Regional reports or structure plans? Opportunities for strategic planning in England and Wales

The British Government is proposing a new system of single‐tier development plans for England and Wales, with clear implications for the strategic level of planning. This paper considers a proposal by the Committee of Inquiry into Town and Country Planning set up by the Nuffield Foundation, for a revised strategic planning network which includes a ‘local strategy’. The paper considers the lessons to be drawn from the use of regional reports in Scotland since the early 1970s and concludes on a note of caution for the Government's proposals.     

Local plans and planning in England

Whilst the process of local plan preparation and adoption in England is far from complete, the commitment to the statutory planning process has not precluded the use of informal or non‐statutory material either in addition to or instead of statutory plans. This paper attempts to quantify the extent of non‐statutory local planning activity in England, and explores some of the advantages and disadvantages which an informal approach involves.     

Nature conservation and local plans

It is noted that nature conservation has gained progressively in importance as a planning issue. The paper reports on the role of the Nature Conservancy Council, and in particular their Assistant Regional Officers, in consulting over the production of local plans. Local plan policies may assist valuably in the protection of important sites, although sympathetic planning authorities can also assist nature conservation in a variety of other ways. Sustained and systematic liaison with planning authorities is necessary for nature conservation to become a substantive local plan issue.     

Evaluating environmental protection in post-Hurricane Katrina plans in Mississippi

Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Governor's Commission for Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal provided planning teams to work with coastal communities to prepare long-range rebuilding plans followed by further community-initiated plans. Eighteen months after Katrina, this paper examines the degree to which environmental protection has been incorporated into the long-range plans developed in Harrison County, Mississippi. This study finds that environmental protection has not been adequately integrated into the plans. It concludes by offering recommendations on how these communities can improve their plans relative to environmental protection measures as they move into their next phase of planning.     

Opportunity costs of implementing forest plans

Intellectual concern with the National Forest Management Act of 1976 has followed a course emphasizing the planning aspects of the legislation associated with the development of forest plans. Once approved, however, forest plans must be implemented. Due to the complex nature of the ecological systems of interest, and the multiple and often conflicting desires of user clientele groups, the feasibility and costs of implementing forest plans require immediate investigation. For one timber sale on the Coconino National Forest in Arizona, forest plan constraints were applied and resulting resource outputs predicted using the terrestrial ecosystem analysis and modeling system (TEAMS), a computer-based decision support system developed at the School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, With forest plan constraints for wildlife habitat, visual diversity, riparian area protection, and soil and slope harvesting restrictions, the maximum timber harvest obtainable was reduced 58% from the maximum obtainable without plan constraints.Former Graduate Student at Northern Arizona University.     

Planning process influences on sustainability in Ohio township plans

This study examines planning process influences on plan sustainability scores for 46 township plans in Central Ohio, in the Midwestern Region of the United States. Townships face many similar development challenges as exurban communities along with cultures and economies which straddle urban and rural perspectives. The empirical analysis shows that participation breadth is positively related to sustainability scores, while the use of the sustainability concept in the planning process is negatively related to sustainability scores. Based on the findings, we suggest that communities preparing a comprehensive plan should encourage participation by a variety of groups in the planning process. Future research should examine the manner in which the sustainability concept is incorporated into the planning process to better assess its influence.     

The readability of federal land management plans

Regulations to implement the National Environmental Policy Act state that environmental impact statements shall be written in plain language. Federal land management agencies operate under this guideline when they prepare plans for their lands. We examined 23 agency plans, using the Flesch Reading Ease Scale, to determine if they met this criterion. The scores show that the plans are written for people with three to six years of college education, far beyond the reading ability of the average person. The results suggest that the plans may limit or bias who participates in agency planning. National policy on the readability of the plans needs to be clarified, and agencies need to evaluate, and defend or revise, their writing programs.     

Development of plans to restore degraded areas in the Great Lakes

The International Joint Commission's Water Quality Board has identified 42 Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes ecosystem where Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement objectives or jurisdictional standards, criteria or guidelines, established to protect uses, have been exceeded and remedial actions are necessary to restore beneficial uses. As a result of the 1985 report of the Water Quality Board, the eight Great Lakes states and the Province of Ontario committed themselves to developing a remedial action plan (RAP) to restore all uses in each Area of Concern within their political boundaries. Each RAP must identify the specific measures necessary to control existing sources of pollution, abate existing contamination (e.g., contaminated sediments), and restore all beneficial uses. Points which must be explicitly addressed in each RAP include: geographic extent of problem, beneficial uses impaired, causes of problems, remedial measures and a schedule for implementation, responsible agencies, and surveillance and monitoring activities that will be used to track effectiveness of remedial actions. The jurisdictions are responsible for developing RAPs, and the International Joint Commission is responsible for evaluating the adequacy of each RAP and tracking progress in restoring beneficial uses.     

