A Ministry Against The Environment?

Forest and Bird, Issue 250, 1 November 1988, Unnumbered Page

A Ministry Against The Environment?

Dr Gerry McSweeney

In 1986 with high hopes we welcomed the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) but cautioned that to be effective it needed a legal mandate to protect the environment. Sadly it has become the master of the talkfest. Its slavish adherence to neutrality is laughable in a world beset by pollution, species and rainforest destruction, erosion, ozone depletion and accelerating resource exploitation. The MfE will this year spend $58.2 million two-thirds the Conservation Department budget to achieve a fraction of the environmental outcome primarily because it lacks both commitment and decisiveness. Ironically the Ministry's many committed environmentalists are frustrated by their minister's and the Environment Secretary's obsession with neutrality. It made a promising start by bringing groups together to hammer out the West Coast Accord and sort out the misallocation of Crown land. Ominously however, it soon also abolished the Environmental Council, the National Water and Soil Conservation Authority and the Environmental Council grants scheme. Worse was soon to follow: © The deluge of rhetoric from the Minister and the Ministry on ozone depletion has not matched Tasmania's and the USA's rapid action to outlaw ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFC aerosols and CFC manufactured polystyrene trays still cram our supermarket shelves. @ Tributyl tin a mutagenic boat antifoulant has already been banned or controlled in many western countries. Our MfE convened a working party and a year later we still await a ministerial decision. e Use of non-biodegradable plastics and deposits on all glass and even plastic bottles is a feature of Canada and many Northern European countries. For more than 18 months our MfE has convened a working party on packaging. Meanwhile there is spiraling and virtually uncontrolled use of wasteful and unnecessary packaging. Recycling of cars, bottles and paper has largely ceased, plastics clog our beaches and waterways and milk cartons clutter our dumps. These are all examples of the Ministry's inaction. Its resource management law reform (RMLR) is more sinister and seems designed to strip away sensible environmental controls and hand responsibility for public assets including air, water, the sea coast, minerals and native forests to regional governments whose abuse of the environment is legendary. For example, their championing of sewage outfalls, coastal subdivisions, reclamations and marinas is well known. A pretence of public consultation and free phones has masked the gravy train of high priced consultants and apparent sweetheart deals with regional government. At the Ministry's meetings around the country we were told that devolution of power to regional government was ‘‘non-negotiable’’, despite widespread public opposition. In late September the MfE coralled DoC’s coastal planning review into its RMLR with no prior public warning and a week after public submissions on the RMLR had closed. Cyclone Bola and the tragedy of woodchipping highlighted in this journal show the dangers of letting the market reign supreme. The Ministry is ignoring that lesson. Its basic problem is its captivation with the wonders of the market place ahead of basic ecological principles, its naive reliance on voluntarism as opposed to compulsion and its apparent dislike of democratically elected and hence accountable central government. Ironically at the very time New Zealand proposes devolving resource management powers to regional government, both the USA and Australia are trying to reverse that process because of a growing recognition that environment planning must have a national and in fact global dimension. The USA gave its Environment Protection Agency resources and legal teeth to do just that. The lesson to our Environment Ministers Geoffrey Palmer and Philip Woollaston is a simple one. Rather than weakening you should strengthen your controls over resource use and environmental management to ensure a sustainable future for all of us.

Contributors to Forest & Bird may express their opinions on contentious issues. Those opinions are not necessarily the prevailing opinion of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society.