Speech by Rt Hon David Miliband MP: to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Campaign for Protection of Rural England, "A Land Fit for the Future" London, 9 March 2007
I am delighted to be here to mark the work of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Since 1926, the CPRE has played a critical role shaping our planning system and establishing a consensus across parties about how we should use our land. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act was a signal achievement of probably the greatest reforming government in history, the 1945 Labour Government under Clement Attlee. It contained a clear vision for Britain: building more homes, protecting the countryside from urban sprawl, and ensuring development served the wider public interest. Few reforms have been as long lasting or as ingrained in the national landscape as the post-war planning reforms.
I would guess those members of the public who know about the CPRE today associate it with stout defence of the countryside against development. However, despite its original name of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, I know the CPRE saw itself as a modern, progressive force eager to reconcile conflicting pressures over land use. In the CPRE’s founding manifesto, written by the modernist planner Patrick Abercrombie, he wrote about a society “in transition”. He concluded that ‘it should be possible for a just balance to be struck between conservation and development: that certain parts must be preserved intact and inviolate but that others can, after suffering a change, bring forth something new but beautiful’. I would like to think that change doesn’t just have to be accepted on sufferance, but today we are again a society in transition, environmentally and demographically. I believe we need to capture the same spirit that animated the CPRE in 1926, if we are to renew ourselves as a vibrant as well as beautiful Britain in the 21st century.
Today, I want to talk about how in the next 80 years of the CPRE our landscape must adapt to the challenges of a more crowded country – a country facing major pressures on housing and infrastructure; how we must adapt to the dangers of climate change, both to mitigate it, and adapt to the climate change already in train; and how we can achieve these goals while not only preserving but enhancing the beauty and accessibility of our countryside – a countryside that is a major source of our national pride, belonging, and sense of British identity.
My argument today is this:
The way we use and manage land fundamentally affects our economy, our environment, and our social cohesion.
Over the next 80 years, 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.
If we are to avoid a zero-sum game, with economic or environmental goals being at the expense of the other, we need a new vision for how to use land in this country.
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.
Delivering this vision of a new, but beautiful Britain will require changes in our systems of planning, agriculture and land use. But most of all it will require us to be brave enough to ask the fundamental questions of what land is for, and how we can value it.
The challenge
The Government will shortly be publishing a Planning White Paper. The focus of the white paper is improving the processes of planning. It is addressing ‘how’ land use is managed for developmental purposes.
Today, I want to begin by asking a fundamental and long term question: ‘what is land for’ and why do we value it. As a DEFRA minister, I come at it from several perspectives – from a concern about the environment, a desire to see vibrant rural communities, and critically, as the Secretary of State for Agriculture. The debate on land use tends to focus on just the 20 per cent of land in the UK already developed and how that might that change at the margin. But nearly 10 per cent of land is forest and woodland and around 70 per cent is agricultural land. So while DEFRA is not responsible for planning, it does through the Common Agricultural Policy have a big influence on how land is managed.
My starting point is that as a country we underestimate the importance of land use to our social, economic, and environmental progress.
Land has obvious social benefits. When I was Minister of Communities and Local Government, I used to argue that our sense of community and social cohesion comes from what we share and have in common: shared values, shared activities, shared spaces, institutions and traditions. It is through these common resources that our sense of solidarity and togetherness is nurtured. At a time of increasing diversity, we need to invest more in developing shared activities and shared spaces that can bind society together. Our landscape, and how we use green spaces for shared activities, are a practical basis for building civic and national pride and the basis for a tourist industry that contributes over £70 billion every year to the British economy.
What attracts tourists to Britain is overwhelmingly the beauty and character of our landscape – in town and country. The distinctiveness of the English landscape is a vital social and economic asset, as well as an environmental one. I think as politicians we don’t speak enough about beauty in terms of the quality of the environment. We are too often nervous about embracing other aspects of what you might call the ‘soft currency’ – the intangible value of our land. The CPRE’s work to try to capture the value of rural tranquillity is vital if we to avoid under-valuing the environment.
