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People we affect, people who affect us
See figure at its full size (including text description).A key tenet of triple bottom line reporting is that organisations will improve their performance if they engage, in a meaningful way, with the people who affect them or who are affected by what they do. These people or organisations who affect or are affected by the Ministry’s actions can be referred to as our ‘stakeholders’.
The Ministry interacts regularly with a wide range of stakeholders. For this report we have grouped them into the following categories:
- Government (the Executive): the Minister for the Environment, the Minister of Energy, Cabinet, other public sector agencies and our own staff
- Parliament (the Legislature): the Local Government and Environment Select Committee, Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, the Office of the Auditor General, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment
- other stakeholders: including the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and the Environmental Risk Management Authority –the two Crown entities for which we have monitoring responsibility, and suppliers and consultants
- the wider community: local government, tangata whenua, industry and business, environmental organisations, professional associations, educational organisations, and the general community.
We also recognise future generations of New Zealanders as stakeholders in our work.
We work and consult with our stakeholders in a variety of ways. We have not established new forums for consulting our stakeholders as an explicit part of a triple bottom line process, but have relied in this report on the feedback we received through existing forums and mechanisms.
The main formal mechanism for stakeholder feedback is our biennial Survey of Corporate Reputation and Communications, last carried out in early 2001. Our interactions with our Ministers and other public sector agencies are ongoing and include feedback to the Ministry. We arrange regional hui with iwi, meet regularly with regional council resource managers, and host quarterly liaison meetings with industry, professional organisations and environmental organisations.
The feedback available for the purposes of this report indicates that for stakeholders the four most important environmental issues facing New Zealand are water quality, waste management and minimisation, air quality, and loss of biodiversity.
| Issue raised by stakeholders | Annual regional iwi hui and iwi liaison | Biannual Survey of Corporate Reputation | Regional council liaison group | Rio +10 community programme |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Water quality |
* |
* | * | * |
| Waste management and minimisation | * | * | * | * |
| Air quality for public health/amenity | * | * | * | |
| Loss of biodiversity | * | * | * | |
| Climate change | * | * | ||
| Urban sustainability | * | * | ||
| Treaty of Waitangi issues | * | * | ||
| RMA effectiveness | * | * |
Our 2001 Survey of Corporate Reputation and Communications found that stakeholder perceptions of our overall performance had improved significantly since the 1998 survey. We scored particularly well in terms of the presentation of our publications, the level of consideration people give to our advice, and our ability to involve the right people. On the other hand, we were perceived to be weaker in giving environmental leadership and in addressing the main environmental issues facing New Zealand.
The recommendations were to involve stakeholders in policy development at an earlier stage, focus on outcomes rather than processes, provide regular feedback to stakeholders, focus on leadership and guidance, have a stronger public voice on environmental issues and to acknowledge the contribution of others.
These survey findings were taken into account by our new Chief Executive in the design of stakeholder meetings held in August/September 2002 and were largely reinforced by the feedback from those meetings. We have made a commitment to reviewing our stakeholder consultation processes, ensuring that the feedback we have received is considered in the current review of the Ministry, and feeding back to stakeholders on the progress of the Ministry’s ‘Transformation Project’ in future reporting.
Key commitments and targets
- Review whether the stakeholder feedback we receive through our existing forums and the feedback form for this report is sufficient.
- Gather feedback on this first triple bottom line report from our major stakeholders and decide how we may do better.
A feedback form is available on the Ministry’s website at www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/about if you want to send feedback to us directly
