Environmental indicators for the sustainable management of freshwater

Abstract

The Ministry for the Environment is developing a core set of nationally standardised environmental indicators that will help to assess the state of the environment and help to monitor the effectiveness and suitability of regional and national environmental policy and legislation. The purpose of this report is to suggest an approach to and some examples of indicators for the sustainable management of freshwater. In this report, the emphasis is on indicators of life supporting capacity/ecosystem health because the indicators of human uses and values are relatively well established. It is recognised that indicators of ecosystem health will overlap with other groups of indicators to be developed later as part of the Ministry for the Environment's indicator programme. Management objectives of the agencies responsible for monitoring may vary with the site to be monitored and the region. Therefore the indicators selected for monitoring will be influenced by particular waterbody and the objectives for management.