Land use is also critical to the economy. At DCLG, I used to argue that cities and countries that succeed in the 21st century will be those that show high degree of openness and flexibility in their markets – for capital, labour, land and products, and those that are highly networked – through investment in global and local transport links. That has implications for how we use land, in particular the speed with which we can make decisions and the flexibility with which we can change patterns of land use.
A particular challenge is the need to adapt to the need for more housing and infrastructure in areas where environmental pressures are already acute. More single person households, an ageing society, and migration are fuelling increased demand for housing, with the population set to increase by up to 6 million in the next 20 years – an increase of 12 per cent. Unless we can meet this demand, our economic growth may be impeded, and people’s freedom to take up job opportunities and get on the housing ladder will be restricted. The gap between the housing-haves and have-nots will widen.
Now that I am at DEFRA, I am still passionate about tackling those important social and economic challenges. But I believe the debate on land use is changed fundamentally by the threat of climate change and a better understanding of dealing with environmental limits.
Climate change means that land use will not stand still even if we want it to. Since the industrial revolution, the global temperature has risen by 0.7 degrees. At a minimum, it is likely that we will see a further rise in temperature of up to 2 degrees above pre-industrial times. The climate change already in train will mean that natural habitats will change and species will be forced to migrate. We will have to adapt to rising sea levels, increased risk of inland flooding from extreme weather events and changing conditions - both threats and opportunities - for agriculture.
Adaptation means more spending on flood defence. But it has to mean more than that. According to the Environment Agency, 1.9 million properties (worth over £200 billion) and 1.4 million hectares of agricultural land, worth about £7 billion, could be at risk over the next fifty years from either coastal or river-based flooding. Even with the £800 million we currently spend on flood defences the UK experiences an average of £1.4 billion worth of property damage each year. The 2004 Foresight report on future flooding risk predicted that by 2080 this figure could increase to £27 billion. As a country, do we really want to have to divert huge proportion of our national income to flood defences rather than schools, hospitals and policing?
Climate change will also require us to re-think which land should be designated for environmental protection. We have a range of designations aimed at protecting land that has a particularly high environmental quality. This includes the grading of the quality of agricultural land through to identifying sites of Special Scientific Interest, Areas of Natural Outstanding Beauty, Special Protected Areas and Natural Parks. 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 adapt to climate change.
But adaptation must be combined with mitigation. We will have to use land to produce low-carbon energy, from wind-farms and solar power to biofuels, but also to absorb carbon emissions. Forests have value not just for the community benefits that we see, not just for the biodiversity they support but also for their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. Peat bogs used to be regarded as valueless tracts of land. Facing the threat of climate change, we must value them because they lock up huge amounts of carbon.
Climate change is the most devastating example of a society that is failing to live within the its environmental means. The scale of the challenge is immense. In the UK, according to the WWF, we are living as though we have three planets rather than one. But moving to ‘one planet living’ is not just about climate change and carbon. There are a whole series of natural resources that are also being pushed beyond their limit, from water pollution and fish stocks, to air quality, soil management and farmland birds. Traditionally, government has thought of air, soil, water and biodiversity in separate boxes. Now we are beginning to catch up with scientific evidence which shows that these interact in natural systems to support human life and well-being. We are beginning to understand that there are limits to how far we can exploit these systems without pushing them past the point of no return. The Millennium Ecosystem assessment found that nearly two-thirds of the services provided by nature to humankind are being degraded or used unsustainably. Over the next year, our scientific and economic understanding of eco-system services and how we protect natural resources, needs to catch up with our understanding of climate change.
Where we want to get to
So the challenge we face is how do we reconcile competing social, economic and environmental pressures on land use? Is it a simple zero sum game, or can we find a way of improving the economic value from land alongside the environmental and social value we get?
