Environmental Effect of Land Use Planning - Essay Example

The Town and Country Planning legislation makes available, the rules and regulations of land use planning in Great Britain. Its aim is to ensure the most efficient and effective use of land in the public interest, while attempting to resolve the rival requirements of development and conservation. Further, it has a significant function to discharge in respect of its involvement in the Government's strategy for advancing sustainable development. Before the commencement of most forms of development in the UK planning permission is essential. In Great Britain land use planning is the express domain of local authorities. This responsibility is vested with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in England, in Wales and Scotland the Welsh Assembly Government and the Scottish Executive respectively. In addition these departments have to develop national planning policy guidance within which local authorities have to function (British Geological Survey, n.d.). The endeavour of the Planning Practice Standard is to develop the environmental impact assessment, EIA, as a planning tool in order to promote the objectives of town and country planning. "This PPS updates the RTPI Practice Advice Note 13, published in 1995, to reflect the requirements of the amended EIA Regulations, which came into effect in 1999". In order to implement the European Directive 85/337/EEC, as amended by the Directive 97/11/EC, legislation on environmental impact assessment has been introduced in the UK. Section 71A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, contains the requirement to carry out EIA of certain planning proposals. (The Royal Town Planning Institute, 2001). The use of land determines irrevocably the fate of natural and semi-natural ecosystems and consequently, sustainable development is ably assisted by Nature conservation policies and their relations with land use exemplify the importance being accorded to planning. This process makes it essential to establish fundamental links between developments in particular localities and environmental changes on a world - wide basis. This methodology requires the adoption of a strategic approach to the conservation and enhancement of biodiversity (Cowell and Owens 2002). The basic human responsibility to protect and improve the environment for the benefit of present and future generations was expressed on the global level as early as 1972, in principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration, but the Aarhus Convention is the first international legal instrument to extend this concept to a set of legal obligations (Stec and Casey - Lefkowitz 2000). Land-use planning is concerned not only with site protection but of late; it is proving of immense relevance in the adoption of a proactively strategic approach to the conservation of nature. This approach must not only concentrate on preservation of what has survived but more importantly, it has to address itself to the problem of habitat restoration and enhancement. In the UK this change is visible in legislation and in the guidance being provided to the local planning authorities from government, statutory agencies and non-governmental organisations, for ensuring the protection of the biodiversity. Planning and nature conservation policy have been influenced to a great extent by the latest interpretations of sustainable development, especially those which involve the concepts of environmental capital and capacity. The role of land use planning has been highlighted by European legislation and in particular the Habitats Directive, which aims to conserve European species and habitats. This Directive, enjoins upon national governments the requirement to nominate Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), which are to be provided with stringent protection. That there are limitations to this approach is borne out by the fact that, despite their protected status, many sites have been lost or damaged as a result of land-use change. The major culprit in this aspect has been development as defined in town and country planning legislation, which has caused a significant proportion of such damage. Further losses have been negotiated away through ineffective mitigation or compensation measures. In the UK the major offenders have been activities falling outside the remit of the planning system. The glaring example being that of farming practices based on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Protection in no small measure has been afforded through the aegis of notification procedures and other provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Additional lacunae vis - a - vis regulations include the limited jurisdiction of land-use planning below the low water mark, which has made it difficult to protect sites from the impacts of offshore development such as dredging for aggregates. The high incidence of failure of site - based approach is due to the aforementioned reasons. A very cogent observation is that this transpires due to the lack of adequate mechanisms, which provide the required protection (Cowell and Owens 2002). When external effects influence the environment, they are known as environmental impacts. A report on the environmental consequences of a development project is known as an environmental impact statement (EIS) (Turner, 1998). Environmental impact assessment is a process which involves the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data in respect of environmental effects by the planning authority (The Royal Town Planning Institute, 2001). The British Land Use Planning System is being conducted in a manner analogous to what had been obtaining in the system that had been extant in the erstwhile Soviet Union, in which the production details were determined by the central government. The United Kingdom being one of the most densely populated countries in the world has an acute shortage of land for construction purposes (Evans, 2002). Some of the limitations of the EIA are its inabilities to deal with the cumulative effect of multiple, successive projects in a particular area. Further, it has failed in achieving the underlying objectives of the preamble to the Directive 97/11 OJL 173, 14.03.97 of the EC. This is due to the fact that the EIA does not eliminate the problems that crop up right at the source as directed by this preamble. The EIA makes attempts to solve this problem at a later stage with mixed success. This has necessitated the intervention of the Single European Act. SEA was formed in order to extend the application of environmental impact assessment (EIA) from projects to policies, programs and plans. The current national, regional, and international SEA legislation mainly falls under environmental impact assessment legislation and it extends the use of environmental impact assessment to programs, plans and at times to policies. This is borne out by the European SEA Directive (Directive 2001/42/EC) whose scope is the programs and plans which serve to equate SEA with a formal EIA-based procedure (Arts, Tomlinson and Voogd, 2005). The Single European Act (SEA) of 1987 forms the legal basis for EC environmental legislation. Article 174 EC provides three main objectives: 'to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment; to contribute towards protecting human health; to ensure a prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources.' This article also states that if the action is well founded, the Court of Justice shall declare it void. If a regulation is involved then the Court of Justice shall, if deemed essential, classify as definitive those effects of the regulation which it has declared void. The inadequate implementation of the formal environmental assessment impact in UK land use planning can be attributed to the following reasons: first, the planning process rules and regulations are determined by the central government, which due to its centralized nature, is not in a position to have intimate knowledge of the local conditions. Second, the population density in the UK is one of the highest in the world and the land resources are meagre, hence this results in damage to nature and natural resources under the guise of development and housing needs. Third, there is a lack of adequate mechanisms for implementing the relevant projects and policies. Fourth, the ineffectiveness of the EIA as it tries to deal with a problem and not its cause exacerbates this situation. Fifth, planning should be based more on creative and adaptive techniques rather than on defensive approaches, which is not the case in the United Kingdom. Hence, in this manner we conclude on the basis of the foregoing, that the formal introduction of environmental assessment has made little difference on the United Kingdom's Land Use Planning System. List of References Arts, Joe. Tomlinson, Paul. Voogd, Henk. [September 2005]. EIA and SEA tiering: the missing link Position Paper Conference on "International experience and perspective in SEA" International Association of Impact Assessment. Page no:26-30 September 2005, Prague. British Geological Survey [n.d.], Natural Environment Research Council, minerals UK, Legislation and Policy, [online] available from http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk /planning/legislation/home.html Cowell, Richard and Owens, Susan (2002). Land and Limits: Interpreting Sustainability in the Planning Process, Routledge, London, Page no: 102 Evans, Alan W. [2002], Building Jerusalem: Can Land Use Planning affect Economic Growth Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Conference Paper, [online] available from http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/561_evans.pdf The Royal Town Planning Institute [2001], Planning Practice Standard, Environmental Impact Assessment, [online] available from http://www.rtpi.org.uk/resources/publications/environment/eia/ [May 2001] Stec, Stephen and Casey - Lefkowitz, Susan (2000). The Aarhus Convention, an Implementation Guide, Economic Commission for Europe Geneva, UN/ECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision - making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, Page no: 41 Turner, Tom (1998) Landscape Planning and Environment Impact Design, UCL Press, London, Page No: 24 Read More