New Zealand's lack of data risks 'irreversible damage' to the environment

Thursday, 7 November 2019

A stark lack of information about New Zealand's environment means the country is 'flying blind' when it comes to the future, a new report says.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton, who released the report on Thursday, has recommended an independent panel patch up the country's 'inadequate' environmental reporting system.

'When we try to find out what's happening on our land or what's happening to our water, there are huge gaps,' Upton said.

'To say we have designed a national reporting system would be to overstate its coherence,' he said.

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'Ours has been a passive system that has harvested whatever data is there and done the best it can to navigate what's missing.'

At the launch of the report Upton said it's been a case of 'cobbling together what we have to hand'.

The extent of what the country didn't know stood out in recent reports, he said.

Upton provided the example of the last survey of land cover in New Zealand, undertaken in the summer of 2012-13.

'I don't think anyone would seriously argue that investors or policymakers should take decisions on the basis of seven-year-old data,' he said.

'This is a land-based economy, you would think we would be interested in knowing about that stuff in a well-moderated, consistent way.'

Blindspots could be causing poorly-designed policies or 'irreversible damage', Upton warned.

'How can we make economically efficient or socially fair rules if we can't measure, authoritatively, what's happening?'

'Significant' data and knowledge gaps exist relating to the state of the country's ecosystems and biodiversity, despite our national identity as ‘Kiwis’, the report says.

University of Waikato professor Troy Baisden said the commissioner's report showed the current system couldn't be relied on.

'[Our system] has been designed to avoid paying to create the information it needs.'

Instead, it was grappling to make sense of information which already existed, he said.

Current data and knowledge gaps relating to the marine environment make it difficult to assess the impact of activities such as fishing, the report says.

Biological Heritage National Science Challenge co-director Dr Andrea Byrom said she hoped the report would empower the Ministry for the Environment to get off the 'current treadmill'.

The call for an independent science panel to address the concerns was long overdue, Byrom said.

One of Niwa's sites for monitoring water quality is the Hutt River, Te Awakairangi.

She hoped the report would be a watershed moment to find a future-focused system, 'before it's too late'.

Niwa chief scientist Dr Scott Larned said Niwa agreed there were persistent shortages of environmental data, and said some were severe.

'Approximately 150 of the thousands of lakes in New Zealand are currently monitored, and less than half of the 150 lakes had sufficient water-quality data for state and trend analysis in the 2019 Niwa report.'

The current deficiencies are causing knowledge gaps, the report says.

In New Zealand, 22,000 arthropod species have been described, but at least that number is still awaiting identification.

The report says the purpose of the Environmental Reporting Act 2015 is 'unhelpful'.

'It simply states: 'The purpose of this Act is to require regular reports on New Zealand's environment'. '

Environmental data came from a 'fragmented system' - a wide range of organisations, including local government, government agencies, Crown Research Institutes, consultants and industry.

'Tenuous funding arrangements' have affected several databases, the report says.

For example, Niwa used to monitor the river quality of 35 rivers from 77 sites, but about 10 years ago, a re-allocation of resources meant some of the 77 sites were handed to regional councils.

The auditor-general's recent report Managing Freshwater Quality noted the lack of information.

The inconsistencies made understanding freshwater difficult, the report said.

Secretary for the Environment Vicky Robertson agreed an improved system was crucial.

'Good environmental monitoring depends on good data … a strong economy relies on a healthy environment.'

'Environmental reporting helps New Zealand businesses understand the physical and financial risks of climate change – and act upon them – and that will assist New Zealand's long-term transition to a low-emissions country.'