Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton says complex and costly environmental rules can be ineffective

Environmental regulation of farms and forests in New Zealand is often ineffective and works at cross purposes, according to a new report.

The report adds environmental rules for individual farms can fail to improve problems like nitrate levels in water when many different farms share the same catchment area. 

The report, Going with the Grain:  Changing Land Uses for a Changing Landscape, comes from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton.

Upton’s report says almost half of all land in New Zealand is used for agriculture and commercial forestry.  And this causes environmental problems, such as high levels of four key contaminants: e coli, sediment, phosphorus and nitrogen. And there must be changes in land use to fix this problem in many areas.   

But how to do it is the real challenge. The report says government policies have been fragmented, complex and hard to understand. It says farmers have experienced a mass of regulation “landing on the kitchen table at the same time”, which disincentivises the work the regulations are supposed to fix.  

“Uncertainty about the scale and timeframes of the required changes and the ways different regulations interact with one another makes it more difficult for landowners to make the large investments required to change land uses,” the report says. 

“After all, why would farmers make an investment when it is unclear whether it will help them comply with regulations?”

Upton says many different policies and initiatives have been announced to deal with climate change, freshwater quality and indigenous biodiversity.

“The result has been a mass of overlapping laws, policy instruments and funding programmes. These policies all influence land uses and land management practices. But they are not necessarily pulling in the same direction.”

The report cites current freshwater regulations as an example of ineffective rule making. It says they put obligations on individual farms, meaning the responsibilities for contaminants stop at property boundaries, but the environmental impacts do not. 

“While some property boundaries are aligned with physical features of the landscape such as waterways or ridge lines, many are not,” it says.  

“As a result…there is often a limit on the impact that individuals can have on improving freshwater quality or biodiversity in their area. Regulating on the basis of property boundaries therefore enshrines a status quo that makes no environmental sense in some places.”

Upton is at pains to avoid prescriptive solutions, in part because the geographical complexity of New Zealand means more research is needed to find the best solutions for each area. He also refers back to a suggestion he made earlier, that carbon offsets from forestry should be made available only to carbon emissions from within the biosphere, and emissions from fossil fuels should have to find their own solutions.   

He also cites a parallel study by his office, that looked at land use change in two catchments. One is Northland’s 150-kilometre Wairoa River, which flows into the Kaipara Harbour via Dargaville. The other is Southland’s 240-kilometre Mataura River, which flows through Gore. 

It looked at the impact of a change on agricultural emissions, as proposed by the last government, but deferred by the current one. It found even a modest levy would require large areas of the Wairoa catchment to be forested, extending as far as some highly valued dairy land. There would be far less impact on the Mataura catchment, and it cited this difference as another reason why environmental rules should be specifically suited to each region.

Trade-offs required

Upton says difficult trade-offs will be required in some parts of the country between environmental, cultural, economic and social objectives.

"The key message of this report is that central and local government need to be upfront and transparent about these trade-offs and work with communities and mana whenua to agree and manage those trade-offs. Some tough conversations lie ahead, and the process will not be easy. But the quicker we press on with the job, the better," he says.

"Contaminants to water, biogenic greenhouse gases, and biodiversity loss, probably in that order, are the biggest pressures land-based industries currently place on the environment. They also pose risks to continued market access and consumer acceptance as international awareness of the true cost of food production grows," Upton says.

"Even if we want to avoid addressing the environmental pressures that current uses place on the land, an increasingly disrupted climate will leave some landowners stranded."

The modelling we undertook for the Wairoa and Mataura case studies suggested that current policies could encourage the expansion of two dominant monocultures: dairying and pine production forestry. It showed how economically precarious some current land uses are, suggesting that the status quo is neither environmentally nor economically viable beyond the short term."

'A one-size-fits-all approach to regulation does not work'

Upton’s report was welcomed by the lobby group Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ).

It says the report shows that a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation does not work.  

B+LNZ Chairwoman Kate Acland says the case studies show that existing and expected environment-related policies and rules, if left unchanged, could lead to a significant decline in the sheep and beef sector.   

“B+LNZ has been calling for pragmatic and enduring solutions that balance environmental progress with sustainable food production,” she says.

“Our sector acknowledges further progress needs to be made. But the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment report supports the need for a fundamental revision of how that improvement occurs – meaning a more integrated approach to environmental management.” 

Acland says B+LNZ supports the recommendation of a catchment-based approach to environmental rules, along with increased, and enduring, investment in environmental data at the regional level, so landowners can have confidence that management changes are working. 

 “B+LNZ will continue to advocate for more targeted approaches to environmental policy, and for the removal of impractical and ineffective rules,” Acland says.