My argument today is that while there will be difficult trade-offs and tensions, it is possible to envisage a Britain that progresses on all three dimensions of sustainable development. The goal of increasing economic, social and environmental value is possible. But to achieve that goal, it will require significant changes in patterns of land use, and how planning and farming policies support this transition.
We have a number of examples from this country and elsewhere of land use that is delivering multiple benefits, economically, environmentally, and socially. These give us a clue to how our land use might need to change in future. Over the next 80 years of the CPRE, I can imagine seeing five main changes in our land use. I set these out not out of a desire to create for some masterplan to reshape our countryside, but as a way of stimulating debate about how our land can cope with the challenges of a crowded country, the dangers of climate change and loss of biodiversity, while enhancing beauty.
First, there will continue to be a need for development; the question is where should it take place, and what sort should it be. In 1998 we set a target for concentrating 60 per cent of development in brownfield areas, to avoid urban sprawl. In fact, we under-promised, but over-delivered. 77 per cent of development is now taking place in brownfield areas. The lesson is clear: the best policy for protecting rural England is urban renaissance. The progress of town and country go together. Of course, there are cases when brownfield development is not best. Some land that falls into the brownfield category, although previously developed or used, may have particular environmental benefits. Disused gravel pits and even highly toxic sites, for example, can become rich in biodiversity. Similarly sensitive development in rural areas can produce social and economic benefits. Nevertheless, the priority must be to continue to increase our housing supply in brownfield areas.
However, a key departure must be the move towards zero carbon development. Where development is taking place, it is possible to massively reduce its environmental footprint. Beaufort Court is the world’s first zero emissions commercial development. It is entirely self-sufficient in heat and power from on-site renewable energy including energy crops, solar power, and wind turbine which sends surplus power to the local grid. The Department for Communities and Local Government consulted in December last year on proposals to make all new homes zero carbon by 2016. The proposals would mean that new homes would produce on average zero net emissions over a year, through better insulation and through the use of renewable energy, like solar panels. The draft Planning Policy Statement on climate change, published for consultation at the same time, sets out a planning framework that will support the move to zero carbon through the way development is located, designed and planned, including through greater use of renewable energy. But ultimately government can only set the framework for decisions that will be taken locally. And here we need the consensus that can only be forged by a united environment movement. I think the message is simple: you cannot be serious about protecting the countryside, unless you are serious about protecting the planet from climate change – that means welcoming zero-carbon homes and recognising that new wind-farms will be needed.
Second, in future we could see major changes in agricultural land – with more land used for other for energy crops, for natural flood management, for carbon sinks, such as wetlands and new forests, and for re-wilding – as woodlands, heathland and fenland. After the second world war, our priority was food security. In the future, our challenges are more linked to environmental security. There is considerable scope for farmland to become more productive both economically and environmentally. 70 per cent of land in this country is used for farming. It produces 0.7 per cent of GDP, 7 per cent of greenhouse gases, and over 70 per cent of our food. It can make a major contribution to environmental enhancement but also contribute to water pollution, loss of habitats, and soil erosion. As the Common Agriculture Policy is reformed to link public payments to environmental public goods, and reduce the overall level of protection through tariffs and subsidies, we should see changes in what and how land is managed, with farmers having an increasing role as land managers, and some farmland, for example that ‘set aside’ under the CAP, being used for other purposes.
For instance, in the Northwest United Utilities are restoring 57,800 hectares of peatland that had been degraded by intensive livestock farming. If the carbon stored in our peat were released into the atmosphere due to erosion, it would amount to between three and five times our annual UK carbon emissions. There is more carbon in UK peat soils than the trees of the UK and France combined. This will deliver carbon benefits and improve the habitat for a range of species. It will also deliver financial dividends. It will reduce the risk of floods, and it will improve local drinking water. The dividends are financial as well as environment with United Utilities projected to save between £1.2 and £2.4 million per year in avoided water treatment costs.
Third, the majority of land in the country will remain farmland, but the environmental footprint of farms must change. The goal I have set out is for farming to become a net environmental contributor. Precision-farming techniques to reduce fertiliser use. Farming methods that reduce water pollution and soil erosion. Greater use, where appropriate, of biofuels. All are rightly on the agenda.
