Lawyer Mike Doesburg, a partner at the firm Wynn Williams, disagreed, saying there were problems with the regulations and recommended changes would go some way to fixing them. “We've lost 90 percent of our wetlands across New Zealand… so we're well past the point of balancing those environmental losses or trade-offs with development wants or gains.” “My mind keeps going back to this idea of balance or trade-offs, and we often talk about balancing interests, right, that's the rhetoric, but we forget that there's this shifting baseline. Kay said with 90 percent of the country's wetlands already gone, it was wrong to say the previous rules had been overly-prescriptive.
A particular focus of the package was protecting and restoring natural wetlands.
In 2020 the government introduced the Essential Freshwater package, which included the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 and National Environmental Standards for Freshwater. "We've lost 90 percent of our wetlands across New Zealand… so we're well past the point of balancing those environmental losses or trade-offs with development wants or gains" “The huge thing for us that sticks out, and that we will fight, is the opening up of this pathway to destroy wetlands for quarrying, landfills, clean fills, urban development, and coal mining in particular, which is insane.” Proponents for changes to the national freshwater standards say existing rules go too far, blocking common-sense development like some housing, landfill, quarrying and mining.īut environmental groups say the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater and the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management finally gave wetlands the protections they deserved and winding those back is absurd.įorest and Bird freshwater advocate Tom Kay said the Government, which is now consulting on changes, was caving to industry pressure. Proposed changes go some way to clearing the air, but environmental groups say wetlands lose their protections in the process.
The legislation surrounding wetlands and development is as opaque and swampy as the ecological features themselves. Environment Wetland changes draw environmental ire
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