Nature loss, Leisure facilities | The home-alone party is over – and we clean up ourselves

(Gudbrandsdølen Dagningen): There are few signs that the government will hold the municipalities tighter in their ears in an attempt to limit the development of new areas and more nature loss. Perhaps it is not punishment and over-control that is needed either. Local politicians have learned from past mistakes and sins.

In the debate about nature loss and measures where people and popular activity displace nature, we have preferred to talk about cabins. Or about cabins and roads. Satellite images showing changing landscapes document destruction. Feel free to say that it looks worse than it is, because few of the wounds have healed. Where natural vegetation is to be given the opportunity to re-establish itself, we are talking about many years. It’s not like rolling out finished lawn around the house walls in the lowlands.

The impression is different when something takes root and grows. The satellite images are getting prettier, but the effect of the interventions that have been made is there just as much.

Storting representative Alfred Bjørlo from the Liberal Party refers to nature management in Municipality-Norway as a “home-alone party”. That party was fierce, but it is far from over. Partly because the demand for new cabins is very low. But also because parents have come home and seen the traces of the party Bjørlo is talking about, participates in the clean-up, and creates new and better settings for the next parties.

We were early on talking about the negative aspects of the cottage boom in Gudbrandsdalen. We finally saw that a lot was going too fast. Heavy basic investments had to be answered with quick sales. When the craftsman cars had a logo with a capital city address or foreign plates, it was obvious that many of the millions that were spent on digging in the ground or building on top, disappeared out of the villages as quickly as the water in the biggest rivers.

The outdoor resource that was set aside for leisure development was supposed to be a caramel to suck on for a long time. Instead it went straight down the throat.

New state planning guidelines for land use and mobility are just around the corner. That is, they were recently sent for consultation. That means it will take some time, but we’ll still see what’s coming. Now the government says, for example, that “When revising the area part of the municipal plan, the municipality should assess whether previously adopted land use corresponds to current and future expected needs and current national and regional guidelines for land use. Consideration must be given to removing or reducing the extent of development areas that should no longer be developed.

There we are. There are local elected officials in the villages who are now talking about “field boundaries”, about densification, and about taking into account both untouched nature and nature that is used for other purposes, such as food production. Local politicians who took part in the “home-alone party” have grown up.

We who either took part in or were spectators to the big cabin rally, have become both slower and more responsible. The party goes on, but it continues in calmer and controlled forms.

The criticism against the government’s proposal for new guidelines is that it says “should” – where a left-leaning Liberal politician and others think it should say “shall”.

It’s funny how those who were in power when market forces were wreaking havoc in Fjællheim didn’t try to put their hand on the wheel until after the “home-alone party” was over.

Most cottage municipalities now want to show that they have learned and understand. When the government says that in the mountains and outback, holiday home areas should be demarcated from contiguous nature, wild reindeer and outdoor areas, cultural environments, and important areas for agriculture, reindeer herding and other industries, the key words hit pretty well what is about to become modern land management in Gudbrandsdalen.