A good example of farming becoming a net environmental contributor is anaerobic digestion. It is possible to imagine a future where farms are zero-carbon or even energy exporters, as Peter Kendall has called for, where farms have anaerobic digestors that take agricultural waste and food waste from our homes and produce enough energy to supply electricity and heat to farm buildings, and enough biogas to run farm vehicles, on top of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from diverting waste from landfill.
Fourth, we could see green belts turning a deeper shade of green. Some of our current green belt is of low quality in terms of wildlife, beauty and recreational access. Green belts are in some ways a misnomer. They were created to restrict urban sprawl rather than to mark out land as being of a high environmental quality. However, there is potential to put the green back into the green belt. For instance, Thames Chase community forest is converting some greenbelt agricultural land and brownfield land into new urban woodlands. Woodlands can reduce the use of pesticides and fertiliser and create land that is multi-functional: providing urban flood control, improved biodiversity and wildlife, renewable wood to offset climate change, and attractive and accessible environments for exercise and recreation. This is surely an important priority for the future.
Fifth, we could see the development of what you could call ‘turquoise belts’ – strips of green space next to rivers. In Japan, to ensure that homes alongside inland waterways/rivers don't flood, they are leaving corridors alongside the banks of urban rivers. Rather than building expensive concrete barriers to insulate ourselves from flood risks, we could create what could be called ‘turquoise belts’. If and when the water spills over into the green space, it would not matter. These could be used for leisure and to improve biodiversity. Turquoise belts could be more attractive, more cost-effective and better for the environment.
Getting there
Creating a country where we get more economic, social and environmental value from our land will require reforms to our systems of planning, land use and agriculture. Today, I want to begin a debate on what sort of principles we must establish for a new system.
I would suggest the need for five main principles that should underpin our approach:
First, we are now beginning to value environment assets that in the past we have thought of as a free good. Carbon is the most obvious example. As well as valuing carbon emissions from fossil fuels, we need to think how we value carbon sinks from forests and peats. But carbon is just one environmental public good. As the Millennium Eco-Systems Assessment report sets out, there are range of eco-system services that regulate the climate, protect us from floods, purify water, and provide aesthetic and recreational value. We need to think through how we build in the idea of ‘environmental limits’ within the planning system.
Second, we should aim to develop a more proactive and positive to approach to land. The environmental focus on planning is often the control of development. Environmental value is protected and preserved rather than proactively enhanced. We need to think of quality green space as a sort of infrastructure – an investment in a physical asset that produces environmental, social and economic value equivalent to building roads and schools. So as more land is developed for housing, business or transport, we need to think about how funding mechanisms such as Section 106 and in future, Planning Gain Supplement can be used to invest not only in brown infrastructure – roads, railways, and power stations - but ‘green infrastructure’ in and around our cities and towns where most people live. The Thames Gateway Parklands is a good example of an attempt to ‘design in’ green infrastructure – with plans for redevelopment incorporating the creation of a mosaic of bio-diverse habitats, new opportunities for renewable energy, and flood risk management.
Third, we need to ask where should power and responsibility lie for improving our green infrastructure. Local authorities have a big role to play. Last year’s local government white paper emphasised the role of local government as a ‘place shaper’. We need to work with local government to ensure they create and improve green spaces within urban environments as a way of attracting and retaining people and businesses. Footloose companies do not choose to locate their high-paid employees in unattractive locations – however good the airport links. But if the benefits of a good environment accrue to those beyond the locality – whether this is biodiversity and wildlife, or carbon sinks – we need to think how local decisions can reflect national benefits, whether this is through Local Area Agreements or the proposed National Policy Statements set out in the Eddington Report.
