teaching and learning english as a second language
Sunday 23 February 2014
the issues around flooding: the costs of development
THE BIGGER PICTURE: The arguments about 'what has caused flooding' are particularly fierce... But it seems that there is agreement about the impact of 'over-development' on the landscape:
Concreting
over flood plains, cutting down trees and expanding cities is making
flooding much worse – and we need to act on that knowledge. Climate change is NOT main cause of floods, say experts | Mail Online Changing landscapes, not global warming, to blame for increased flood risk Studies
have shown that there is a clear link between population density and
flooding. Currently 800 million humans are living in areas vulnerable to
flooding. This is predicted to rise by a further 140 million during
21st Century as we see continued economic and population growth. At the
same time reduction of woodland, changing river flow and the
urbanisation of flood plains will increase flood risk in many regions.
The inconvenient truth: houses built on floodplains could flood
30 January 2014
Role reversal: a river of land in fields of water. Tim Ireland/PA
Ministers
should be applauded for recognising that there’s simply no way we could
tell the thousands of key workers and low income families, desperate
for a decent home, that we can’t build any more new homes because of
concerns about flood plains. David Orr, National Housing Federation, BBC News, 2007.
For the past six weeks, Somerset has experienced its most significant flooding in decades that have at last required calling out the army.
While commentators fixate on dredging rivers, or more sustainably planting trees, or reintroducing beavers
as the solution to prevent more homes from being flooded, those with
longer memories may cast them back to 2007, when much of central and
southwestern England was underwater from some of the worst flooding in
living memory.
Communities Minister Eric Pickles might like to
consider the inconvenient truth of his own words in 2007 while in
opposition. Following the floods, he said in response to Labour’s
housing strategy that: “if you build houses on flood plains it increases
the likelihood that people will be flooded”. Recommendations ignored
But a general election later, in 2012 prime minister David Cameron is pledging to “cut through the dither”
that is holding Britain in “paralysis” and has brought forward by
contentious measures to relax rules on planning applications with an eye
to boosting growth, and providing 75,000 new homes. The National Planning Policy Framework
is proclaimed “simple”, and had reduced planning policy from more than
1,000 pages to under 100, said to pave the way for swifter, clearer
decisions.
Otto Thoresen, director-general of the The Association
of British Insurers, expressed immediate concern that the framework
could lead to greater inappropriate development in flood risk areas,
something that the current “rigorous planning system” was a bulwark
against. The result, he predicted, would not be the “stimulation of the economy,” but “misery for people when their homes are flooded”.
The
National Flood Forum’s chairman, Charles Tucker, similarly argued that
the new framework “has, at a stroke, scrapped the carefully constructed
raft of technical guidance, context and definitions built up over years”
for flood protection.
It does seem, however, that there are some in the construction industry who are taking this seriously:
Construction in a Changing Climate:
Building for Resilience
This
CPD film is designed to support construction industry professionals in
adapting to the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. It has
been produced by Climate SouthWest in partnership with Future
Foundations and Constructing Excellence South West, and is supported by
the Construction Clients’ Group.
‘Construction
in a Changing Climate: building for resilience’ includes interviews
with expert speakers, such as Professor Bill Gething author of 'Design for a Future Climate' (Technology
Strategy Board 2010). Featuring onsite case studies (covering homes,
commercial buildings and new developments), we hear from a range of
industry players who demonstrate how adapting to climate change has been
integrated into the development, design and construction of their
sites.
CPD film: ‘Construction in a Changing Climate: building for resilience’
This CPD film is designed to support construction industry
professionals in adapting to the impacts of extreme weather and climate
change. It has been produced by Climate SouthWest in partnership with
Future Foundations and Constructing Excellence South West, and is
supported by the Construction Clients’ Group.
‘Construction in a
Changing Climate: building for resilience’ includes interviews with
expert speakers, such as Professor Bill Gething author of 'Design for a Future Climate'
(Technology Strategy Board 2010). Featuring onsite case studies
(covering homes, commercial buildings and new developments), we hear
from a range of industry players who demonstrate how adapting to climate
change has been integrated into the development, design and
construction of their sites.
The key messages from the film are: The
climate is changing and the construction sector needs to take action.
