A moral dilemma

I tend to find that the coast draws out the passion in people. I for one choose to work in coastal management because of that passion. I grew up by the sea, taking myself off to the beach, or playing among the windswept scrub on the sloping cliffs. I remember the young fascination with harbours and boats – the colours, the sounds, the activity. It gets right inside you.

We all experience the coast in different ways and that can lead to our passions taking very different forms. This is where many of the conflicts on the coast arise – and it is often individual, personal conflicts that are most difficult to resolve. We have decision-making processes, with checks and balances and safeguards, for the bigger (some would say more important things) such as housing developments, roads, ports and so on. But sometimes our passions break out of these frameworks and give rise to deep rifts in the community – essentially about differences of opinion.

This was all brought to mind a few months ago when I was in Cornwall, South West England.

Cornwall is a county of rugged cliffs, tidal rivers and fishing villages. In recent years it has become a popular place for a new type of tourism – the second home. The village Helford is one such community where over 40 per cent of the houses are now only occasionally occupied. By definition these occasional residents are relatively wealthy. They have taken issue with proposals by local fishermen to create a jetty to land their catch – worth over £1 million per annum to the local economy in one of the poorest counties of the UK. The planning process had been completed and consent given. Nevertheless, unhappy second home owners took the matter to judicial review and overturned the planning authority’s decision, on the basis of environmental designations.

Andrew George, the local MP, said the High Court decision would "inflame divisions" and reflected: "So we still live in a society in which wealth and power can dictate the course of events”.

In a world where people are much more mobile, and have the wealth to buy their dreams of a rural idyll these sorts of divisions are not going away – until perhaps we have nothing left of the old ways and the people who live by them. The moral dilemma in this story is should we be trying to preserve today’s landscape for all time, or should we be more positive about change and enable a distinctive way of life to move with the times?

See Telegraph article for more info