Whenever there is a debate about
perceived, or actual, needs for land to build new homes, the pro-building
lobby invariably puts the demand into context as a percentage of the land mass
of the British Isles. I seem to recall
that we need to build at the scale of towns the size of Birmingham on an annual
basis for the foreseeable future to accommodate a projected population growth
of at least 10 million. What does this really mean in terms of the amount of
agricultural land or semi-natural habitat lost to concrete?
The answer is clearly uncertain
because various permutations might be used to define land needs. What is clear
is that the greatest demand will be within the south and east of England, so
the commentators who say 'this only amounts to x or y percent of land in
Britain' are being somewhat disingenuous because the vast proportion of the
British Isles is unsuitable for building - the sheer practicalities of building
and living on the uplands of Scotland, Wales and northern England are too great
to contemplate, and new arrivals would not want to live there anyway! Inevitably, housing needs to be close to where
the jobs are, and if that is the case we are not just talking of new housing;
we must also factor in land required for factories, shopping centres etc to
accommodate the extra 10 million.
I seem to recall figures of
around 9% of the land mass of the British Isles is needed to accommodate this
projected rise in population. If that is the case, it is probably not 9% of all
Britain but nearer 25% of the land in south-east England! That must, in turn,
mean that a significant proportion of the remaining semi-natural habitat will
be developed.
I find myself absolutely amazed
that nobody seems to have picked up on this and translated it into what it
might mean for biodiversity. For example, a simple analysis of species-richness
of hoverflies shows that southern and eastern England are infinitely richer
than anywhere else in the UK and that lowlands and especially coastal lowlands
support the greatest number of species. This is all land that will be needed to
accommodate the projected growth in population and so we must start to
recognise that if it is accepted that there will be a huge rise in population
there must be an equal and opposite demise of wildlife.
What is more, it is puzzling
that society simply views undeveloped land as a resource for human habitation.
There seems to be a huge disconnect between where we live and where our food
comes from. It is surely time that this issue was addressed? For a committed
nature conservationist such as me, the wildlife issues seem to be of paramount
importance, but at a human scale there is an even more compelling argument: if
we build on good farmland we have less capacity to support ourselves and so we
will become increasingly reliant upon overseas sources. It is therefore not
impossible that the importance of oil as a trigger for conflict will be
replaced by demand for food. Are we capable of dealing with this or are we
sleep-walking towards catastrophe?
In this respect, I wonder which
will cause the real collapse of society: food and water shortage or climate
change? Examined in proper context, demand for building land in the UK perhaps
shifts the urgency of the question towards our ability to feed ourselves. Those
who foresee shifts in climate envelopes improving agricultural production in
more northerly situations must think twice. The land is much poorer, often
with thinner, leached soils at altitudes where the growing season is much
shorter. These are no realistic replacement for the agricultural belt of the
northern hemisphere. Therefore, demand for housing should be seen as
the wake-up call for a growing environmental problem that will not be resolved
by further building. We must surely re-examine living modes and look to Chinese
and South Korean models where people live in 40 storey tower blocks. It is a
decidedly unappealing prospect, but the ongoing expansion into good food
producing land is surely too significant to ignore?
