Foresight 10. Coastal segregation

Background

Coastal and marine planning is increasingly centralised

  • Planning (urban & rural and coastal) is undertaken at all levels of Government in Australia. But most ‘direct’ planning activities happen at the local /municipal level, however, this is changing, with State Governments (e.g. Tasmania) now developing overarching planning legislation.
  • The Federal Government is also playing an increasing role in setting policy (e.g. ‘city deals’ in Launceston and Townsville, Smart Cities Plan’, and in developing national climate adaptation and mitigation strategies) and also has a more direct role in coastal planning processes in Australia, mainly through the regulation of development in areas that are of national environmental significance (they have the power to ‘intervene’ in planning activities if they contravene Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 or other relevant legislation).
  • Regional marine planning (development of bioregional plans) is a Commonwealth planning instrument (part of the EPBC Act through Australia’s Oceans Policy (since 2005)), with complementary arrangements negotiated with each State and Territory.
  • It is not unreasonable to assume that the influence and reach of the Federal Government will increase in coastal and marine planning. After all, increased federalism has occurred in other areas too (e.g. health and education).

Small rural coastal communities and fishing may be the losers

  • The places people work and live in the Australian coastal zone falls into different categories: urban, commuting communities, regional cities, and the rural coastal towns in between.
  • Economic performance of regional cities (e.g. Devonport, Launceston, Albany and Cairns) varies from expanding to declining (https://theconversation.com/bust-the-regional-city-myths-and-look-beyond-the-big-5-for-a-378b-return) but they generate national economic growth and jobs at the same rate as big metropolitan cities.
  • However, rural coastal towns (defined as?) are falling between the cracks economically
  • The role of fishing (in terms of employment) in rural coastal communities has declined (even just in the past decade).
  • Downstream processing and upstream service industries in small coastal communities often lose out too (van Putten et al 2016) and move to larger urban centres for reasons of demand and economies of scale.
  • Tourism activities have become the mainstay of small coastal communities and increasingly provide the main (or the only) source of employment.
  • The coastal location is generally a main attraction of small communities (with a fishing port with fresh local fish – which is often not really local!).
  • The demographic of these increasingly tourism-dependent communities is changing with young people not able to afford to live in these communities due to the lack of employment, essential services, and ‘gentrification’ or ‘grey-ification’.

 

Table 1: Change in employment in fishing (between 2006 and 2011) in coastal communities (between the commuting towns and urban centres) (see van Putten et al 2016 for detailed breakdown). (is this % change, or thousands?)

State Large coastal communities

(15-30K residents)

 Medium coastal communities

(5-15K residents)

 Small coastal communities

(<5K residents)

 Total
NSW -15.5 -39.6 -98.5 -153.5
NT -4.9 -1.0 -6.0
QLD -0.7 -21.0 -45.4 -67.1
SA 4.1 -20.1 -5.9 -21.9
Tas 7.9 -2.0 -22.4 -16.6
Vic -30.5 -87.2 -117.6
WA 0.0 -60.6 -9.2 -69.8
Grand Total -4.3 -178.7 -269.6 -452.5

 

Scenario

  • The Federal Government increases its powers to create a national planning approach in which coastal and ocean planning are inextricably linked. This planning approach seeks to concentrate sectoral uses in particular geographic zones (i.e. heavy industry in ‘sacrificial’ area places like Gladstone, exclusive tourism zones in small coastal towns, fishing and related downstream industries in larger regional or urban centres).
    • Exclusive tourism zones created, and linked to high conservation preference for adjacent marine environment.
    • Fish farms move away from the urban areas to minimise social licence related issues. Single use marine farm plans created for remote coastal areas.
    • In small coastal tourism communities fishers are paid to leave their boats in the harbour for tourist experience reasons (i.e. no fishing takes place).
  • Stringent resettlement policy is developed as part of this coastal and marine planning, with people ‘encouraged’ to live in areas based on their main economic pursuits.
    • Freedom to choose where you live is reduced significantly and is linked with profession
    • Suitability vetting process implemented before people are allowed to settle in certain coastal areas (similar to the ‘Straylian’ immigration language test).
    • Social complexity is minimised and “mono-cultural” gated communities are created.
    • Coastal retirement villages are created in desirable coastal locations.

Indicators: How would we know this was “starting to happen”?

  1. New strict planning rules limiting people’s residence choice and movement
  2. Coastal real estate prices rise exponentially due to planning and building restrictions (creating scarcity) thus pricing some demographics completely out of the market
  3. Fishers can no longer work and live in small coastal communities due to comparative high costs (only ‘retired’ fishers remain if they have already paid off their housing and fishing assets)
  4. Coastal towns change their nature completely forcing lower paid professions and less wealthy demographics out
  5. New marine industries, such as offshore wind farms, have to fight to find a spot in an increasingly busy and ‘planned’ ocean and rigidly structured coastal communities

Scoring of indicators

Project team only – “score” this scenario (requires login): Click to continue.

 

Additional reading

Offshore wind farm conflicts:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-02/victoria-plans-to-build-australias-first-offshore-wind-farm/8582652