Big issues, bigger solutions: are bottom lines enough?

The life-supporting capacity of New Zealand’s environments has been much reduced and the pace of degradation shows little sign of abating (Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand, 2015). Few countries are experiencing greater biodiversity loss, more rapid freshwater deterioration or greater per capita increases in greenhouse gas emissions (Myers et al., 2013; Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, 2016; Gluckman, 2017). The climate is changing fast and it is already clear that a number of communities cannot be sustained for more than another decade or two in their current locations

Compensating for ecological harm - the state of play in New Zealand

Ecological compensation involves measures to create positive conservation outcomes intended to offset the residual impacts of development (e.g. restoration planting, pest control). Rarely, however, have the exchanges arranged been subject to objective assessment. Here we assess 110 cases of ecological compensation involving diverse New Zealand ecosystems on the basis of how they addressed the six key implementation issues identified by McKenney and Kiesecker (2010: Environmental Management 45: 165–176): equivalence, location (i.e. spatial proximity), additionality, timing, duration and compliance, and currencies. Our research showed that habitat enhancement and protection is the most common form of ecological compensation, and that 72 of 110 case studies undertook compensation on the same site or immediately adjacent. The great majority (94.5%) of compensation was required by condition of resource consent to be demonstrated after the development had proceeded, with an average of 11.3 years of continuing management or monitoring required. The most common form of security other than a consent condition was a covenant (29 of 110 cases) followed by a resource management bond (25). We also found that in 97 cases there was no objective quantification of the compensation needed to make up for impact losses, with the requirements being devised by negotiation between parties with the assistance of expert input. We recognise the potential of ecological compensation as a policy tool, but recommend that significant improvements are made to its implementation to enhance ecological outcomes

Halting indigenous biodiversity decline: ambiguity, equity, and outcomes in RMA assessment of significance

In New Zealand, assessment of ‘significance’ is undertaken to give effect to a legal requirement for local authorities to provide for protection of significant sites under the Resource Management Act (1991). The ambiguity of the statute enables different interests to define significance according to their goals: vested interests (developers), local authorities, and non-vested interests in pursuit of protection of environmental public goods may advance different definitions. We examine two sets of criteria used for assessment of significance for biological diversity under the Act. Criteria adapted from the 1980s Protected Natural Areas Programme are inadequate to achieve the maintenance of biological diversity if ranking is used to identify only highest priority sites. Norton and Roper-Lindsay (2004) propose a narrow definition of significance and criteria that identify only a few high-quality sites as significant. Both sets are likely to serve the interests of developers and local authorities, but place the penalty of uncertainty on non-vested interests seeking to maintain biological diversity, and are likely to exacerbate the decline of biological diversity and the loss of landscape-scale processes required for its persistence. When adopting criteria for assessment of significance, we suggest local authorities should consider whose interests are served by different criteria sets, and who will bear the penalty of uncertainty regarding biological diversity outcomes. They should also ask whether significance criteria are adequate, and sufficiently robust to the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of natural values, to halt the decline of indigenous biological diversity