary David Miliband has called for a ‘radical rethink’ about land use to take account of climate change impacts and to enhance the quality and beauty of our environment

His call came in a speech celebrating the last 80 years of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).

The Secretary of State argued that in the coming decades "we will face new and competing pressures that will force changes in how land is used and managed, from demographic change to climate change. Preservation of the status quo is not an option".

He said a ‘new vision’ was needed for how to use land in the UK. "We will need more development. But if we focus it in urban areas and continue our urban renaissance, and if it is zero or low carbon, we can preserve the countryside and the planet. We need to make our Green Belt land more attractive - a basis for wildlife and recreation.

‘We need farming to become a net environmental contributor, with subsidy tied to delivering environmental public goods. And we need less productive farmland to be 're-wilded' - for woodlands, heathland and fenland.’

Miliband said this would have implications for the grading and status of farmland through to the designations of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Green Belts and sites of special scientific interest.

He argued: ‘As our climate changes and wildlife moves and adapts, we will have to re-think our designations. We will have to make our designations more flexible so that they can adapt to climate change.’

He stressed that climate change would mean land would have to increasingly produce low carbon energy, from wind farms and solar power to bio-fuel, but also to absorb carbon.

And he suggested there should be a concerted effort to put the green back into the Green Belt and made a case for the establishment of what might be called 'turquoise belts' - strips of green space next to rivers. He explained this would echo the Japanese practice of leaving corridors alongside the banks of urban rivers, designed to ensure houses weren't flooded.

In a related development CPRE has issued a warning over the potential loss of Green Belt land by producing research which, it claimed, showed that some 10,000 acres of green belt was under threat from airport expansion and housing development. ‘Death by sprawl’, according to CPRE's Gerald Kells.

Meanwhile Parliament has given permission for a Conservative backbencher to bring in a ten-minute rule Bill to provide for "the establishment of an indicator for rural tranquillity; to provide for the protection of rural tranquillity in the planning process; and for connected purposes".

John Penrose, MP for Weston-super-Mare, told the Commons his two-clause Bill would require Government to report on and publish the results of the measurement of tranquillity. ‘It also says that the Government should put a duty on planning authorities to protect, preserve and enhance tranquility in every decision that they take,’ he said.