Matthew Moore and Louise Hall in the Age (Australia): Property groups have criticised a planning policy aimed at limiting development in coastal regions, raising fears it has the potential to prevent construction in huge areas. As the Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally, defended the draft policy to stop development in areas subject to sea-level rises, developers said it went too far and could unfairly restrict the right to build in many areas.The Urban Development Institute of Australia's NSW chief executive, Stephen Albin, said he was worried that hazard lines to be drawn up by councils based on predicted sea-level rises of 90 centimetres by 2100 could determine which projects were allowed to proceed. "We would be concerned if the 2100 hazard line becomes the default planning control," he said.
"Councils are likely to be very cautious in their interpretation of the guidelines, less inclined to make genuine merit-based assessments, and more inclined to defer to a 90-year sea-level-rise forecast - which is definitely a concern. It is a speculative approach that will present … significant challenges for current and future users of coastal land."
The institute and other groups representing property interests supported the move to consistent sea-level-rise guidelines for all councils, but were concerned about predicting sea-level rises 90 years on. "We'd prefer the adoption of a 2050 benchmark - this approach appropriately recognises the evolving understanding of the science of climate change and its likely impacts,'' Mr Albin said….
Main Beach - Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. Shot by Alpha, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License
No comments:
Post a Comment