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New Zealand’s environment
Information on the state of our environment enables informed conversations and decision-making. Knowledge gained from monitoring and reporting will help guide future steps.
My first month as Acting Chief Executive and Secretary for the Environment has given me a good sense of the wide range of new demands and expectations on the Ministry and the challenges ahead.
One thing I intend to focus on is helping develop clearer understandings of the outcomes that should drive the Ministry’s work over the next few years. Obviously high levels of environmental quality and sustainable development need to go hand in hand. Within this we need to explore how and where the Ministry can help make the biggest difference.
Environmental issues and perspectives now interface very strongly with many areas – economic development, farming, forests, transport, energy, urban development, Maori development, housing and local government.
A sustainable future does require the effective integration of environmental outcomes into the decisions by communities, households, farmers and businesses. To raise living standards and achieve good environmental outcomes such as better water quality, more efficient and renewable energy use, and lower carbon usage will require over the next few decades significant shifts in how things are done in businesses and in households.
World Environment Day events during June will provide exciting opportunities to focus on such changes and see first hand examples of some of the ways of the future.
The new state of the environment report, Environment New Zealand 2007, provides a valuable information base to enable questions to be asked and to inform future environmental policies. We need to think about what the indicators in this report will show in 10 years time as policies change and practices evolve.
I am very much looking forward to working at the Ministry in the coming months on issues that are very important to New Zealand’s future.
Howard Fancy
Acting Chief Executive and Secretary for the Environment
Ministry for the Environment
