State of the environment reporting by territorial local authorities : towards improvement

Abstract

The overarching purpose of New Zealand's principal legislation, the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), is to promote the sustainable management of New Zealand's natural and physical resources (Section 5). Achieving this relies, in part, on comprehensive information. Reporting on the state of the environment is one way to collect, analyse and disseminate this information (MfE, 1998a: 1).

Agencies charged with resource management responsibilities should incorporate state of the environment monitoring and reporting into a continuous cycle of planning and review (Beanland & Brown, 1994: 10; Fraser & Hardy, 1995: 16). This is important because reporting facilitates a better understanding of human interactions with the environment, thereby allowing better-informed policy-making.

The provisions in New Zealand environmental statutes requiring state of the environment monitoring and enabling reporting do not provide a robust mandate for state of the environment reporting (MfE, 1998b: 9). This means that local government is developing monitoring and reporting practices independently, according to what each authority considers appropriate (MfE, 1998b: 9).

Local state of the environment reporting is necessary to identify the "causes" of environmental issues so that TLAs can make informed policy responses to environmental issues, thereby improving TLA environmental management performance. At the present time, however, TLA state of the environment reporting is largely underdeveloped. The reasons for this can be attributed to the following barriers: lack of resources; lack of expertise; lack of political support; organisational culture; and the inadequacy of the Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI) Programme. To address these barriers, thereby improving local state of the environment reporting, the following recommendations are made.

1. Government should provide a legislative mandate under the RMA for state of the environment reporting by TLAs.

2. The Ministry for the Environment should develop 'best practice' guidelines for integrated environmental reporting at the local level that are distributed to all TLAs and are available on the internet. These guidelines should be accompanied by a list of contacts for agencies that gather environmental information.

3. Further research should be undertaken to monitor the effectiveness of the 'best practice' guidelines and to determine the most effective way the Ministry for the Environment can provide guidance to TLAs.

4. The Ministry for the Environment should continue consultation about the EPI Programme with TLAs to ensure that indicators relevant to TLA issues are developed.