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Tools and guidelines for monitoring the environment

In making choices about the use of natural resources we need good information. Without this, we cannot identify our environmental impacts, set realistic targets, assess progress, detect past errors, or objectively weigh economic and environmental values.

A great deal of environmental information is collected across New Zealand. Central and local government agencies, crown research institutes, universities, businesses, iwi, and other researchers collect information to assist environmental decision-making, and to satisfy international reporting requirements (eg. ozone and climate change agreements with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)).

The Ministry for the Environment does not have its own environmental monitoring capability, but it does play an important co-ordinating role so that we can compare information from different parts of the country and aggregate it at the national level. To enable us all to derive maximum value from our environmental information the Ministry’s work programme includes: