Peel-Harvey Catchment Council (PHCC) has criticised the state government’s commitment to protecting vulnerable wetlands in the region in its first draft submission to the Green Growth Plan.
The Green Growth Plan, which is the state government’s proposed plan for handling the population growth expected in the Peel and Perth regions to the year 2050, outlines the government’s strategy to simplify the bureaucratic processes in land development and environmental management.
In their written submission to the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the PHCC outlined a number of criticisms to the current plan, including a lack of assurance over important environmental areas like the Ramsar-listed Peel-Yalgorup site.
PHCC chairman Andy Gulliver acknowledged the amount of work undertaken in the plan, but said there was more work to be done.
“First of all, we do acknowledge that the state government, particularly some people within the Department of premier and Cabinet, have done a huge amount of work to pull this together,” PHCC chairman Andy Gulliver said.
“The government is starting to look at what Peel would look at with three-and-a-half million people, which is something like 70 per cent more than we have now, so it will always be a massive and complex undertaking.”
However Mr Gulliver said the plan did not guarantee enough protection for environmental sites.
“As a community, we are concerned about our environment, and we know that if we continue to manage it the way we do, we're basically going to trash it,” he said.
“So the dilemma is, how do we provide for all the social structures that happen because of a growing population while protecting the environment that we value?
“The business as usual won't work. The government has a responsibility to manage urban development and the movement of resources, we acknowledge that.
But the government also has a responsibility to protect the environment and areas that have value.”
The PHCC outlined in their submission a need for adaptive management that applied to all aspects of the plan throughout it’s creation.
“Simply putting out a plan without any assurances on when certain goals will be achieved will not work,” Mr Gulliver said.
“There needs to be constant monitoring of how it is being applied, and constant communication with the public. At this stage, we are not convinced that the plan in it’s current state satisfies that.”
