SUNSHINE Coast council will today be asked to support a regional summit to consider future population growth levels.

Queensland National Sea Change Taskforce representative Debbie Blumel said the time had come to rethink the future, with enough people now interested in quality of life and the environment to influence federal government policy.

Ms Blumel said the realities of climate change would have a diminishing impact on the Coast's ability to absorb more people.

She will move today that the council work with Moreton Bay Regional Council and the NSCT to develop policy proposals to put to both the state and federal governments that would address the issue of carrying capacity, including our ability to produce food.

The summit, which would be held either annually or bi-annually, would function at a broader regional level to develop policy proposals to put to both state and federal government.

It would provide a forum to critically examine social, economic and environmental indicators, which the state government's own SEQ State of the Region report shows are all trending downward.

Ms Blumel said it was also important to understand the economic and social drivers of settlement patterns and why Australia was deserting the bush for the coast.

This follows mayor Bob Abbot's call last week for government to create incentives for people to remain in and choose the bush as a place to settle, including the relocation of industry and decentralisation of government departments.

Mr Abbot said the region's future growth potential could only be properly understood through careful examination of all the geographic and ecological constraints of that growth.

Ms Blumel said regions like the Coast would not do well from any massive increase in population, which would undoubtedly affect the quality of life and the loss of desperately needed agricultural land.

“There are enough people interested in quality of life and quality of the environment rather than just more is better,” she said.

“The suggestion that carrying capacity can always be increased through engineering needs to be seriously challenged.”