12 June 1998 Lincoln scientists answer NZ's first State of Environment report

A Lincoln University response to the Government's 1997 report on The State of New Zealand's Environment has been launched.

Titled New Zealand's State of the Environment: a critical response, the 106 page, 10-chapter book, was launched at Lincoln University by the Mayor of Selwyn District, Michael McEvedy, who said that New Zealand's environment was not as clean and green as imagined.

"We've been kidding ourselves over the past 40 years," he said. "Today the more we measure it the worse we find it."

It was time to “bite the bullet” and make some decisions, he said, and he believed the Lincoln University book was a good step forward.

The book is edited by Dr Ken Hughey, Dr Stefanie Rixecker, Roy Montgomery and Dr Ton Buhrs whose contributions are accompanied by those of colleagues Professor Ian Spellerberg, Dr Keith Morrison, Dr Geoff Kerr, Tim Mallet, James Lambie, and Rebecca Gee.

All the authors are either staff or postgraduate students in the University's Environmental Management and Design Division, which has published the book.

Described by the editors as arguably more difficult to write than the report itself, the response strives to be "positive where it is warranted" and "positively critical where that is warranted".

It is only too easy to be critical, say the editors, who felt their biggest challenge was establishing an "agreed framework for evaluation" which at the same time allowed for individual intellectual expression.

The framework settled on is explained in the opening chapter by Dr Ton Buhrs who points out the difficulties of the task given that "state of the environment reporting is in its infancy in New Zealand, and in much of the world" and that "there is no generally agreed formula for producing 'state of the environment' reports".

The 1997 document was New Zealand's first such report and its production followed equivalent work in a number of other countries such as the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

Four sets of questions were formulated by the Lincoln scientists to evaluate the New Zealand report and these are employed as their response unfolds. The questions are: (1) What is the picture? (2) How plausible or convincing is the picture that has been sketched? (3) How useful is the information provided? To whom? Which purpose(s) does it (seem to) serve? (4) In which way(s) could environmental reporting be improved?

The desire to be positive and constructive is evident throughout the book and is expressed particularly strongly in the editors' concluding remarks: The Government's State of New Zealand's Environment report has "many meritorious features" they say. "By no means is there anything frivolous in the way the report is constructed".

Despite this praise, the editors conclude that there is nothing in the report which allows them to draw any conclusions about the state of New Zealand's environment in an "action-guiding sense".

This is a "major flaw" they say and they regard it as perhaps their key "intuitive conclusion".

A second key conclusion reached is that the close attention the report gives to biophysical indicators is not matched by the attention given to social and economic considerations.

In summary they say that future state of the environment reporting must provide a clearer overall picture and be more than simply a "compendium and limited interpretation of data".

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand