Submission on the Infrastructure Commission's Infrastructure for a Better Future

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The Commissioner commends the Infrastructure Commission for making the environment a top priority and placing it front and centre of building infrastructure for a better future.

There is much in He Tūāpapa ki te Ora: Infrastructure for a Better Future Strategy Consultation Document that will, if implemented, make important contributions to improving environmental outcomes for Aotearoa.

This is particularly important considering the scale of infrastructure investment required to enable us to transition to a net zero carbon economy and still accommodate growth.

The Commissioner supports the use of cost-reflective pricing and other user-pays mechanisms to appropriately price both new and existing infrastructure.

However, we can do more.

Effectively incorporating the costs to the environment in infrastructure pricing is essential if we are to reverse the alarming decline of native species and loss of natural habitat caused by human development.

A work programme to establish consistent and robust estimates for a range of different environmental values must be developed to incorporate the economic value of natural capital and associated ecosystem services in the decision-making process.

Including the full social cost of carbon in infrastructure business case appraisals will improve decision making by properly incorporating the future costs of climate change.

Cost benefit analyses can also be improved to better consider the full costs and benefits to the environment which occur over longer time horizons.