Submission on Improving Aotearoa New Zealand’s environmental reporting system
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In this submission to the Ministry for the Environment, the Commissioner comments on the proposals outlined in Te whakawhanake i te pūnaha rīpoata taiao o Aotearoa | Improving Aotearoa New Zealand’s environmental reporting system consultation document.
The Commissioner was pleased with the proposed amendments to the Environmental Reporting Act 2015 that follow on from his 2019 review Focusing Aotearoa New Zealand’s environmental reporting system.
The Commissioner has no concerns about the following proposals as they are almost exactly as he recommended in 2019:
Proposal 1
Clarify the purpose of environmental reporting.
Proposal 3
Add drivers and outlooks to the reporting framework.
Proposal 4
Adjust the roles and responsibilities for the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician.
Proposal 7
Reduce the frequency of state of the environment reports to six-yearly.
Suggestions
However, the Commissioner raises a few points regarding the other six proposals. He suggests:
Proposal 2
Amalgamating the proposed two steps of a process; specifying in the legislation the minimum requirements for what the mandatory Government response and action plan should cover; and reviewing the action plan every three years.
Proposal 5
Establishing two advisory panels – a standing science advisory panel and a mātauranga Māori expert panel – and specifying their roles in the legislation.
Proposal 6
Including the five recommended overarching themes in legislation.
Proposal 8
That the Secretary for the Environment, on advice from the advisory panels, produce commentaries to provide updated analysis on new, or significantly changed, environmental information, and comment on emerging issues that are likely to be significant in the future.
Proposal 9
Prescribing in regulations the core environmental indicators that are consistently reported on. These indicators could be reviewed after three years.
Proposal 10
That powers be given to the Secretary for the Environment to actively collect environmental data to populate core environmental indicators. Without such powers it will be difficult to shift from passive to active information gathering as recommended in 2019.