Biodiversity Policy Approaches

Terry Parminter

Much of the current biodiversity activity of policy agencies is focussed upon publicly owned land - protecting and restoring ecosystems in parks and reserves. Activities often involve encouraging people with strongly held environmental values to provide cheap labour in work schemes on nearby public land. The limited amount of policy being implemented on private land is still dominated by the "lock it up and preserve it" approach and we have yet to move to more "appreciate and make use of it" policies. The Parliamentary report on biodiversity recognised that we could only ensure the future of our indigenous flora and fauna by interweaving them back into a mainly privately owned landscape and ensuring that they become part of our future social and economic well-being.

Is it possible for policy agencies in local and central government to encourage greater support for improvement in biodiversity amongst all sections of society and throughout all areas of New Zealand? Yes, but it may need a new approach to policy formulation.

Only a small proportion of society is likely to be so motivated by their environmental values that they will take positive action on biodiversity issues to achieve biodiversity outcomes alone. Instead, if restoring biodiversity is to be the responsibility of all sections of society, then the policy issues need to be defined by policy agencies in social terms rather than (biophysical) scientific terms. Communities may be more interested in supporting ecosystem restoration associated with iconic species such as whales and kokako rather than for its own sake. An understanding of the interactions between social and ecological trends and pressures can be used to establish the desirable human behaviours that enhance biodiversity and the incentives and disincentives (or motivators and demotivators) that will influence the expression of those behaviours.

Activities that encourage the appreciation of indigenous biodiversity in local landscapes, and its nonconsumptive or sustainable use, will enable policy agencies to reach new sections of their communities. Involving commercial companies in sponsoring or investing in biodiversity outcomes can assist people to understand how important these outcomes are for everybody and not just environmentalists.

There needs to be recognition of just what might be possible on privately owned land and its limitations. On privately owned land people may undertake pest and weed control as their initial responsibility for encouraging biodiversity. They may be able to plant suitable trees or build shelters to create transitory security for the movement of indigenous fauna. They may also be able to provide feed sources for limiting periods of the year (e.g. nectar sources in late winter). Except for very small fauna or large areas of land, it is unlikely that people will be able to provide enough habitat to create completely new breeding territories. Therefore, people on privately owned land will remain dependent upon having nearby source material (probably in parks and reserves) if their efforts are going to be successful.

Central government guidance is needed to assist local government prioritise the biodiversity issues in their regions and districts without making the decisions for them. This particularly applies if we continue to emphasis the "intrinsic" rather than "use" values of biodiversity. One of the difficulties with establishing biodiversity priorities at a local level is the effects of scale. For example: a land owner with the last 200 of an endangered species of duck on his or her property may not be impressed with not being able to control the ducks if their crop is being spoiled. So, one of the difficulties for local authorities is how to establish local priorities that also reflect district, regional and national priorities, and how to avoid a negative back-lash from their communities when they have done just that. If the criteria for decision making are established outside the scale at which the decisions occur (e.g. via a national policy statement) then the relevant agency will need to explain and justify these criteria to the people affected.

Landscapes and landscape management can provide a decision making context that brings together the different strands of biodiversity value be they non-economic (such as identity, intrinsic, aesthetic amenity and cultural), non-extractive (such as shelter, erosion control, honey and tourism), or consumptive (such as timber, oils, fibre, and food); as well as lifestyle and living standard factors.

AgResearch working collaboratively with local authorities and universities in the Waikato and Queensland are studying the development and use of policy instruments to create landscape corridors that assist in achieving biodiversity outcomes. The project will particularly tackle the difficult issues of how to design voluntary policies to achieve measurable behavioural changes on privately owned land. The project is being funded by both FRST and the Councils involved and has now established study areas in Auckland (Wildlink), Bay of Plenty (Manawahe Corridor), and Wellington (Ohariu Valley) Regions. Over the next few years the development and application of policy in these areas will be monitored and evaluated.

Biodiversity Policy Approaches

Terry Parminter

Further Reading