You are here: State of the environment Monitoring tools and guidelines

Environmental indicators

Environmental indicators simplify, quantify and communicate complex environmental data and in doing so tell us about the state or quality of the environment. They allow us to monitor environmental trends and track progress towards stated objectives and policy goals. Indicators can be used to:

tell us whether environmental quality is improving or getting worse
assess whether policies, laws and other actions are having the desired effect
identify emerging issues
inform the development of environmental policies.

A core set of national environmental indicators has been identified. They cover key environmental topic areas that will be regularly monitored and reported in an ongoing national state of the environment programme. The core indicators include air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and stratospheric ozone, freshwater quality and allocation, land cover and land use, indigenous biodiversity, amongst other vital aspects indicating our environment’s health.

The environmental indicators and Environment New Zealand 2007 complement regional and local state of environment reporting by local government. Ongoing reporting of the indicators will also complement reporting of social, economic and cultural indicators by central government. See more about the Ministry’s reporting partners.

The indicators establish the basis of the Ministry’s ongoing national state of the environment reporting programme. They also complement ongoing reporting by other government departments about