Reporting on New Zealand’s Environment

1 Introduction

2 Context

3 First Things First – What is Environmental Reporting and Who Does it?

4 What We Are Doing – The Ministry’s Environmental Reporting Programme

5 Meeting External Expectations

6 The Principles that Shape the Programme

7 Conclusion

Appendix 1: New Zealand’s Core National Environmental Indicators

Appendix 2: Criteria for Selecting Environmental Indicators

Appendix 3: Proposed Schedule for Reporting on Indicators

Appendix 4: Proposed Frequency of Indicator Reporting

6 The Principles that Shape the Programme

Five principles shape the Ministry’s national environmental reporting programme. Each is described below.

Meet international best practice

Meeting international best practice is important for several reasons.

• Because it is time-consuming and costly to ‘reinvent the wheel’, it makes sense to use well-proven and well-tested international work wherever we can.

• It is important that New Zealand’s environmental reporting programme and its products can be benchmarked against international good practice when we are reviewed by the international community. This approach is similar to that taken in New Zealand’s economic and social indicator reporting programmes.

• Because New Zealand contributes environmental data and information to international bodies, consistency in reporting can allow better benchmarking of New Zealand’s environmental performance against that of our peers.

Primary focus on national-scale reporting

National-scale reporting complements and adds value to regional and local-level environmental reporting in New Zealand. Moreover, the international community specifically asked New Zealand to resume its national environmental reporting. The most recent OECD Environmental Performance Review of New Zealand (2007) included specific recommendations:

• report periodically on key environmental indicators at the national level (OECD, 2007: 17)

• expand the availability of [national] quantitative indicators and time-series data related to environmental quality, assuring policy relevance and public access (OECD, 2007: 26).

These recommendations were a key driver to re-establish a national-scale environmental reporting programme.

While the primary focus is on national-scale reporting, where relevant, the national environmental reporting programme may also report more meaningful, finer-scale information for decision-makers. This may include reporting trends:

• per capita

• by region

• by economic growth (ie, by dollar of gross domestic product).

Disaggregated reporting may also be appropriate where national-scale information in the form of a national average (or median) does not adequately reflect the range of results across the country.

In some cases, disaggregated reporting will be important in showing decision-makers where growing pressures on the environment really lie, and where a management response can best be directed.

Use environmental indicators

Because we cannot continuously measure and report on every aspect of the environment, we rely on indicators which, combined, give us a picture of the environment’s overall health. This is common practice in New Zealand and overseas.

New Zealand’s national environmental reporting programme has 22 core indicators, each focused on a high-priority issue in one of 10 domains. Sixty-six variables are used to report on the indicators. They are summarised in Table 2, and provided in full in Appendix 1. The national environmental indicators align well with the OECD’s core environmental indicators. Sixteen match the OECD’s core indicators exactly, and others are similar to those used by the OECD.

The primary focus of the national environmental reporting programme must be to provide up-to-date and timely information on the set of indicators. Other supplementary information will also be reported, as appropriate, to ensure a more complete national picture can be built.

Table 2: Summary of the 10 domains and 22 core indicators

Domains	Core national indicators		Domains	Core national indicators
Consumption	Household consumption expenditure		Fresh water	River water quality Lake water quality Groundwater quality Recreational water quality Freshwater demand
Transport	Vehicle-kilometres travelled (VKT)
Energy	Energy supply Energy demand
Waste	Solid waste disposal
Air	Air quality		Oceans	Marine protected areas Fishing activity Recreational water quality
Atmosphere	Greenhouse gases Stratospheric ozone
Land	Land cover Land use Soil health Erosion risk		Biodiversity	Native land cover Indicator species

 

Apply standard criteria for selecting environmental indicators

Six criteria were used to select the 22 core national environmental indicators from a wider set of 160 indicators. The criteria require that the indicators should be:

 

A full description of the criteria is provided in Appendix 2.

The criteria closely align with international best practice, drawing on work by the OECD and the European Environment Agency. The criteria also closely echo those used in other national-scale indicator reporting undertaken in New Zealand – for example, those used to select the national social indicators employed by the Ministry of Social Development.

The process to select the indicators included extensive consultation with reporting partners and information users.

Use an internationally recognised framework

The core set of national environmental indicators were derived using the internationally recognised Pressure-State-Response (PSR) reporting framework.

The framework is commonly used internationally and nationally:

• Among OECD countries, 87% used the framework, or a modified version of it, in their most recent state of the environment report.

• In New Zealand, 69% of regional councils used the framework in their most recent state of the environment report.

Using a framework already familiar to both decision-makers and reporting partners can achieve a better uptake of indicator information, and aid international comparison of New Zealand’s environmental performance.

 

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