Saving the land is - cheaper than you think argues Barbara
Maude of the Council for the Protection of Rural England Although technological developments vary in the amount of damage they do to the landscape, when one looks at them in detail as CPRE has done during the last few months, certain underlying causes can be discerned which are common to all. It is these that have to be corrected.
In the industrial revolution the principles of laissez-faire' and the theory that 'enlightened self-interest' generally conduced to the common good, combined to do in- calculable damage to the land, the towns and the people. Only a small minority saw the evils—and got them alleviated at least by legislation. Today, the technological revolu- tion is producing comparable evils; but because they are accompanied by an in- creased ability to buy its material products (generally referred to as higher standard of living) most people are blind to these evils—or are resigned to them as inevitable.
Meantime, the prophets of woe, who are using European Conservation Year to utter apocalyptic cries more distinguished for their drama than for any noticeably constructive ideas, can only say that `It will cost a great deal more money'. With a Government absolutely committed to reducing official spending this is the last thing to cut any ice. But is it true?
To find out one must first examine the ex- isting machinery. The planning laws which are supposed to control all land use are in fact dangerously weakentd by a mass of ex- emptions. The ordinary citizen, having spent months trying to get permission to build two rooms onto his house, cannot understand how this squares with the things that statutory undertakings are allowed to perpetrate in green belts and national parks. The Coal Board while collecting lavish praise for the way in which it reclaims opencast workings, continues to tip deep colliery waste ad lib wherever it happened to have started doing it before the 1947 Act became law. Similarly the War Department need do no more than 'consult' local authorities before building what it chooses—and what it chooses is generally pretty nasty, and none of them is obliged to employ anyone pro- perly qualified to ensure that what does go up or what is put down is dealt with to the best advantage. The aesthetic results are deplorable; and the wasteful use of land
itself contributes to the mounting tide of pollution. Our first suggestion therefore is that all changes in land use should be subject to planning control. Indeed the difference now existing between the private-citizen and the privileged public bodies seems com- pletely inconsistent with our boasted equality before the law.
The problems of mineral extraction, in an age which has been encouraged to believe that all raw materials are inexhaustible, are dramatic because of the scale of the mess they make in the countryside. We are told, of course, that this could be put right 'if more money were spent'. Nothing could be more inaccurate, as is proved by the ironstone mining industry, which is governed by a special Act. A levy is taken for each ton mined, and all the land is properly reclaimed—not twenty years after but two or three. A slightly altered, but charming and fertile landscape results. If this can be achieved in one field we see no reason (nor has the Ministry produced any) why it can't operate elsewhere; and we think that this Act should be extended to cover all mineral ex- traction. The financial effects would be no more damaging than those restrictions on manufacturers and employers which everyone now takes for granted; and the effects on the landscape, and the national benefits of returning the land to maximum use, would be immense.
This brings me to the question of derelict and spoilt land. Ministries make much play with the fact that derelict land is eligible for grant aid; what they fail to make clear is the acreage of truly derelict land which is ex- cluded; many of our most disgusting wastes don't qualify. A short amending Act would put this right—and (incidentally) add a horrifyingly large acreage to the official total of dereliction. Perhaps that is why no government has been anxious to bring it in.
Then—farming. The hedges are going, especially in East Anglia, Wessex and parts of Shropshire and Northamptonshire. The bleak prairie landscape they leave is said to be efficient—but is it? Our farmers, in a country which raises the best fatstock in the world, have been forced by the politicians to concentrate on continuous arable cropping, with its accompanying loss of cover; and the protests of experienced farmers, that even the best soils can't stand up to this for ever, have been ignored. Alongside a deteriorating soil structure have gone the bird and insect life, the bees whose pollinating activities can increase a legume crop by 50 per cent, and a considerable degree of moisture retention.
It is no good talking about 'amenity' plant- ing; farmers must be able to make a living out of doing their land properly. This means revising the price review so as to give an incentive to keeping livestock in the rotation; and a new look at the farm improvement scheme which should be based on long term benefit to the land rather than short term profit. We are simply advocating a return to classic business principles, according to which you nurse your capital assets instead of destroying them. Eating the seed corn has never been a profitable exercise.
One form of wealth can't be quickly created—top soil. It represents the stored fertility of a thousand years of husbandry; yet there is absolutely no legislation to pre- vent its burial, theft or sale. It is buried under tips, smothered under subsoil; and cer- tainly hardly ever reaches the gardens of newly built houses. We want a short Act making it a penal offence to remove, bury or sell it.
There has been a lot of talk about the countryside Act—its car parks and picnic sites and the 'leisure' it caters for. What has escaped notice is Clause 11, which lays on all Ministers the duty of looking after the beauty of the countryside where their work involves them with it. We cannot find that any Minister concerned with land use—Mintech, Board of Trade, Transport, Agriculture or Housing, has issued a single directive either to its own departments or to local and other authorities suggesting how they might carry out this duty. We think they should start now.
These are only a few of our recom- mendations. There are of course many others, relating to widely different subjects from farming and minerals to power and transport. But they all have one thing in common; none of them would cost a lot of money.
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