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Reporting on the state of the environment

The primary purpose of state of the environment reporting is to communicate accurate information about the condition of the New Zealand environment to people who make decisions about natural resource use and management. State of the environment reporting aims to provide information that can answer the following questions:

What is happening to the environment?
Why is it happening?
Are policies and actions having the desired effect?

State of the environment reporting may include:

comprehensive state of the environment reports which report on the full set of national environmental indicators,
indicator updates (which provide updated data for a particular indicator), and
issue-based ‘snapshot’ reports (which provide information on a specific issue).

Regional state of the environment reporting

Regional councils play a large role in the environmental monitoring undertaken in New Zealand. Regional councils have responsibility under section 35(2)(a) of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) to monitor:

The state of the whole or any part of the environment of its region or district to the extent that is appropriate to enable the local authority to effectively carry out its functions under this Act.

Visit your local or regional council’s website or the Quality Planning Monitoring Links page to find out what information is available on the state of the environment in your area.

National state of the environment reporting

National state of the environment reporting differs from regional reporting in that it identifies changes in the environment over time that are significant at the national level, illustrates how rapidly these changes are occurring, and how widespread these changes may be. It provides a higher-level picture for decision-makers than can be generated at the regional level.

Environmental Reporting Programme

Through its environmental reporting programme, the Ministry is responsible for producing five yearly comprehensive national state of the environment reports, as well as regular (in many cases, annual) updates on the core set of environmental indicators.

An overarching report on New Zealand’s environment called Environment New Zealand 2007 was released early in 2008. Using the core set of national environmental indicators, this report provides a benchmark for ongoing indicator reporting by the Ministry. The report builds on the first state of the environment report - The State of New Zealand’s Environment, produced in 1997. For further information about the 2007 report, contact ENZ07@mfe.govt.nz.

The Environmental Reporting Programme also produces a variety of reporting on specific issues. Some of these have regular reporting cycles and others may be occasional ‘snapshots’.

Recent examples of state of the environment reporting can be found on this site at State of the environment publications.