Greater Wellington to review regional plans – new committee established

A new approach to managing the region’s natural resources – combining regulatory and non-regulatory methods – was unveiled today by the Greater Wellington Regional Council.

Council Chair Fran Wilde said that a scheduled 10-year review of Regional Plans – effectively the natural resource “rule book” – provided the opportunity to work in a more integrated way with communities and landowners across the region.

“Regional Plans contain the rules and policies that govern the use of natural resources and we are about to develop our second generation of such plans,” she explained.

“Two things will change. First, we will be developing one integrated plan, instead of the set of five that we currently have, thus recognising the inter-relationships between different activities, whether they are on land or water. Second, we will be encouraging both communities and individual landowners to take ownership of the need to repair our environment by developing their own sustainability plans for natural resources under their control, and integrating them into wider catchment plans.

“Balancing environmental, economic, social and cultural objectives is a complex exercise and we felt that working with communities and those affected by our regulatory framework was better than simply creating rules and expecting people to conform,” Cr Wilde said.

Over the next few months the Council will be working on the development of its community engagement plan in preparation for the start of the process early next year.

The first step was taken today with the appointment of a Natural Resource Plan Development Committee. This committee includes both elected councillors and iwi appointees from around the region.

Cr Wilde said the inclusion of nominees from the region’s mana whenua iwi fulfilled the Council’s Treaty obligations to maintain and improve opportunities for Maori to contribute to local government decision making. It built on the Charter of Understanding that the Council signed with regional iwi 15 years ago and the positive relationship that the Council had with regional iwi.

“Inviting iwi to recommend appropriately qualified people to participate in our thinking on natural resource management is a logical next step,” Cr Wilde said.

“The new committee will be responsible for ensuring widespread public engagement and I expect that input will be sought from a diverse range of groups and individuals, including local communities, property owners, farmers, NGOs, iwi, industry groups, local authorities and government agencies.

“As well as having a robust regulatory framework, this approach provides the potential to link and integrate with other statutory approaches and the suite of environmental programmes, work and incentives that we currently deliver. Integration with industry-led codes of practice and standards will also be explored.

“The success of this approach will be entirely dependent on the active participation of the community. We hope this will be the case and that this region can develop a genuine leadership model for the integrated management of natural resources,” Cr Wilde said.

ENDS

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