It's a farce. Our "Greenest Government ever" with yet another attempt to allow the economy to take precedence over biodiversity. The one very small possible benefit with this type of mitigation is that where a developer wants to build on some 'less valuable' habitat it may be possible to get them to restore some 'more valuable' habitat. And before anyone jumps on me, I'm well aware that all habitats have different values of their own. Bottom line is our planning system does not and probably never will provide any significant protection for wildlife. The policies are pants and very few planning committees or inspectors have the backing to refuse an economically beneficial development because of some 'wildlife issues'!
A Green Paper was recently published about Biodiversity Offsetting: if you want to build something on some land, you have to compensate the loss of biodiversity by increasing it elsewhere.
Apart from the obvious reason against it like some valuable habitat, e.g. mature woodland, which can't just be developed somewhere else at the wave of a hand, one of the daftest claims made by the paper is that the developers can asses the value of a habitat in only 20 minutes!! As if you could make a full report and correctly assess the biodiversity in a third of an hour, without thinking that maybe the site is an important breeding or wintering ground for one species or another, and won't be noticed at that time of year.
Then again, the paper says that biodiversity offsetting will be added to the planning permission process, and will not replace it. So if you can build the buildings somewhere else, well you'll still have to.
I won't go into the details about everything wrong with this paper, even though there is quite a lot of points which seem wrong. The problem with biodiversity offsetting, finally, is that we are still losing out on natural habitat every time somebody builds a house somewhere. There is nothing saying that we should pull down a building for every new building we put up.
So, "licence to trash", or not?
Paul Hurst said
Tue Apr 23 6:38 AM, 2013
I struggle to understand this. When I read stuff likes this I just can't comprehend it! It makes no sense at all! I am no genius, but if I can spot this blatant error of thinking, then surely a team of experts working for months can also see it! Anyway , if they wanted to destroy one area (say an ancient woodland, or some salt marshes) , they would have to spend so much more money to try and "more than compensate" the loss of habitat, which for an ancient woodland would mean a hundred years of investment, and for salt marshes years to move acres and acres of dirt around, and regulate that too! Nobody would invest in that!
I understand what they mean by trying to halt the destruction of our natural habitat (which is happening regardless), and the actual news article is sort of inflating the proposals of the report, but they seem to have forgotten the sheer complexity of the environment, and that no habitat is the same (and how can you quantify this anyway: is a salt marsh better than an ancient woodland?). They seem to have gone from the assumption that the only difference between two plots of land is their price per acre!
Roger Baker 3 said
Tue Apr 23 5:03 AM, 2013
It said: We need a system in which unavoidable net impacts on biodiversity of new development are more than compensated by restored and created habitats elsewhere through an efficient market." ...........................................................................................
What a load of gobbledygook ......... they should drag the "think-tank" outside and string 'em up on lamp-posts.
Roger.
Mike Passant said
Tue Apr 23 3:13 AM, 2013
I went to this link and am amazed at how naive the instigators of this nonsense are to think that often unique habitats which may have evolved over hundreds or even thousands of years can be replicated so readily. What about the break in continuity for instance; do they think that rare creatures or rare migrant birds can simply be placed into a "time warp" of some kind and then released at our convenience and carry on as before as if nothing has happened? This brings to mind the relocation of indigenous black populations of South Africa to marginal habitats when aparteid was first introduced, or when native Americans were shunted off the prairies by the floods of white settlers onto reservations which were virtual deserts. (The Bison didn't do so well either, did they, they were slaughtered in their millions on purpose to starve the Indians into submission).
If history tells us anything, it is that no original occupants in these situations ever got the best of the deal; - or am I just an old cynic?
Regards, Mike P.
Matt Potter said
Mon Apr 22 12:41 PM, 2013
If it is approved, it could spell a disaster to our wildlife and countryside!!
A Green Paper was recently published about Biodiversity Offsetting: if you want to build something on some land, you have to compensate the loss of biodiversity by increasing it elsewhere.
Apart from the obvious reason against it like some valuable habitat, e.g. mature woodland, which can't just be developed somewhere else at the wave of a hand, one of the daftest claims made by the paper is that the developers can asses the value of a habitat in only 20 minutes!! As if you could make a full report and correctly assess the biodiversity in a third of an hour, without thinking that maybe the site is an important breeding or wintering ground for one species or another, and won't be noticed at that time of year.
Then again, the paper says that biodiversity offsetting will be added to the planning permission process, and will not replace it. So if you can build the buildings somewhere else, well you'll still have to.
I won't go into the details about everything wrong with this paper, even though there is quite a lot of points which seem wrong. The problem with biodiversity offsetting, finally, is that we are still losing out on natural habitat every time somebody builds a house somewhere. There is nothing saying that we should pull down a building for every new building we put up.
So, "licence to trash", or not?
I understand what they mean by trying to halt the destruction of our natural habitat (which is happening regardless), and the actual news article is sort of inflating the proposals of the report, but they seem to have forgotten the sheer complexity of the environment, and that no habitat is the same (and how can you quantify this anyway: is a salt marsh better than an ancient woodland?). They seem to have gone from the assumption that the only difference between two plots of land is their price per acre!
...........................................................................................
What a load of gobbledygook ......... they should drag the "think-tank" outside and string 'em up on lamp-posts.
Roger.
I went to this link and am amazed at how naive the instigators of this nonsense are to think that often unique habitats which may have evolved over hundreds or even thousands of years can be replicated so readily. What about the break in continuity for instance; do they think that rare creatures or rare migrant birds can simply be placed into a "time warp" of some kind and then released at our convenience and carry on as before as if nothing has happened?
This brings to mind the relocation of indigenous black populations of South Africa to marginal habitats when aparteid was first introduced, or when native Americans were shunted off the prairies by the floods of white settlers onto reservations which were virtual deserts. (The Bison didn't do so well either, did they, they were slaughtered in their millions on purpose to starve the Indians into submission).
If history tells us anything, it is that no original occupants in these situations ever got the best of the deal; - or am I just an old cynic?
Regards,
Mike P.
http://http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10008738/Developers-can-build-on-nature-reserves-if-they-offset-the-damage-elsewhere-says-Government-review.html
-- Edited by Ian McKerchar on Monday 22nd of April 2013 03:24:13 PM