Examination of Witnesses (Questions 477
- 479)
WEDNESDAY 13 OCTOBER 2004
MR BOB
ROBERTS, MS
JOANNA RUSSELL
AND MR
TERRY ROBINSON
Q477 Chairman: Thank you for coming
and thank you for your written memorandum. I should like to ask
you about one of the issues that often comes up. We know about
the balance that needs to be struck in relation to all this housing
development, but you seem to take issue with Kate Barker over
the extent to which there should be trade-offs between the three
of those. Is not the problem that everywhere you look in dealing
with environmental issues this issue raises its ugly head, and
on all occasions really the economy and the arguments in favour
of economic progress win? Are you not being a little unrealistic
in rebuking Barker for the position taken on this?
Mr Roberts: I hope we are not
rebuking it too much, but I do think we should always challenge
the claim that it is necessary to lose one thing in order to gain
another. It may sound a little idealistic but we should always
start off by looking at what is termed the win/win answer, so
we should be looking for ways of reconciling and gaining environmental
benefit from for instance economic development, rather than starting
off with an assumption that it cannot be done. It is quite right
that there are sometimes trade-offs, but increasingly, if we think
hard about things, there are opportunities to come out winning
on several points. It is that starting assumption that we did
not like, that there always has to be a winner and loser.
Q478 Chairman: Can you give us some
examples?
Mr Roberts: I will give you a
nice controversial example. We might think of an area of land
which is currently undeveloped and a green-field site, and people
might say it is undesirable to develop. But if that site is a
very sterile, biologically or ecologically a poor piece of land—it
might be producing fabulous cabbages but from an environmental
point of view it might not be terribly productive—it is
not impossible that you could develop that land if there were
other benefits in developing it and increase biodiversity. If
you were really good at design you might even be able to develop
it in such a way that it is a very attractive development. I would
say that that could be an example of win/win.
Q479 Chairman: How confident are
you that that sort of thing can be achieved? Notionally, it is
easy to accept what you say, but in practice there is very little
evidence that that ever happens. That is probably what worries
me.
Mr Roberts: It worries us as well,
but you start off saying what you want to achieve and the ideal.
We have three choices in a sense. The first choice is to be defeatist
and say that you cannot get these big multiple wins, so you do
not even try to do it—and that must be wrong. The second
choice is to be so pessimistic about the chances of achieving
it that you adopt the NIMBY approach and say that it can be done,
but it is unlikely to be done, and therefore oppose it. The third
option is to say, "we want to achieve this; how can we achieve
these wins?" I have not seen the report, but I think CABE
came out with a statement earlier in the week about the amount
of development they thought was winning, in terms of being sustainable,
and from memory they said something like 17% or 20% that they
thought was good, and the rest was not so good. That was played
as a bad headline. When I heard that, I said, "gosh, I did
not expect it to be as good as 17 or 20%." So it can be done.
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