As the Sunshine Coast’s population increases to about 300,000 and continues to climb, serious questions are being raised about the negative impacts upon our lifestyle and natural environment. Managing growth is increasingly seen as a failed idea, or just marketing-spin for developers and their backers.

As the region becomes more crowded many people fear a looming environmental catastrophe. Yet, there are those who predict a promising future for the Sunshine Coast and cheer on even more development.

Growth in the local economy has seen a skewing of jobs, with the building industry predictably leading the charge, gaining an almost 70 percent increase in employment.

So who will be proved right? If those who promote unfettered development are wrong, we’ll all be in deep trouble, according to a growing swell of people who worry and care for the lives of future generations.

Respected academic, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation and local resident Professor Ian Lowe said we may be heading for a “‘Noosangatta’: one concrete sprawl from the Noosa River to the Tweed”.
Ordinary families are also becoming increasingly nervous about pro-development lobbies being given the green light.

Paul and Sally Johnson, along with their two children, live just outside the tiny town of Pomona and don’t want the city they escaped following them onto the Coast. “We moved here to be away from all that, yet we drive down into Maroochydore and it’s starting to feel like a city already,” said Mrs Johnson.

But Colin Dwyer, director of research at Colliers International Sunshine Coast, was recently reported as saying that a 27 per cent growth in jobs since 2001 and an estimated half a million people living on the Coast by 2020, means we are heading for a bright future.

Mr Dwyer was reported as saying that it is our growing population that is driving employment growth and: “We’re feeling quite bullish about the future and we’re ready to ramp up the next stage.”

Yet there are many signs of concern over the rate of growth within one of Australia’s most environmentally-diverse regions.

Maroochy Mayor, and Sunshine Coast Regional Council mayoral candidate Joe Natoli recently announced that he would sustainably manage the Coast’s rapidly expanding population if elected onto the new super council.

However, Professor Lowe believes council’s are creating the problem. “Local councils and the State Government are choosing to have rapid population growth by cheap house-and-land packages and an open-slather approach to planning,” he said.

“Port Douglas and Noosa Shires have chosen to limit their resident and tourist populations to levels that they believed could be sustainably managed, by choosing how much land they would release for development.

“They are now being forcibly amalgamated with neighbouring shires that have no such restrictions and no overall policy of limiting growth to maintain natural values and the quality of life for existing residents,” he said.

Professor Lowe also believes the formula of ‘growth equals more jobs and better living standards’ is wrong and that most job increases have been amongst unskilled labour.

He pointed to Dr John Coulter’s study of OECD countries where population growth rates were compared to GDP per capita. The study found that higher increases in wealth per person exist in nations where the population was stable or only slightly increasing or decreasing. High population growth-rates resulted in greater expenditure on the so-called “unproductive assets”. There include roads, water, sewerage, waste and electricity supplies, Prof. Lowe explained.

ABC Radio National recently hosted the first part of a three-part series on population and the environment. Dr. Colin Butler from the Australian National University said in the report that growth rates, as well as population numbers, are important to consider. High rates of growth tend to rapidly alter the natural environment. The environment will change and adapt, “not always in ways we will like”, he said.

Projected population numbers in the Redlands Shire have recently produced a heated dispute between the council and the Queensland Government’s Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara.

“The current rate of habitat destruction and fragmentation in the Redlands (Shire) as a result of urbanisation must be slowed,” Mr McNamara was reported as saying.

However the Redlands Council believes the State Government’s South East Queensland Regional Plan underestimates the amount of new dwellings required to accommodate an expanding population.

Sunshine Coast Environment Council campaigns coordinator Keryn Jones said the question of growth is one for local residents to answer - not our politicians.

“Local residents must ask themselves, do we want to see our region quickly transformed into a city at the behest of developers,” she said.