By Gary Taylor, Chief Executive, Environmental Defence
Society
This is an open letter directed to
leaders of the National, Labour, Greens, NZ First, ACT and
Opportunity parties. It is based on the Environmental
Defence Society’s deep research and submissions over the
past 3 years.
EDS is asking every party to
make three commitments: repair environmental law; put nature
first on conservation land; and set out a credible plan for
cutting emissions. These commitments should be written into
coalition agreements and funded in the first
term.
Start with the laws that shape everyday
decisions. If they are not simply repealed, the new
Planning and Natural Environment Acts need immediate,
targeted fixes. Their environmental limits must operate as
effective bottom lines for freshwater, indigenous
biodiversity and the coast. Councils must be able to protect
outstanding landscapes, urban trees and remnants of native
habitat before they disappear.
The new regulatory
relief provisions need to go. Making cash-strapped councils
compensate landowners for reasonable public-interest
protections will strongly discourage them from protecting
nature. The whole approach will lead to bureaucratic churn
and rampant litigation.
Meaningful public
participation, access to the Environment Court and
independent scrutiny need to be restored. We get better
environmental decisions when local communities, iwi and
people with knowledge of the affected area can engage
meaningfully.
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The Fast-track Approvals Act should be
narrowed to essential public good infrastructure. Housing
developments belong in the planning system, where their
location, transport links and costs to councils can be
assessed alongside other growth choices. Fast-track is
especially ill-suited to out-of-sequence greenfield
subdivisions.
For the infrastructure that remains
eligible in fast-track, expert panels need adequate time and
genuine independence. Section 85 of the Act should be
amended to require a rigorous assessment of environmental
harm. Its current test, which allows serious adverse impacts
to be weighed against a project’s regional or national
benefits, should be replaced with environmental bottom lines
that every project must meet. Ministerial policy statements
that can influence individual decisions should be removed
and fair participation rights provided for local
submitters.
If it’s not immediately repealed,
Parliament should give the Act a sunset clause: its special
route should end when the first generation of plans, under
new resource management laws, are in force across the
country.
All those laws will work only if the
institutions applying them can do their jobs. We need to
complete the redesign of local government promptly. Councils
need to be funded for monitoring, enforcement and catchment
restoration. Support for public-interest environmental
participation, including Environmental Legal Assistance
should be reinstated. The government needs to invest in
incentives that help landowners protect wetlands, native
bush and waterways.
Put conservation back at
the centre of conservation law. The Conservation
Amendment Bill is still before Parliament. Its direction to
enable economic use and development of public conservation
land to the “greatest extent practicable” should be
removed. Compatible tourism and other limited activities
already occur on public conservation land; there is no need
to turn economic development into a overriding statutory
imperative for the Department of Conservation.
The
Bill’s proposed visitor amenity areas also need firm
limits. They must not become a places that allow intensive
development in national parks or other protected places,
bypassing ordinary conservation planning and public
scrutiny. Any provision for disposing of conservation land
should retain the demanding test we have at present. The
Bill does contain useful ways to simplify planning:
Parliament can keep those parts of the Bill without the
others which weaken the Act’s purpose.
DOC needs the
resources to better manage the third of the country in its
care. That means increased and sustained funding for pest
and weed control, threatened species recovery, and managing
visitor pressures, as well as for marine protection and
advocacy beyond the conservation estate. Fisheries law needs
to be reformed so catch decisions respect ecological limits.
Effective and modernised marine protection is needed and
damaging practices on sensitive seabeds including trawling
prevented or phased out. We need to review the clunky and
outdated Quota Management System.
Make climate
policy credible again. We should stay in the Paris
Agreement, retain and strengthen the independent Climate
Change Commission and take domestic emissions budgets
seriously. The Emissions Trading Scheme needs to be reviewed
so its price and unit supply drive real reductions in fossil
fuel emissions, rather than allowing an expanding supply of
forestry offsets to defer them. Forests matter, especially
permanent native forests, but planting cannot substitute for
gross emissions reductions. We also need a portfolio of
complementary policies to sit alongside the ETS and
encourage the right behaviour change.
Renewable
generation needs to be deployed faster and smarter through
effective consenting and grid connections, while steering
projects away from places of high ecological and landscape
value. We need investment in storage, efficiency and demand
management so the electricity system can cope with dry years
and rising demand. The costly LNG import terminal should be
cancelled. Energy security deserves a rigorous assessment of
all options, not a long-term commitment to imported fossil
gas.
Agriculture requires more than a voluntary pledge
to take up still-evolving technologies. A price should be
put on agricultural methane through a dedicated mechanism
separate from the ETS, with a clear start date and a
declining emissions pathway consistent with New Zealand’s
targets. Farms that achieve verified reductions should be
rewarded through rebates or exemptions, and the revenue used
to help pay for technology and changes in farm practice. If
technology succeeds at scale, farmers’ bills will fall
with their emissions. If it does not, the price signal
remains.
Finally, adaptation cannot wait. We need a
national framework for decisions about flood, coastal and
landslide risk, including when protection is feasible, when
relocation is necessary and how costs are shared. We need to
stop adding homes and infrastructure in places already known
to be unsafe. In Tairāwhiti, the emissions trading
liabilities and planning impediments that can prevent
erosion-prone forestry land from transitioning to permanent
native cover need to be addressed with urgency before
there’s another disaster.
None of these asks
requires choosing between prosperity and the environment.
They require political parties to say plainly which
protections they will uphold, what they will change and how
they will pay for delivery. Voters deserve those answers
before coalition negotiations begin. Our environment
matters.
