Close-up: Long-term threats to the countryside

Last updated at 11:46 09 September 2005


A doomsday report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England identifies future severe long-term threats to the countryside including:

  • A greatly expanded house building programme with the land speculation that would go with this

  • A huge expansion of road freight distribution and car dependent development with associated noise and loss of tranquility

  • Major airport expansion, both nationally and regionally with associated infrastructure

  • A dramatic decline in farming, leading to ever more polarised land management, either more intensely farmed or abandoned

  • All the while, climate change threatens to undermine the long established processes at work in the countryside, while the response to the associated extreme weather and increased shortage of water could cause more damage still

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