The importance of planning in tackling climate changeBy: Fiona Mannion

Climate change is the greatest long-term challenge facing people and wildlife. It is not just our biggest economic and social challenge; it is also a personal
and moral one. In whatever sector we work, we should endeavour to forge practical and rapid paths to a sustainable low-carbon planet. Fairness and justice should be at the heart of the debate about ways forward, alongside an acknowledgement of the need for risk-taking and innovation.

While we need to work nationally and internationally to secure progress on addressing climate change, we also need to galvanise local action. It has been estimated that some 70,000 jobs could be created from local action on domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy alone.*

Local communities are at the cutting edge of the climate change challenge because they have responsibility for a wide range of decisions that are vital to our collective future. Many of the
adverse impacts of climate change, such as flooding, will result in costs to businesses and householders, and solutions to the problems they pose need to be developed locally. Adaptation to the risks presented by climate change, such as extreme heat or water scarcity, is key to future-proofing our existing communities and making sure that new developments maintain quality of life and are affordable both now and in the future.

The challenge for planning
Spatial planning can make a major contribution to tackling climate change by shaping new and existing developments in ways that reduce carbon dioxide emissions and positively build community resilience to problems such as extreme heat or flood risk. Spatial planning has the potential to deliver the right development in the right place in a fair and transparent way, informed by the imperative of sustainable development.

Since coming into Government, the Coalition Government has set about a radical reform of the planning system, including decentralising powers to the local level through the Localism Act 2011, streamlining national guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and a suite of deregulation measures. Most recently the Government has introduced the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which includes measures to remove decision-making powers from poor performing local authorities to the Planning Inspectorate as well as an option on certain types of business and commercial development to take it through the major infrastructure planning process (as opposed to the town and country planning regime), again by-passing local authorities.

Local authorities have a responsibility to help to secure progress on meeting the UK’s emissions reduction targets, both through direct influence on energy use and emissions (by, for instance, encouraging energy efficiency and renewable energy) and by bringing others together and encouraging co-ordinated local action. A key part of any local authority strategy to encourage economic recovery and improve energy security should be to help to reduce the costs of buying in energy – by identifying renewable and local sources of energy, and also by reducing the amount of energy used.

In 2012, the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and Friends of the Earth-led Planning and Climate Change Coalition, which represents over 60 cross sector organisations, published the first sector-led guidance of its kind since the NPPF, ‘Planning for climate change – guidance for local authorities’. The guide sets out how local planning authorities can help to shape places with greater resilience to the impacts of climate change.

Planning can also give local communities real opportunities to take action on climate change by encouraging community-based development and active participation in plan-making, and by helping them to reap the rewards of green development.

The case for larger than local planning
While local planning authorities have a pivotal role to play in driving positive solutions in response to climate change, there is also a need to think spatially about planning for climate change at a national level. England in 2012 – unlike Scotland and Wales – has no government department, or agency, charged with addressing acute strategic, or spatial, problems across the country.

For example, the concentration of development pressures and resource constraints in the South East plays out against a political geography of fragmentation. London retains comprehensive strategic spatial powers while the greater south east is characterised by a mosaic of local government, a Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), and other emerging bodies such as Local Nature Partnerships (LNPs). It is in relation to sea level rise and flood defence that the nature of the disjuncture between England’s functional and political geography becomes most clearly visible.

Solutions to these problems are readily available, but they require a significant culture change in ambition and greater collaboration between sectors and among government departments. Addressing climate change is necessary if we are to ensure future economic, environmental and social well-being. Communities that ignore the challenge will find the cost of impacts and of insurance rising sharply, threatening their economic and social fabric. However, Government also needs to offer a national framework for infrastructure and investment decisions that will support the long term resilience of our communities and provide certainty for the private sector.

*Carbon Descent /Friends of the Earth (December 2009) Job Creation from Local Action on Climate. London: Friends of the Earth.
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/job_creation_carbon_descent.pdf 

About the TCPA
The Town and Country Planning Association campaigns for the reform of the UK’s planning system to make it more responsive to people’s needs and aspirations and to promote sustainable development. www.tcpa.org.uk

The Association is involved in a number of activities around responding to climate change, including the Planning and Climate Change Coalition (http://www.tcpa.org.uk/pages/climate-coalition.html), ‘The Lie of Land!’ (http://www.tcpa.org.uk/data/files/Lie_of_the_Land_ExecSummary.pdf and a European project on local renewable energy solutions, LEAP (Leadership in Energy Action and Planning, www.leap-eu.org)

About the author

Fiona Mannion is Communications Manager at the TCPA and is responsible for raising the Association’s profile, including the European project Leadership in Energy Action and Planning (LEAP).
Fiona has extensive experience in managing partner relationships across the public, private and third sector, including overseeing cross-sector coalitions. She has project managed a number of reports, most recently ‘Re-imagining garden cities for the 21st Century’ and ‘The Lie of the Land!’. The latter of which mapped the environmental, social, economic and political geographies of England and argues the case for a light touch spatial framework that would enable the nation to think in a joined up manner and plan ahead for the next 50-100 years.