Urban Development in Far North Queensland

Far North Queensland is home to some of the fastest growing urban areas in Australia. Cairns is the region’s major population centre and is facing a range of environmental impacts from the ongoing expansion. Unlike most other urban centres in Australia, Far North Queensland urban centres in the region are nestled between two World Heritage-listed environments - the Wet Tropics Rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef. Urban development has already impacted heavily upon both these iconic areas. The hill slopes which form the green backdrop to Cairns are now pock-marked with scars and rooftops as landowners continue to build homes in this delicate environment. The Northern Beaches region is losing most of its remnant forest and melaleuca vegetation from clearing for development. The local wildlife, most noticeably the wallabies, are dying from habitat destruction and being hit by vehicles. 

The FNQ2025 regional plan will shape development in the region over the coming two decades. This statutory plan provides many opportunities for improvements in how we develop this region but it can also become a vehicle for locking-in bad planning. The public, and CAFNEC must work to ensure the plan moves us toward a more sustainable future. Get informed about this important step in regional planning.

Tropical Coast

Our unique tropical coastline has already suffered greatly from ill-planned and designed development. Urban development has lead to severe loss and fragmentation of coastal forest communities, wetlands and coastal dune systems and the animals which depend upon them.
Increasingly, low lying areas vulnerable to flooding and tidal surges are being developed with disregard to past weather events or future extreme weather events under global climate change. Coastal developments have in the past and will continue in the future to disturb acid
sulphate soils, so common in the coastal regions of the tropics. Acid sulphate soils have the potential to severely impact offshore marine environments when disturbed. Trinity Inlet, cleared in the 1970’s for cane farms, is possibly Australia’s worst case of disturbed acid
sulphate soils, which led to hundreds of thousands of litres of sulphuric acid being released into the coastal environment. It also generated massive quantifies of CO2, contributing to the Greenhouse effect.

Tropical Waterways

Our natural waterways continue to be channelled and piped to accommodate the expansion of housing. This practice not only destroys aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, and disrupts natural hydrological processes, but has questionable benefits to flood mitigation. Our waterways are critical to the habitat connectivity of the landscape, the conservation and restoration of creek vegetation as wildlife corridors through urban areas are critical for remnant tropical ecosystems. Urban waste and pollution of waterways are an ongoing problem around urban settlements. In Far North Queensland such pollution flows on to pose a threat to the health of the Great Barrier Reef. This adds pressure to marine ecosystems already suffering from pressures from commercial fishing, tourism and agricultural runoff.

Tropical Building and Planning

Even with all that is known today about sustainable design in urban development and its increasing affordability, there are relatively few new buildings in Far North Queensland that could be considered either sustainable or suited to the tropical climate. Sustainable urban development is not simply having some energy efficient appliances in your house, but requires a holistic approach, ensuring housing has sustainable energy, water, waste and cooling systems. This is as much about the design of the house and the land its situated on as it is about the fittings and appliances used within it.

Cairns and Far North Queensland is still in love with slab houses and the benching of blocks to facilitate this. This is perhaps the worst design of housing, especially in the tropics for a number of reasons. Not only do slabs require the levelling and benching of blocks, generating the need to destroy all remnant vegetation and hydrological features on blocks, but the ability of these houses to cope with changes in underlying soil moisture and structure, high temperatures, avoid flooding and survive cyclones is highly questionable. Benched blocks on hill slopes also cause erosion and the threat of landslides. Alternatives design approaches are needed such as pole-homes and other elevated designs.

Population in the Tropics

According to the Department of Local Government and Planning the population of Cairns as of June 30 2001 was 119 909 people. This is roughly double what it was 30 years ago. However, and perhaps most concerning for the local environment, is that the medium projection of population for 2021 is 187 564 people - almost double the population pressure in the next two decades. This means increased infrastructure and resources to meet the needs of our consumer culture, as well as an increase in pollution, road kill of native wildlife, loss of habitat, increased stormwater runoff, higher energy and water demands and waste production to name a few.

What is CAFNEC doing:

CAFNEC believes there are problems with the Integrated Planning Act, lack of sunset clauses on many development applications, poor local government planning, poor quality reports from environmental consultancies, lack of community awareness on sustainable design alternatives and reluctant attitudes of governments and industries to drive a real change to sustainable development. CAFNEC will continue to lobby industry and all levels of government to adopt development policies and planning approaches which genuinely aim to achieve ecologically sustainable development. Raising community awareness of the environmental alternatives and exposing urban developments that pose an intolerable threat to our rich tropical ecosystems.

CAFNEC is also working on a coastal development campaign to strategically address the major issues of coastal development and how it impacts our environment.

Current major development issues include the 1 500 person residential Reef Cove resort development at False Cape, the $500 million dollar Kuranda Range Road upgrade and high-density residential development in the Redlynch Valley.