ENVIRONMENT

Spokesperson: Seamus Close MLA

Last updated: 30 April 2004

Alliance believes that a quality local and global environment is integral to a good quality of life. Alliance supports regional, national, European and international efforts to protect the environment. Alliance supports the implementation of the Rio and Kyoto Treaties.

Yet there is much that can be done in Northern Ireland to protect our local environment, and to contribute to wider efforts to protect the environment generally. All sections of society, including the public and private sector, civic society and local communities, producers and consumers, have important roles to play.

MANIFESTO PLEDGES (2003 NI Assembly)

Structures

• Establish an independent Environmental Protection Agency. This body will have the power to enforce environmental legislation.
• Create a Green Economy Task Force. This body would make local businesses aware of the true economic and environmental costs of their actions, to illustrate the potential savings from the more efficient use of resources and the minimisation of waste, and to show the potential of new markets for environmentally friendly products.

Planning

Alliance favours balanced development that creates new investment, prosperity and homes, while respecting both the environment and our built heritage. Alliance is concerned at the lack of proper planning frameworks in most parts of Northern Ireland, and the particular absence of current Area Plans. Alliance is also deeply concerned at the destruction of many buildings of historic importance or architectural merit, and incursions into the Greenbelt.

• Give District Councils the ability to initiate third-party appeals. While it may not be practical to give this power to individual residents, Alliance believes that it should be vested in local representatives through a weighted-majority vote on the relevant District Council.
• Initiate a general review of Planning Policy Statements (PPSs). We will ensure that planning policies are consistent with both the economic and social needs of Northern Ireland, and the concerns of local communities.
• Set targets for ‘brownfield development’ as part of Area Plans.
• Lobby for the abolition of VAT on all renovations and repairs to existing buildings. This will protect our cultural heritage for future generations, with the judicious use of existing buildings.
• Support the creation of additional ‘Conservation Areas’, to protect the built environment in key areas of historical or architectural interest.
• Ensure necessary infrastructure is put in place before new major housing developments commence. For example, sufficient consideration must be given to potential new residents’ access to public transport.
• Ensure that out-of-town retail developments are only permitted as part of an approved strategic plan.
• Amend planning regulations and procedures so that planning applications with clear economic development potential can have accelerated consideration. This will not be carried out at the expense of standards.
• Streamline co-ordination between the Planning Service and the Roads Service.
• Develop best practice regarding design of the urban environment to maximise cross-community mixing.

Sustainable Development

Protecting the environment and developing our economy are not mutually exclusive but interdependent. Sustainable development reflects this reality.

• Make sustainable development an overarching theme in central, regional and local government. Furthermore, Alliance will introduce an ecological footprint indicator as a means of measuring the progress of sustainable development. We believe this is the best way of assessing Northern Ireland’s impact on the world’s natural resources.
• Integrate sustainable development into the Northern Ireland education curriculum. This will include entitling quality out-of-school environmental trips and experiences.
• Endorse the ‘polluter pays’ principle. This means that those who pollute more should pay more, and provides a financial incentive to pollute less.
• Support a shift in taxation towards pollution and resource depletion. Consistent with the ‘polluter pays’ principle, the use of market forces can contribute to the protection of the environment.

Conservation

• Implement the Northern Ireland Biodiversity Strategy. This strategy contains 76 recommendations for conserving and enhancing our local biodiversity—the intricate and interdependent relationships between species and their habitats—essential to the health of the whole planet.
• Introduce legislation to ensure Marine Wildlife Conservation. This will identify, designate and protect Marine Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Alliance is committed to the implementation of the Habitats and Birds Directives and the OSPAR Convention.
• Fully implement the Water Framework Directive, to ensure the maximum opportunities to protect and restore our wetlands. These deserve sustainable management, because wetlands protect us from floods, filter out pollutants, provide homes for wildlife, are a source of recreation and beauty, and attract thousands of visitors.
• Ban hunting of mammals with dogs. Hunting foxes and deer, as well as hare coursing, is incompatible with animal welfare.
• Ban unlicensed bonfires. Such events must be done only under approved safety conditions.

Waste Management/Recycling

Alliance is concerned at the amount of waste that is both produced and dumped in landfill within Northern Ireland. This is not only bad for the environment, but puts additional costs onto the District Rate. The Landfill Tax has already produced financial incentives to minimise landfill dumping. There are now European Union targets for waste minimisation and recycling, and a Northern Ireland waste management strategy is in place. Northern Ireland is considerably behind both the rest of the United Kingdom and most of our partners in Europe in the amount of waste that is recycled.

Alliance favours a broad-based approach to waste management that stresses waste reduction, reuse, recycling and energy recovery. Waste disposal in landfill must only be the option of last resort. It is important that all producers of waste are made aware of the true cost.

• Introduce Public Sector Purchasing Policies that will favour recycled products. This will give a substantial boost to the creation and maintenance of markets for such products.
• Actively promote recycling. This can be done through influencing public attitudes, the creation of financial incentives, lobbying Councils to introduce separate kerbside collection streams for recyclables, increasing the number of, and accessibility to, recycling facilities, and helping to consolidate markets through public purchasing policies.
• Accelerate the implementation of the Waste Management Strategy, and the various Waste Management Plans. Alliance favours a five-year moratorium on the creation of any waste to energy plants (incinerators) in order to allow the further development of recycling.
• Introduce a levy on plastic bags. A similar scheme has been launched successfully in the Republic of Ireland. We will also investigate extending such a levy to unnecessary packaging.

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