Newport SDR - Flood by A thousand road contracts and six billion people

As construction starts on a new dual carriageway in Newport, South Wales (1), home owners in flood-prone areas in Ruthin and Cemaes, north Wales are being told their properties may become uninsurable (2). There is a link say environmental campaigners concerned about the imperceptible but devastating incremental effect of new roads generating increasing traffic and exacerbating global warming.

It is now widely accepted that new roads encourage more traffic and that traffic is responsible for about 25% of the emissions that are causing global warming. Yet, global warming, the most threatening world-wide environmental danger, is estimated to actually displace 100 million people due to sea level rise and coastal flooding by 2050 say the campaigners (3).

Friends of the Earth Cymru say that planners, politicians and the public should be careful what they plan, approve or vote for. Every year thousands of new roads contracts are started and more traffic is generated. Yet already Wales has one car for every 2.6 people, while globally the average is one car for every 8 people and counting.

The campaigners also point to the disempowering PFI road funding mechanism which dictates the transport budget for decades and limits future generations from taking decisions based on future priorities. Such priorities are almost certain to include major responses to global warming issues such as re-housing whole populations. The insurance companies can see it coming.

Neil Crumpton, transport and energy spokesperson for Friends of the Earth Cymru said:

"We should all be aware of the incremental links between more roads, more traffic and eventually more floods. And its not just a street here and a few fields there, its whole regions and even countries that are becoming uninsurable.

Later this year, all 11,000 inhabitants of the South Pacific island of Tuvalu are having to move lock, stock and barrel to New Zealand because of global warming caused mainly by us in the developed world.

While some road network redesign in Newport may well be beneficial we question the scale, the expense and also the financing arrangements of the dual carriage way distributor. Otherwise children in Wales will be locked into funding 40 year PFI contracts on excessive road schemes that are helping to cause hardship all around the world."

Notes

1) Sod Cutting Ceremony in Newport today at 11.15am for start of work on the £50 million Newport Southern Distributor Road (SDR).

2) Warnings by Association of British Insurers on Halifax Bank owned Esure announcement of decision to stop cover for flood-prone homes.

3) Briefing by Welshman Sir John Houghton Co-Chair of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).