environmental sustainability in rural wales: richard cowell
TRANSCRIPT
Environmental Sustainability in Rural
Wales
Richard CowellSchool of City and Regional
PlanningCardiff University
WRO, Cardiff, 22.03.12
Implications of ‘environmental sustainability’ for rural Wales:
- Multiple and diverse effects
- Places involved in very different ways
- Conflicts between environment and development have not gone away
Environmental sustainability of rural WalesSite protection not gone away
More fluid geographies of conservation, and
enhancement/restoration
Layering of rationales for conservation
Designation Area (hectares)
% of total area
National Parks (2005) 410,300 20
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
84,000 4
Special Areas of Conservation (SAC)1
590,871 28
Special Protection Areas (SPA)2 123,015 6
Environmental sustainability by rural WalesAREA EF (2004, global hectares/capita) Income per head1
UK 5.30 100
Wales 5.03 88
Anglesey 5.24 86
Blaenau Gwent 4.60 82
Bridgend 4.98 88
Caerphilly 4.76 82
Cardiff 5.05 91
Ceredigion 5.40 85
Denbighshire 5.11 93
Flintshire 5.12 92
Gwynedd 5.22 88
Merthyr Tydfil 4.70 82
Monmouthshire 5.36 94
Neath Port Talbot 4.92 88
Newport 4.96 94
Pembrokeshire 5.20 85
Powys 5.35 88
Rhondda Cynon Taff 4.79 82
Swansea 5.03 87
Wrexham 4.97 92
Using rural Wales to promote sustainability- an energy case study
Rural spaces becoming enrolled as major producers of renewable energy
Geographical proximity between facilities and communities does not mean a win-win outcome for all
Especially, perhaps, given emphasis on large-scale commercial renewable energy facilities
TAN8 seeks to create a
supportive policy context
for large-scale wind energy
development
What is the scope for more
community-owned
renewables?
May reflect the uneven
availability of
‘communitarian solidarity’
and ‘situated knowledge’
(Bill Edwards)
Some conclusions
Whatever aspirations of win-win-win solutions, sustainability agendas confer no automatic tendency towards harmonious integration
Spatial differentiation of rural Wales is likely to be the result and, for the state at least, also remains an important means of balancing competing goals
Sources
Slide 3 (Areas under designation)taken from the e-digest of environmental statistics and JNCC.
Slide 4: Ecological Footprint data from the Stockholm Environment Institute 2008; income data from NUTS data, ETES3 2007.
Slide 6: map based on Welsh Assembly Government (2005) Technical Advice Note 8: Renewable Energy, redrawn and updated by the author.