Ecological planning - Ecological Governance - page 167

plans should also be built, as far as possible, on a common foundation of
spatial and socioeconomic knowledge, including of resource availability
and of the ecological signi

canceofplaces.Thecreationofanational
spatial support base for plan-making is, as I consider at Section 5.3.2 ,
central to developing a capacity for strategic ecological planning.
Second, ecological planning should be vertically comprehensive. It is
essential in a multi-level system of governance that the separate decision-
making levels should operate under the same framework, and that their
activities should be coordinated to ensure that they contribute to the
achievement of common goals. 79 A national planning framework could
provide this coordination by setting out clear objectives, principles and
rules to be observed by all participants in governance. It should also
empower the state to review regional and local plans with the planning
bodies responsible for them and to produce nationally coordinated plans
based on them, or challenge them where needed to advance ecological
objectives. The desirability of the state s involvement with planning in an

overseeing capacity was recognised in the Barlow Report of 1940 that
preceded the development of the

'

rst land use planning system for
England and Wales. 80 The report concluded that an overarching plan
comprised of

a patchwork of schemes of varying size, and varying merits,
which had not been coordinated and moulded to form a coherent whole

'

'
wouldnotconstituteanationalplaninatruesense,andrecommended,in
view of this, that provision should be made for a central authority with
' effective responsibilities for national planning and with the duty of watch-

ing, stimulating and guiding local and regional planning

. 81 Successive
governments have preferred not to get involved with coordinating regional
and local planning beyond issuing planning policy statements. However, an
important aspect of the state

'

s role in ecological governance would, for
reasons I consider in Chapter 4 , be the coordination of planning processes
at lower levels with a view to ensuring that best use is made of national
resources to advance the system

'

s objectives. 82
Third, the planning system should be ecologically comprehensive in
that preferred activities should be selected and particular projects eval-
uated according to the full range of their ecological impacts and bene

'

ts.

'

The argument that planning s limited focus on the potential effects of

79 80 Wong,

,278.
81 Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population (Cmd.
6153, 1940) quoted in Wong,

See Chapter 4, Sections 4.4.1 , 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 . ' Is There a Need? '

' Is There a Need? ' , 278, 294.

82

See Chapter 4, Section 4.4.3 .