∈ spotthehall

Just got back from an ‘interview’ session for this access forum, which was quite stimulating stuff.

Under the Countryside Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW) the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is required to establish a Local Access Forum, to advise the Authority from the perspective of ‘stakeholders’. Indeed that was one of the questions put to us, for debate, as it’s always all too easy to get carried away and suddenly you’re in an imaginary world of wielding power and putting your little bit of the globe to rights (according to your viewpoint of course). I was back in the meeting room with all the factions that had an interest in my boss’s land, trying to seek a way through to what was invariably almost common ground at the end of the day, despite the apparent disparate starting points. So, a good question to remind me to be more factional!

At things like this, I hear the word ‘sustainable’ used a lot – and I know it’s the buzz word – but I do question the long term sustainabilty of areas such as the Dales, having lived amongst and seen what is happened to some areas of the Lake District. One can immediately distill the problem down Hardinian Taboo lines and point to the self-defeating success of the Lakes, the Tragedy of the Commons. However, another word that came up a lot was ‘education’ and I can never get away from the thought that we (generally) are getting further and further removed from our environment and our understanding of the way it (still) functions despite us. We are learning more and more about our environment, but it seems that that information is disseminated through an interested and concerned minority, although I think the Stern Report is good in that it has attempted to publicly bring into focus the economic implications, not an easy task.

We have perhaps lost ‘wilderness’ for good in England certainly the Lakes has already gone past this point, but at what point do we say the Dales is still the Dales, acceptable in character and ‘sustainable’ – picture postcard looks with block pathways on the hills? What I’m interested in is us realising our ‘footprint’ and having the awareness to self-regulate how much human traffic an area, such as this, can stand – everybody included…

…and while we’re on the subject, I think this moon base is a great step (pun intended).

Yorkshire Dales Local Access Forum

6 December 2006