tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890072686320682804.post4386371528918765713..comments2010-12-13T16:32:33.102-08:00Comments on the chronicles of an academic amble...: on the creation of wetlands...wild mosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107114027534569924noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890072686320682804.post-76058740753141000552010-11-01T01:53:51.969-07:002010-11-01T01:53:51.969-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.wild mosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11107114027534569924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890072686320682804.post-50449160157829308032010-10-30T23:51:16.036-07:002010-10-30T23:51:16.036-07:00Another great post MAB, keep 'em coming. The g...Another great post MAB, keep 'em coming. The great benefits of artificial wetlands (to the "developers") are twofold.<br /><br />First they're a cheap form of greenwash, effective at salving the consciences of buyers in the luxury market who want an excuse not to do without: you pay up, they're planted, you ignore them and go to the farmers' market in your SUV for brunch - all's right with the world.<br /><br />Second and more insidious, they're tradeable. Promise a wetland in a gorse-covered gully that you picked up for a song, and in return any Kiwi council will waive its zoning "rules" and let you subdivide prime productive land, often kilometres away. The council gets a rates windfall (and, if my growing suspicions are correct, kickbacks from infrastructure contracts for which there otherwise wouldn't have been a pretext). The environment gets a few crumbs and the impact of dozens more polluters. The so-called "developer" gets a massive windfall. (At a district council meeting I attended not long ago, a developer's lawyer stated that 19% p.a. return on investment was a typical trigger point for development; below that the developers, their bankers and investors didn't consider most projects worth starting. This wasn't conceded as it should have been - a shameful admission of greed. On the contrary it was stated openly and held over the council as a tacit threat: the project in question would be abandoned if the council imposed compliance terms that reduced the developer's profit to anywhere near that 19% threshold.)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00549301718006126337noreply@blogger.com