RRI Green Planning Archives: New Zealand
Environmental Policy Review
(current to 1995)

New Zealand: Policy Implementation

Important Legislation

Over the years New Zealand has passed a great deal of environmental legislation similar to the laws developed by other industrialized nations, including measures on resource depletion, hazardous waste, and species protection. During the 1980s and 1990s the country undertook a massive overhaul of its laws and governmental structures, including those related to the environment. Such major reforms within relatively short periods of time are possible in New Zealand because of the weight given to the executive branch: It has a unicameral (single-house) legislature, with the prime minister and cabinet chosen from the majority party, and no written constitution or federal system of provinces.

Recent environmental reform legislation includes:

• The Environment Act of 1986, which established the Ministry for the Environment and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment
• The Conservation Act of 1987, which provided for the preservation and protection of New Zealand's natural and cultural resources, including its system of national parks and reserves
• The Local Government Amendment Act of 1989, which provided for regional and territorial authorities
• The Ozone Layer Protection Act of 1990, which restricted the importation of ozone-depleting substances
• The Resource Management Act of 1991, which controls the environmental effects of activities on land, air, and water, and is the core of legislation designed to achieve the sustainable management of New Zealand's natural and physical resources
• The Biosecurity Act of 1993, which prevents the introduction of unwanted organisms and provides for strategies to manage pests, weeds, and diseases
• The Forests Amendment Act of 1993, which provides for the sustainable management of New Zealand's indigenous production forests

{Source: Environment 2010 Strategy}

The Resource Management Act of 1991 is the most important of these. It replaced 57 existing resource-related laws and whittled 800 units of government down to 93. Although some earlier laws remain in force, the RMA radically altered the process of environmental management in New Zealand. It is now the country's preeminent resource legislation; other resource-related laws must adhere to its goals and intent.

The RMA is designed to allow communities and regions to take a broad, comprehensive approach to resource management. It establishes a framework that integrates national, local, and regional institutions and systems dealing with resources, so that the environment can be managed as a whole. This framework delegates various responsibilities for the promulgation of standards, policies, plans, and regulations between national, regional, and district government authorities. Much of the implementation of these provisions is still in progress. The ultimate goal of the RMA, and thus New Zealand's environmental policies as a whole, is the sustainable management of resources.

The RMA provides a structure within which decisions are made about the way community-owned and -managed resources are allocated, determining who is allowed to use such public resources as water, the coastal area, air, and geothermal energy. It also determines how they may be used. The Act also applies the principle of sustainable management to privately owned property, setting the standards of environmental quality that private owners must adhere to in using their own property.

Rather than relying primarily on such land-use controls as zoning, the RMA requires the government to promulgate standards for environmental quality that must be met regardless of the use the land is put to. The RMA is designed to shift the country away from regulating exactly how resources are to be used, toward regulating the effects that resource use may have on the environment.

A number of special environmental programs fall outside the scope of the RMA, including programs on climate change, hazardous substances, and waste management. The last project, which has a strong emphasis on waste minimization and clean technologies, is conducted principally through cooperation with industries, beginning with the packaging industry. The legislation covering mining activities was also dealt with outside the RMA, in large part because the government owns most naturally occurring mineral resources. Under recent legislation passed in this area, the government remains responsible for granting mining rights to companies, but the environmental effects of that mining now fall under the jurisdiction of the regional and local authorities, which have the authority to grant permits and set conditions.

These programs all accord with the RMA's purpose of sustainable management of resources, but while some of the measures used to implement them operate within the RMA framework, others do not. For example, the climate change program operates within RMA-mandated air-quality standards, but beyond that the program has its own target of maintaining carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000, and has introduced a variety of measures to achieve that. The Department of Conservation was also created independently of the RMA, with specific responsibilities to preserve and protect indigenous species.

The RMA requires the development of national environmental standards, which are to be promulgated as regulations. They apply to the entire nation and cannot be violated by regional and local plans and policies. They set technical standards relating to the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources, including standards for contaminants; soil quality; air quality; and water quality, level, or flow. Typically these will be bottom-line standards, beyond which one cannot go and still practice sustainable management, but they can go further in particular situations. National standards are still being developed.

