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

New Zealand: Guiding Principles Motivation

New Zealand takes great national pride in its "clean and green" reputation and tremendous scenic beauty. Its relatively low population density and lack of heavy industrial development have allowed it to avoid many of the acute environmental problems of other industrialized nations. However, it is highly resource dependent, relying on agriculture, tourism, and other resource-related industries. Such environmental problems as deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and the loss of native habitat threaten these industries as well as the natural qualities of the landscape so highly valued by the population.

New Zealand's early environmental legislation developed much along the lines of that in other industrialized countries, with each law focusing on a particular resource or problem. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government proposed a series of massive, energy-related development projects, including a major dam on one of the country's wild and scenic rivers. In order for these projects to be carried out, the government proposed changing a number of environmental laws, including limiting the right of individuals to testify regarding specific projects. These proposals, and in particular the government's attempts to limit citizen input regarding them, touched off a public furor that eventually led to a change of government. The Labour Party thus came into office with a public mandate to reform and strengthen environmental protections.

At the same time, New Zealand was going through a period of economic stagnation, due in part to heavy intervention in the economy by the central government. When the new Labour government came to power in 1984, it thus concentrated its efforts on a massive government overhaul designed to streamline the legal and regulatory processes. In 1988 the Resource Management Law Reform initiated a process that resulted in the Resource Management Act of 1991. Although some earlier laws remain in force, the RMA has radically altered the process of environmental management in New Zealand, creating a comprehensive, integrated framework for the sustainable management of the country's resources.

New Zealand's Environment 2010 Strategy, released in 1994, lists nine overall goals of the country's environmental policies. These are:

• To protect indigenous habitats and maintain biological diversity
• To reduce risks posed by pests, weeds, and diseases to ecosystems, human health, and economic production
• To manage pollution and waste and thereby reduce risks to environmental quality and public health to levels that are generally considered to be socially acceptable
• To enhance soil quality and to secure viable land use options and long-term productivity
• To manage the quality and quantity of water so that it can meet the future needs of ecological systems, communities, agriculture, and industry
• To conserve and manage New Zealand's fisheries for the benefit of all New Zealanders
• To manage the environmental impacts of securing a sustainable supply of energy services
• To help stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in order to reduce the risk of global climate damage
• To help constrain peak levels of ozone destruction and help achieve the full recovery of the ozone layer.

The primary principle driving the Resource Management Act is the sustainable management of resources. This principle is a refinement of the concept of sustainable development as defined in the World Commission on Environment and Development's report Our Common Future (the "Brundtland Report"). Section 5(2) of the RMA defines sustainable management as:

Managing the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources in a way, or at a rate, which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural wellbeing and for their health and safety while:

• (a) Sustaining the potential of natural and physical resources (excluding minerals) to meet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations; and
• (b) Safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems; and
• (c) Avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse effects of activities on the environment.

For additional information, read a more detailed description of the RMA prepared by the New Zealand government.

New Zealand's Environment 2010 Strategy cites additional resource management principles that the country will incorporate in order to minimize conflicts between economic growth and environmental quality. These include the internalization of environmental costs, the precautionary principle, and the use of least-cost policy tools.

{Sources: Environment 2010 Strategy, Johnson}