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.