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Norfolk's Green Party's comments on SMP

Executive Summary of the Norfolk Green Party's comments under the public consultation procedures on Norfolk's Shoreline Management Plan, dated 11th November 2007

Here follows the introductory/summary text of the Green Party's response to the Norfolk SMP consultation:

We believe the SMP to be a disastrous evasion of - and a giving into - the fundamental problem of offshore dredging for vast private and government profit. Given especially the threat of climate change, it is imperative that this SMP be abandoned, that aggregate dredging be vastly curtailed or stopped altogether until methods of and levels for such activity can be found (if they can, at all) which cease to harm the coastline, and that our precious coastline and Broads be properly protected - which includes putting in place a catastrophic-climate-change-PREVENTION strategy, without which in the long term our East Anglian coast will be decimated in any case.

We therefore totally reject the Shoreline Management Plan on grounds of its inequity, unfairness -- and its failure to address the fundamental cause of the rapidly escalating erosion, i.e. Offshore Aggregate Dredging.

In its present highly myopic form the SMP can only be seen as a means of further exploitation of the vulnerable coastal community and the wider environment for the gain of powerful vested interests. In that compensation is to be refused and no reimbursement given to those that lose their properties, source of income and amenity, the policy projected can be seen as indiscriminate, unethical and socially unacceptable, devoid of the basic principles of justice and invoking of Article 8 of the 1st Protocol and Article 14 of the Bill of Human Rights. (The government may then be running the risk of a challenge via judicial review or via the European Court of Human Rights.)

The Norfolk coast is rich in historical and cultural heritage. It supports a major tourist and holiday industry, protects a precious wetland system, a valued natural habitat, numerous vital wildlife sites and the remains of a previously thriving (prior to offshore dredging) fishing industry. These are by far the main source of external income for the area.

The SMP proposed will destroy this dependency, as habitats, accommodation and beaches will disappear, the Broads and tidal rivers become salinated, valuable agricultural land destroyed and many low lying inland villages lost to the sea. The economic cost of losing all this is far greater than the penalty of stopping the fundamental cause of the damage and the provision of essential protection as provided in coastal Europe. The true cost to the community has not been addressed by the SMP.

Furthermore, the government is not taking any serious steps nationally or internationally to make the huge cuts needed in greenhouse gas emissions, if we are to prevent catastrophic/runaway climate change from setting in within a generation or two. Such climate change would further worsen the encroachment of the sea - via increased levels of storm-activity, and sea level rises - that the SMP permits and invites.

The SMP should be rejected and rethought from the ground up. A responsible replacement-plan should feature centrally the banning or severe curtailment of aggregate dredging off Norfolk, and a serious anti-climate-change strategy. Without these two elements, our precious Norfolk coast will indeed be destroyed. With these two policy changes, it may prove possible, given the investment of modest sums, to preserve the broad outlines of the Norfolk coast - and the Broads - more or less in perpetuity.

For further detailed information and photographs of the damage, see the Marinet website www.marinet.org.uk and the Happisburgh CAG www.happisburgh.org.uk

MARINET Comment:

Whilst MARINET is in full agreement with this policy, it is necessary to point out that the ambition to "safeguard our unique coast, indefinitely" is more than optimistic. But we could at least forestall and postpone as much of the damage as possible to retain a protective coastline for a number of years to come. The question is 'for how many years?'

The massive rise in sea level now expected over the next fifty years is such that measures to combat this are currently technically unacheivable as no UK government is likely to claim such to be unaffordable. We are not in Holland who have funded and provided superb defences for their countries protection rather than spend on military adventures abroad. But even the Dutch defences are unlikely to offer indefinite protection with the expected sea level rise and severe climatic conditions forecast.

We must therefore recognise that the loss of parts of the Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire coastal and sub-sea level areas is inevitable, and put in place preventive measures that conserve areas of intrinsic value by maintaining our defences for as long as humanly possible. Those protected would include areas of human habitation, communities, wildlife sites and amenity areas upon which the local economy depends.

Among these measures is the conservation and protection of our beaches, dunes, sand cliffs and salt marshes, which is best served by ceasing to lower our seabed and causing sand loss from our remaining beaches by the ongoing practice of dredging aggregate offshore.

Further measures must include preventing further development on areas at risk of flooding and reversing the current practice of building on flood plains; the compensation of people living in vulnerable areas to help them to move to safer places over the coming years; and the identification and holding and return of appropriate areas to salt marsh to absorb wave impacts and protect wider areas of settlement.

Pat Gowen - 11th November 2007