Public perceptions of New Zealand's environment: 2010

Abstract

The sixth biennial survey of people’s perceptions of the state of the New Zealand environment was undertaken in March-April 2010. The survey is based on the Pressure- State-Response model of state of the environment reporting and is the only long-running survey of this type in the World. New Zealanders’ perceptions of all the main resource areas, and more specifically the freshwater environment (including repeats of some questions asked about this resource in 2004 and 2008), were tested. For our postal survey we sampled 2000 people aged 18 and over randomly selected from the New Zealand electoral roll. An effective response of 35% was achieved. (A companion electronic survey was also undertaken for the first time and raw data from this is also reported.) Statistical analyses of the responses were undertaken to determine the roles of several socio-demographic variables. Amongst a very large set of PSR findings some that are notable include: New Zealanders continued to consider the state and management of the New Zealand environment to be good, and better than in other developed countries; Air and coastal waters and beaches were rated to be in the best state of the 11 components of the environment studied. Rivers and lakes, marine fisheries and wetlands continued to be perceived to be in the worst state, but were still rated highly; Management of most components of the environment studied has improved significantly over the course of the five surveys. Groundwater, rivers and lakes, and marine fisheries were judged to be the least well managed of the 13 resource areas; Management of farm effluent and runoff continued to be perceived to be the least well managed of the environmental problems investigated; and Water pollution and water related issues were rated as the most important environmental issue facing New Zealand. On a global basis, climate change/global warming was seen as the most important issue for around a third of respondents. Overall findings regarding the freshwater case study were similar between the 2004 and 2008 surveys and this survey. The general state of freshwater is good but there are issues at regional and local levels with streams and sometimes with lakes. Ethnicity was an important determinant of freshwater perceptions, with New Zealand European and Maori respondents almost always more concerned than people of other ethnicities—the consistent pattern is startling. In terms of freshwater generally it is clear respondents want high quality water and value freshwater for its instrinsic, environmental and recreation values; while they consider development important they rate maintaining instream values more highly. These views are consistent with long term aims around the need for resource conservation in terms of freshwater. Finally, in order to achieve desired outcomes respondents favour integrated approaches which combine economic, regulatory and voluntary instruments, while in a complementary way they are strongly supportive of charging for the commercial use of freshwater.