Social Assessment of the Waituna Catchment, Southland – anticipating the impacts of nutrient limits for farming systems

Abstract

Social assessment is a process of for predicting and analysing social impacts in advance of a decisionbeing made. It is also applied to the monitoring and management of change once it starts. The process is applied to policy design, as in this case of Waituna Catchment, as well as to project design and implementation. Social assessment typically is applied in an integrated approach along with ecological, economic or other forms of technical assessment and usually has input from affected people as a core part of the process. The social analysis for Waituna Catchment, in the first instance, comprised a social profiling exercise (baseline study) that drew on existing research and data sources as well as a limited number of stakeholder interviews. The assessment also includes a preliminary social analysis of the initial landuse projections and a number of economic scenarios developed for the catchment by DairyNZ.