The Labour government intends to replace the Resource Management Act with new pieces of legislation, but all other parties are unhappy with the bills – and National still doesn't understand how fundamental its reform must be
Opinion: We can solve our climate, food and biodiversity crises, the World Bank tells us in a seminal study released this week. All we need to do is use the Earth's natural capital wisely and efficiently.
If we did, nations would sequester in nature 85.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide – the equivalent to two years’ worth of global emissions at current rates – without compromising economic growth; and they could increase annual income from forestry and agriculture by US$329 billion per year – more than enough to meet humanity's food needs until 2050 when the human population is expected to peak. And do so without damaging the environment.
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The key to achieving those twin goals is to farm more intensively in the right places, while preserving greatly increased areas of forestry and other natural habitats to sequester carbon and increase biodiversity, concludes the report, Nature’s Frontiers: Achieving Sustainability, Efficiency, and Prosperity with Natural Capital.
But humanity has long headed quickly in the opposite direction, the report says. "The great expansion of economic activity since the end of World War II has caused an unprecedented rise in living standards, but it has also caused rapid changes in earth systems. Nearly all types of natural capital – the world’s stock of resources and services provided by nature – are in decline."
As all countries are on the same downward spiral, the report doesn't single out the worst offenders. If it did, New Zealand would be a prime candidate. We have the largest stock of natural capital per capita of any country, except fossil fuel producers, earlier World Bank reports concluded.
While fossil fuel producers are fiercely resisting the end to their game, we should be working on a far richer future in ecosystem and economic terms, given our abundance of natural capital.
But we aren't. We are perpetuating one of the fastest, deepest degradations of natural capital of any nation. Our regular state of the environment reports give us the evidence but we don't act with anywhere near the speed, effectiveness and ambition that we must.
Take, for example, the Resource Management Act (RMA). Though it was one of the first attempts in the world to achieve the twin goals of economic growth and environmental health, its progress by the Labour government before the 1990 election and by the National government after was tortuous.
During the third reading of the bill, Simon Upton, National's Environment Minister, said in part:
"The bill provides us with a framework to establish objectives with a biophysical bottom line that must not be compromised. Provided that those objectives are met, what people get up to is their affair.
"As such, the bill provides a more liberal regime for developers. On the other hand, activities will have to be compatible with hard environmental standards and society will set those standards.
"Clause 4 sets out the biophysical bottom line. Clauses 5 and 6 set out further specific matters that expand on the issues. The Bill has a clear and rigorous procedure for the setting of environmental standards – and the debate will be concentrating on just where we set those standards."
The health of the environment is paramount because the wellbeing of humanity depends on it. Yet, if we grasp that reality and reform the way we run our economies and environmental practices we can massively improve both outcomes
Bold words. But that and successive governments – both National and Labour-led – failed on those environmental standards. Despite many partial reforms over recent decades, the RMA continued to frustrate economic growth and perpetuate environmental degradation.
Finally in 2016, a serious project to map out the resource management reforms we urgently need was started by the Environmental Defence Society, the Property Council, the Employers and Manufacturers Association and Infrastructure New Zealand. The project ran until 2020 delivering excellent analysis and recommendations which have deeply informed the RMA reform bills currently progressing through parliament.
The Labour-led government intends to replace the RMA with three new pieces of legislation – the Natural and Built Environment Bill, the Spatial Planning Bill, and the Climate Adaptation Bill.
The Environment Select Committee, thanks to its Labour majority, reported the first two back to parliament this week with significant improvements. The Government aims to get the two through parliament in August.
But all other parties are unhappy with the bills in various ways. National said if it wins October's election, it will repeal the legislation. Chris Bishop, its RMA spokesman, had a long list of complaints about the two bills.
"The new bills will increase bureaucracy, significantly increase legal complexity and litigation, remove local decision-making, and put our decarbonisation goals at risk,” he said. “New Zealand simply cannot afford the extensive litigation that the bills will inevitably produce.” The bills would be "a deterrent to investment and development”.
National is also concerned about replacing "sustainable management" – the RMA concept of mitigating the adverse environmental impacts of proposed developments – to basing regulatory decisions on environmental outcomes under the concept of te oranga o te taiao, which broadly means the health of the environment.
“This term is completely new to New Zealand law and is likely to cause significant confusion and potential legal disputes,” Bishop said. And among other things, it would undermine property rights.
But, as the World Bank reminded us this week, the health of the environment is paramount because the wellbeing of humanity depends on it. Yet, if we grasp that reality and reform the way we run our economies and environmental practices we can massively improve both outcomes.
Those twin, interdependent tasks are huge and complex, but we must accomplish them quickly.
Of course, National's promise to tear up the RMA reform bills could just be a campaign tactic to stop more voters defecting to Act, and if elected, it would instead do the sensible thing of amending the new legislation, hopefully in minor ways.
But Bishop's comments suggest the party still doesn't understand how fundamental the reform of the RMA must be, and how thoroughly various business and environmental organisations have been working on that over the past seven years.
If that's the case, it's further evidence New Zealand is incapable of the fast, deep, beneficial reforms we and our natural environment need to thrive.
