Planning Development to Reduce Mosquito Hazard in Coastal Peri-Urban Areas: Case Studies in NSW, Australia

Abstract

In this chapter we take a multidisciplinary approach to evaluating planning for coastal development, particularly in peri-urban areas. We consider ecosystem services and disservices and how, in the past, much development was at the expense of coastal wetlands. We then focus on mosquito production as a wetland related disservice that affects residents and imposes costs on individuals and government from both a health and management perspective. Most coastal peri-urban areas including adjacent wetland sites retain legacy infrastructures and landforms that degrade wetland function and often exacerbate the mosquito hazard. Rehabilitating coastal wetlands can improve wetland function while also reducing the mosquito hazard. Yet examination of rehabilitation and mosquito management within the existing planning framework found deficiencies and complexity. In particular, coastal wetlands are almost always overlaid with a number of different zone and ownership boundaries that increase complexity of both mosquito management and wetland rehabilitation actions. We illustrate the issues with two case studies from northern New South Wales (NSW), Australia: a greenfield development located in Ballina and a retrofitted site at Banora Point near Tweed Heads. We recommend land use planning frameworks incorporate a trigger for both assessment of adjacent coastal wetland ecosystem function and restoration of wetland ecological processes that includes provision for habitat based source control of mosquito hazard and coastal wetland rehabilitation.