Saturday, July 12, 2008

The environmental perspective

Greenpeace is already in trouble with property agents on the La Manga strip for predicting that it will eventually disappear beneath rising sea levels. Now it has issued a new report, 'Total Destruction of the Coast', which attacks the intensive provision of infrastructure for development in coastal areas. In particular, Greenpeace says, Spain’s local administrations have approved no less than 137 new ports largely targeted at recreational use.

Greenpeace is scathing about developments that are often closely linked to corruption and questionable practices. It claims that a huge amount of land has already been declared as urbanisable along the Spanish coast – enough, in fact, to build three million homes.

The environmental group wants a total ban in Spain on any development at all within 500 metres of the beach and for the government to actually apply policies of sustainable development that have already been approved. They say that existing buildings that stand on public land near the coast should be demolished – no matter how long they have been there.

With the current estimate of new housing available for sale in Spain at around the 600,000 homes mark it seems that economic recession may well be the best protection that the fragile coastline can have for the next few years at least.

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