Our buildings are already affected by extreme weather and climate change
will only make things worse.
Flooding
may have shot up the political agenda but that hasn't stopped local
planning authorities driving through housing developments in areas at
severe risk of flooding.
From
Cornwall to London, to Cardiff, Leeds and Northumberland, local
authorities across England and Wales have been ignoring the Environment
Agency's (EA) protests and waving through developments on flood-prone
land. As Britain endures another weekend of torrential rain and further
flooding, figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal that last
year local councils allowed at least 87 planning developments involving
560 homes to proceed in England and Wales in areas at such high risk of
flooding that the EA formally opposed them.
The
numbers of homes being built in the face of the EA's opposition are
increasing markedly. That rise appears to be part of a broader trend,
with developers seeking to push through more projects on land at high
risk of flooding to satisfy demand for new houses. Last year, developers
proposed 618 construction projects on land the agency deemed to be
particularly high risk, an increase of more than a third on the previous
year.
Dr
Hannah Choke, a flooding expert from the University of Reading, said the
figures were "disturbing". "The real problem with the Somerset Levels
is that the people are no longer attuned to the landscape," she says.
"In the past, everyone who lived there was attached to the agricultural
system and they expected flooding. Now people live there because it's a
nice place to live and they have lost touch and been removed from the
functions of the landscape, so when flooding happens, it causes
problems."
A 2012 report by the Government's official climate
change adviser – the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – concluded that the
planning policy "approval process is not sufficiently transparent or
accountable". The report found that 13 per cent of all new developments
were on flood plains. While many flood zone developments are well
protected, one in five was in an area "of significant risk under today's
climate". It noted that much of Britain is now so densely populated
that developments on flood plains are growing much faster than those
outside..
THE WEST COUNTRY: But is it a question, not of homes vs greenfields, but of people vs wildlife? Andrew Gilligan considers the issue in the Sunday Telegraph - from the Somerset Levels:
Somerset floods: 'Is this area for people to live in or for animals?'
“Retreat
is the only sensible policy,” says Colin Thorne, professor of physical
geography at Nottingham University and a leading flood expert. “If we
fight nature, we will lose in the end.” This view has until now strongly
influenced government policy on the Levels. Much stress has been
placed on the area’s role as a flood plain where people should expect to
get wet. The perhaps brutal calculation has been that it was not worth
spending millions dredging rivers and building barriers to protect a few
thousand people – especially when the scientists say that it will
merely buy time. “Can the
Somerset Levels be defended between now and the end of the century?
No,” says Prof Thorne. No explicit decision would be taken to abandon
the Levels. But the much-hated end to the dredging of the area’s rivers,
and the increased flooding that may have resulted, were at least
pushing in that direction and letting nature, in at least some places,
gradually take its course.
There are, however, a few problems for
the “swampist tendency,” as Anthony Gibson, a former farmer’s union
official now closely involved with efforts to plan for the area, calls
them. The first, as he says, is that “the Levels are very far from a
typical flood plain”. They are a deeply artificial, man-made
environment, criss-crossed with rivers, canals and channels whose banks
have been built up higher than the surrounding land to carry large
volumes of water through and out of the area. Because of these banks,
the water level in the two main local rivers, the Parrett and the Tone,
is up to 10ft higher than the land around it. In flood times, when the
rivers burst even these banks, floodwater cannot escape until the level
of water in the river is lower than the level on the land around it, and
that can take months. Unless you completely destroy the man-made banks,
letting the Levels flood more often would not, says Gibson, lead to the
lovely natural marsh with wading birds envisaged by the more romantic
swampists. Instead, it would create a “slimy, stinking mess” of foetid,
stagnant floodwater, unable to escape, finishing off not just the
farming and the people but also much of the wildlife. This, indeed, is
what happened in 2012.
The other problem, of course, is the
politics. The people of the Levels have businesses, homes, rights, and
votes. And ghastly as the last month has been for many of them, being in
the national spotlight has quite clearly reset the issue in their
favour.
This
CPD film is designed to support construction industry professionals in
adapting to the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. It has
been produced by Climate SouthWest in partnership with Future
Foundations and Constructing Excellence South West, and is supported by
the Construction Clients’ Group.
, NATASHA CLARK Sunday 02 February 2014
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