Leading by Example: The Chief Executive’s Introduction

We are taking a risk

This report is a summary of the Ministry for the Environment’s first attempt at reporting on our impacts on the environment, the economy and society (including Māori culture) – what has become known as ‘triple bottom line’ reporting.

As part of our work in exploring the value of triple bottom line reporting to the wider public sector, we felt we should lead by example by producing a triple bottom line report for our own organisation. But we recognise we are taking a risk. In seeking to become more open and accountable to all the people and organisations we connect with, we may be opening ourselves up to criticism.

However, I believe this risk is outweighed by the importance of sharing our attempts to evaluate our performance, not only in terms of the environmental outcomes required by the Government, but also in terms of our impacts on society and the economy. We hope you will read this report in the spirit with which we present it – as an honest attempt to evaluate and improve our performance.

Towards a Triple Bottom Line?

We’ve called our report Towards a Triple Bottom Line because we are just learning how to evaluate and report on our contribution to environmental, social and economic outcomes. This report is essentially a stocktake of the environmental, economic and social performance of our offices, which we can use in the ongoing assessment of our own operational footprint. What is far more difficult to assess is how our work makes a difference for the environment and affects New Zealand’s economy and society.

Reviewing our priorities and functions

Although this report covers the financial year ended 30 June 2002, there have been a number of significant activities since I became Chief Executive in July 2002, which are relevant to this report and our future approach to triple bottom line reporting.

In conjunction with the Minister for the Environment we have been reviewing our functions and priorities. Through consultation with our staff and our key stakeholders in August and September 2002 we received some clear messages about priorities and future directions. The major themes can be summarised as:

leadership – to define strategic direction, get action on national environmental issues and co-ordinate seamless government environmental policy
partnerships – to make sustainable development meaningful for local government and communities, set national goals, targets and standards, and encourage understanding and practical action in the community
fix problems – especially with Resource Management Act processes, by developing national policies, standards and standard procedures, building capacity in local government, and reducing the backlog in the Environment Court.

We will be communicating our progress in addressing the issues raised under each theme. Reports from all external meetings and written comments provided by participants are available on our website at www.mfe.govt.nz/about/review/

The Transformation Project

Following this consultation process I initiated a Transformation Project to help us make decisions and match our structure to our new functions. A Transformation Leadership Team, which included external stakeholder representatives, was established to lead this work. The challenges for us are to:

change the emphasis of our work and the structure of the Ministry
find ways to become more effective while being spread less thinly
make hard decisions about priorities in order to manage our workload better
establish the sort of systems and structures that were not needed when we were a much smaller Ministry.

We will keep you, our stakeholders, informed of progress with the Transformation Project throughout the year and will highlight any changes in our priorities, structures and ways of working.

Barry Carbon
Chief Executive
Ministry for the Environment

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