AS Mark Twain observed in a slightly different context, the reason why land is so valuable is that they are not making it any more.

The truth of that comment is magnified many times over when the land in question covers only about 45 square miles and is surrounded by sea. These days, too, we think of it not just as land but as the environment – a concept which serves even further to underline a preciousness which must be measured in more than economic terms.

That is the issue at the heart of the renewed debate in the States next week over whether the Planning and Environment Department should be split into two, each taking clearer responsibility for one part of that sometimes contradictory remit. The time has come to make the break and end an unsatisfactory situation in which it is becoming increasingly hard for one set of politicians and civil servants to reconcile the conflicting demands of development and environmental protection.

As is often the case, a glance back at history is instructive. The instincts of an earlier generation who dubbed it the Natural Beauties Committee are clear, as are those of their boom-time successors, who clearly felt that the name Island Development Committee had a more dynamic and welcoming ring about it. More recently, as States departments were reshuffled in anticipation of ministerial government, the portmanteau phrase Planning and Environment was adopted in the hope that both complex sets of interests could be
accommodated under one political and administrative umbrella.

When the reorganisation took place, there were no doubt genuine reasons for believing that planning and environmental considerations could be handled by one minister and one department, each set neatly balancing the other in harmonious equilibrium. But that was before the renewed States dash for economic growth and the decision to allow the population to grow to 100,000. Now it is ever clearer that one government department cannot adequately protect the interests of the Jersey environment in all its aspects – marine, coastal, rural, built – while also serving the interests of an economy dependent to such a significant degree on the property industry.

The shortcomings of ministerial government, in which one politician is vested with enormous powers, simply add more layers to the insoluble paradox. How can one group of administrators be expected to reconcile the demands of insistent developers with the protection of coast and countryside?

The environment is not an afterthought or a luxury, especially in a place like Jersey. It fully merits its own adequately resourced political champions, running an independent department, to provide the balance necessary to maintain quality of life as well as standards of living.