The RMA also requires regional authorities to create policy statements that will develop strategies for sustainable resource management and identify priority issues and responses. The regulatory measures required to implement these statements will be generated separately.

In some cases the RMA uses the permitting process to regulate effects on the environment. If a landowner is not operating within the standards established for water quality, air quality, waste disposal, soil management, or any other standard, he or she will be required to get a special permit. The permitting process is a public one involving an assessment of all the effects of the activity. The RMA consolidated permitting into one standard process with a standard time limit, in order to make it more efficient. Only the local and regional councils issue permits now, rather than a multitude of small boards. If permits are needed from both councils for one property, there will only be one combined hearing process for both. The sustainability of the proposed action is the bottom line used to judge whether or not a permit should be granted.

{Source: Johnson}

The government of New Zealand uses few economic incentives or charges to promote environmental goals. However, the "rationalization" of its economy has led it to abolish many environmentally harmful subsidies and to move toward a policy of building environmental costs into its infrastructure services. Agricultural subsidies have been eliminated, bringing to an abrupt halt many damaging practices such as the application of pesticides and fertilizers. Existing irrigation subsidies were also removed, as was the practice of subsidizing the clearing of marginal land for farming.

In its Environment 2010 Strategy, the government adopted a number of principles that it will refer to as it attempts to integrate environmental issues into the economic structure. Included in these is the internalization of environmental costs, which recognizes that the environmental costs of production and consumption should be fully assessed and charged to the users who benefit from them. Another key principle recognizes that such public infrastructure services as roads, energy, water supplies, sewage systems, and government-owned resources should be priced according to market principles, in order to better reflect their true environmental costs. The government also advocates voluntary codes of practice by industry, partnerships between government and the private sector, and economic instruments such as fees and taxes in order to achieve environmental goals.

{Sources: Johnson and Environment 2010 Strategy}

Enforcement of the RMA is largely the responsibility of local authorities and of the planning tribunal, or environmental court. Local authorities can issue abatement notices requiring environmental damage to be remedied within a certain period of time. The tribunal has jurisdiction over both planning and permitting, reviewing activities in these areas to determine if they comply with the Act.

On the level of permit-granting and the enforcement of standards, the court can determine whether or not a particular permit was granted in violation of the sustainable management requirement, or denied when it should not have been. It has the power to enforce compliance with the terms under which a permit was granted, or to require the permit-holder to meet different standards if circumstances change. Even those who have not been required to obtain a permit can fall under the court's jurisdiction if their actions run contrary to the performance standards set by the relevant plans. Any person can request the court to take these enforcement actions. Planning tribunal judges are appointed for life and are chosen solely for the purpose of making environmental decisions. Non-judicial members of the tribunal are drawn from various sectors of society.

The RMA sets out penalties for offences that include a maximum fine of $200,000 plus $10,000 for each day of the offence. Imprisonment for up to two years is also a sentencing option. The Act specifies that company directors and management may be held personally liable for offences which they can reasonably be expected to have known were being committed.

The RMA requires that the state of the environment be monitored and that information be gathered relating to its sustainability. It also requires that policy statements, plans, and resource permits be monitored to determine their suitability and effectiveness. The national government, in cooperation with local authorities, is currently developing environmental indicators and standardizing the gathering of environmental information in order to measure environmental trends and provide feedback on policy design. One of the goals of this project is to develop a comprehensive and reliable environmental information base. Under the Act, the information gathered from monitoring is required to be made public.

The RMA also requires environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for all regional and district policies, plans, and programs, as well as for all projects requiring permits. The Act requires the assessment of a number of factors beyond those traditionally considered in EIAs, including risk, social impact, and technology assessments. This provision of the RMA has been cited as one of the world's most thorough and comprehensive efforts to integrate environmental policy through the use of assessments. {Buhrs and Bartlett}

{Sources: Johnson, Buhrs and Bartlett, Environment 2010 Strategy}