The Need for Flexibility in Conservation Practices: Exotic Species as an Example

To garner support for biodiversity from the World’s human population, conservation biologists need an open-minded, integrated conservation strategy. We suggest that this strategy should include efforts to (1) preserve existing high quality, diverse ecosystems, (2) remediate impaired systems, (3) balance the needs of people and ecological resources, and (4) engender appreciation of nature and its services. We refer to these four key tenets as reservation, restoration, reconciliation, and reconnection. We illustrate these concepts by presenting the debate surrounding the management of exotic species from an unusual perspective, the benefits of exotic species. By this example we hope to encourage an integrated approach to conservation in which management strategies can be flexible, adjusting to society’s needs and the overall goals of conservation.     

Implementation of resource management plans: identifying keys to success

One of the primary challenges in resource and environmental planning is successful implementation of plans. Plan implementation is a complex process influenced by many factors. This study identifies 19 criteria affecting implementation success and tests the impact of these criteria through a case study of collaborative plan implementation in British Columbia, Canada. The significance of criteria and degree to which they are met is assessed by a survey of senior officials responsible for plan implementation. An implementation evaluation index (IEI) is constructed to assess the quality of plan implementation systems and best practices for effective implementation are identified.     

Compliance of Australian threatened species recovery plans with legislative requirements

Recovery plans are the main documents supporting management decision-making for threatened species. We evaluated Australian recovery plans to assess their appropriateness as conservation and management planning instruments. Six legislative requirements (species information and general requirements, species distribution and location, known and potential threats, objectives, performance criteria and actions, duration of the plan, and estimated costs of plan implementation) were used to assess the degree of compliance of recovery plans with the relevant legislation. We assessed all 236 official recovery plans which had been adopted as at January 2006. The results showed that plans were most compliant regarding the setting of objectives, performance criteria, recovery actions, and duration of plan. Most plans included a single performance criterion that was generally related to the population status of target species. Improvement is required in relation to identification of current threats and critical habitats, and the establishment of basic elements of monitoring and evaluation for measuring recovery progress. Gaps in ecological information are the main factors affecting adequate compliance with legislative requirements as opposed to managerial information (e.g. clarity in establishing the implementation schedule, costs and resource allocation). Planning deficiencies could be addressed by improving the recovery planning guidelines and more carefully reviewing the drafting and adoption of new plans.     

Environmental history: A piece in the puzzle for establishing plans for environmental management

Establishment of plans for environmental planning and management requires that a number of natural and societal factors must be taken into consideration. Insights into the inherent dynamics of nature as well as the role that past human activities have played for establishing the current condition of the landscape and the natural environment in general are essential. Many natural and man-made changes occur over time scales of decades or centuries, and these are difficult to comprehend without a historical perspective. Such a perspective can be obtained using palaeoecological studies, i.e. by geochemical and biological analyses of lake sediment and peat deposits. To illustrate the long-term dynamics of nature and particularly the role of man, we present here five case studies from Sweden concerning pollution, lake acidification, lake eutrophication, biodiversity, and landscape dynamics and conservation – topics of broad interests – and discuss benefits of including a longer time perspective in environmental management.     

Preparation and implementation of seven ecological compensation plans for Dutch highways

First-generation compensation plans (CPs) for Dutch highway projects have been evaluated with respect to implementation of the compensation principle (1993), which aims to counterbalance the adverse ecological impacts of large-scale development projects. Decision-making on the seven projects took place between 1993 and 1995. Specifically, we considered: (a) the processes employed to prepare and implement the compensation plans; (b) the methods used to identify, plan, and execute the compensation measures; and (c) the results yielded by these methods. We conclude that the CPs were prepared fairly uniformly, particularly in terms of the processes and methodologies used to derive compensation measures. Five of the seven CPs had become operational by 2001 and initial experience is now being gained on land acquisition and transfer of compensation sites to nature conservation trusts. Further progress of CPs is likely to be seriously hampered by growing demand for land for development in general and associated increases in real estate prices. Several problems are addressed and recommendations made with respect to: (a) developing a legal basis for the compensation principle; (b) the relationship with re-allotment projects; (c) estimation of compensation costs; (d) an annual bias of CP budgets to account for rising costs; (e) contingency measures; and (f) criteria for CP (ex-post) evaluation.