Biodiversity decline has continued at a rapid pace in New Zealand in the past 15 years (OECD 2007), in spite of specific provisions for biodiversity conservation under the Resource Management Act 1991 (Froude 1997, Bellingham 2004). This thesis has examined problems with biodiversity conservation implementation in district plans, that arise from planners not making full use of the available factual base for district planning, a lack of monitoring in New Zealand’s RMA planning, and failures by ecologists and planners to properly understand and communicate information for effective district planning. A critique of the policy and plan framework for biodiversity conservation in the Auckland Region and case studies in Rodney District and Waitakere City show there are strong provisions for biodiversity conservation in these plans that support the implementation of biodiversity conservation through district planning. There was a moderate to high level of internal compatibility in the planning framework, apart from a policy conflict between urban growth and infrastructure development versus the protection of natural values and amenity. Although the biodiversity factual base available for the Rodney District and Waitakere City district plans for district planning was sound, but it wasn’t often used to provide appropriate or sufficient information for district planning. This was hampered by the poor state of the environment monitoring, and no process for monitoring the effects that resource consents and permitted activities were having on biodiversity condition. This was exemplified by the discovery that the Rodney District Plan’s incentive-based regime for biodiversity conservation had failed to arrest the loss of 2.5% per annum of indigenous forest cover from 1977-1998. This went undetected through a lack of plan monitoring. In Waitakere City, district plan rules led to the indigenous vegetation cover on private land increasing by 0.5% per annum during the same period, and this was undetected by the council also. District planning will continue to fail to achieve biodiversity conservation unless changes significant occur in planning practice, policy development and plan implementation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/278560 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Bellingham, Mark |
| Publisher | ResearchSpace@Auckland |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated., http://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm, Copyright: The author |
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