Fourth, we must think how our farming subsidies can deliver the maximum level of environmental public goods. We are starting a shift within the Common Agricultural Policy from paying farmers for producing food to paying farmers to look after the land and deliver environmental public goods. As CAP reform progresses, we will need to be increasingly clear about understanding what environmental goods we want to subsidise and how we can use the CAP to enable farmers to become net environmental investors.
Finally, If we are to make the transition towards a more sustainable countryside, environmentally, economically and socially, we must address some traditional divisions. CP Snow once wrote of the division between ‘two cultures’, science and humanities, holding back progress. Since the second world war this is exactly what happened in the environmental movement. The scientists who had been lobbying for wildlife protection and the creation of nature reserves could not see eye to eye with the inheritors of Wordsworth, the picturesque movement and the campaign for access to mountains. Their lack of agreement was enshrined in legislation. The institutional arrangements for National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, rights of way and access went down one track; those for Nature Reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and wildlife protection down another.
To help us meet these challenges, we have unified responsibilities to create a powerful new champion of the countryside, Natural England, with a mission to promote nature conservation and protect biodiversity, preserve and enhance the landscape, and contribute to social and economic well-being. It will have a key role to play, especially at local level, working with communities and businesses to secure solutions which achieve environmental benefits and provide long-term economic and social improvements.
Conclusion
When it was founded the CPRE led a new national consensus on how we manage land in the future. It avoided what Anthony Bertram in 1938 describes as ‘the sort of arid conservatism which tries to mummify the countryside’.
In the next 80 years, I hope the CPRE can forge a similar consensus. The only given in this debate is that land use will change. What is up grabs is whether we do this in a way that ensures environmental, economic and social objectives go hand in hand, or at the expense of the other.
What we must avoid is a salami-slicing approach to land use where marginal decision erodes our environmental assets. The risk, as Dieter Helm, has argued, is that the sum of multiple marginal decisions is irreversible damage to our environment. Helm illustrates his point in the following way. St James’s Park occupies 58 acres of prime real estate in Central London – with huge potential development value, worth, based on conservative estimates, £170 million, and probably much more. Conventional cost benefit analysis would justify taking a corner of St James’s Park and developing it. And then taking another edge and developing that. But as each corner was sliced off, we would soon discover that a magnificent national and international asset had been eroded to a sad remnant of land – and the argument for complete development would be unstoppable. The choices we make now will determine the options our children and grandchildren have for the future, and we have a duty to act responsibly.
I have set out my views on some of the ways we might reshape the way we think about land. But this is not an agenda that should be left to political parties or politicians. It goes to the core of the way we live, the country we want to build and the legacy we want to leave for future generations. It can capture the imagination and passion of people for whom politics is often a remote concern. Government can help to spark a debate, but if we are to get a more mature, engaged debate, we must mobilise a broad coalition of interests, from citizens and community groups to farmers, developers, and local government. I look forward to working with you in the next year to do just that.1
1 I have agreed two specific proposals for follow up action that have already been put to help test out the debate through practical action, as together we think through our future strategy.
The National Trust have proposed working at a strategic level with other major landowners. I welcome this offer to look on a large-scale basis across land boundaries, at what more can be achieved by working together – on common objectives and with the aim of delivering multiple benefits from land use. I am confident it will be welcomed by other major landowners - the Ministry of Defence, Forestry Commission, RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, and Crown Estate. With Natural England and Environment Agency, we will take this suggestion forward.
A practical ‘test-bed’ project is also being developed to look at land use issues on a regional scale, with regional and local partners in the East of England. This region offers a number of the challenges described in my speech: it is particularly vulnerable to climate change, with a fragile, changing coastline, and significant areas of high-value agricultural land and rare habitats vulnerable to flooding and salting. It is also a region of growth, with ambitions for over half a million new homes and over 150,000 new jobs by 2021. The time is ripe for a proactive, long-term look at a land use strategy across the region – addressing climate change, coastal erosion, habitat protection, social cohesion and economic growth. Such a project would also bring out wider lessons for how we can achieve a holistic approach to land use planning.
Page published: 9 March 2007