Strategic Environmental Assessment in New Zealand: 
Enhancing Policies and Plans 

In 2016, the annual conference theme was Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in NZ and the wider region to support policy and plan making processes. Internationally, SEA is used to address the big issues around sustainability in the development and implementation of policies, plans and programmes. These issues include climate change, sea-level rise, regional-scale land use changes as found with urban growth and renewal, or agricultural intensification, and the impacts arising from development of infrastructure systems such as transport or water distribution.  The objectives of applying SEA are typically to enhance the resilience of ecological, economic and social systems, and increase the sustainability of our environment. 

The methods of SEA are similar to those applied in project-level impact assessment. In New Zealand, these typically include scoping, base-line studies, assessment of future options or scenarios and the evaluation of specific policy or planning instruments. There is particular emphasis on processes of participatory planning in NZ practice, often in the form of “collaborative” planning processes. In NZ, policies and plans deal with strategic issues under the Resource Management Act. There is also direction and guidance under other legislation such as the Local Government Act and the Conservation Act. Examples of the application of SEA here include the development of district and regional land, water and coastal plans, and plan changes.

The two-day conference followed our usual two-day format with invited speakers addressing the overall theme around a number of current or potential applications of SEA. In summary of the overall conference, we found a number of themes emerging:
  • If we use SEA effectively we will have better policy and planning, with more sustainable outcomes.
  • At present, however, the use of SEA in NZ is piecemeal and lacks a systematic approach.
  • Sometimes we don't even recognise we are doing SEA under the RMA or other jurisdictions such as strategic planning by local government or iwi.
  • There is a need for more consistent frameworks and guidance in NZ.
  • NZAIA should support SEA practice and capacity building.

We report on the key highlights of each conference session and provide observations on the presentations and discussions that took place. These observations are by members of the NZAIA Core Group: Nick Taylor, Gilly Stewart, Dyanna Jolly, Katherine Russell, Richard Morgan and Hamish Rennie. 

Strategic Environmental Assessment: What is it and what makes it effective? 

Jenny Pope provided a keynote address that was widely appreciated. She introduced the concept of SEA as different to EIA but also in many ways similar, indeed with a mutually dependent relationship. The distinguishing feature of SEA is its strategic purpose and broad level of analysis.  She drew on the EU experience in particular and also the IAIA performance criteria in highlighting best practice, and provided an Australian case study with the James Price Point natural gas processing hub. Jenny's insight and enthusiasm, with more comments she made throughout the sessions, was a great help in giving the conference a clear direction.

Practice and applications of SEA in New Zealand

Richard Morgan is one of New Zealand's leading advocates for SEA. With many years of its theory and practice under his belt, Richard's presentation offered an overview of SEA that provided a solid foundation for the conference discussion. He maintained that whilst legislation, in particular the RMA, provides an environment for the application of SEA as a strategic assessment tool, its application remains less than convincing. Richard described some of the key features of SEA type processes and some of the activities in New Zealand that people believe align with SEA or are closely related. In conclusion, he argued for consolidation and harmonisation, and developing a commonly-used and understood framework for its standard application that could provide impetus for greater political awareness and support, so that SEA can better live up to its potential in New Zealand.
Hirini Matunga ​discarded the presentation he had prepared and spoke passionately and eloquently about Iwi Māori engagement in SEA.  He described how Iwi Māori have been doing SEA since the early 1980s, to inform land claims, Treaty Settlements, legislative change and other developments. The aim of these efforts has been finding the balance between the critical iwi aspirations of tino rangatiratanga (recognition of iwi authority), kaitiakitanga (guaranteed protection of natural resources), and manaakitanga (guaranteed access to resources). Iwi Māori tend to approach SEA in a broad,  integrated, holistic and interdisciplinary way, across cultural, social, environmental, economic and political dimensions.
So Hirini proposed a new term going forward: Strategic Indigenous Impact Assessment (SIIA). SIIA could function as a process as much as an outcome, and be informed by Māori planning tools such as Iwi Management Plans, Cultural Impact Assessments, and a Mauriora Systems Framework for integrating mātauranga and tikanga into impact assessment. Hirini later wrote an article for Impact Connector on this topic. ​
Hugh Logan reflected upon his experience as Chair of the New Zealand Land and Water Forum, as a space in which strategic environmental assessment might flourish. He pointed to the levels of local and national collaboration achieved around freshwater policy as a means of providing a holistic, integrated and therefore consensus-based assessment of impacts.However, as he reminded the conference "in the end the government and ministers have the final say. They are the elected representatives". Perhaps impact assessment processes for freshwater offers insight into a future where integrated collaborative approaches can influence political will. ​

Practice and applications of SEA in Oceania 

Jope Devetanivalu and Malenie Bradley ​from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment (SPREP) Programme, based in Apia, provided an overview of SEA in the Pacific. They explained that SPREP is the lead organisation in the Pacific on biodiversity, climate change, waste management, and environmental monitoring and governance.  SPREP recognises that SEA is important in the Pacific but not yet widely used by member countries. 

​Examples of SEA included an SEA for the town of Neiafu, Tonga, as part of the Vava’u Development Programme, an SEA of Fiji’s Tourism Development Plan, renewable energy and integrated “oceanscape” management.  Mainstreaming of SEA has started with the Regional Guidelines for Strengthening EIA and will include ongoing collaboration and capacity building with an emphasis on better integration between policy, planning and progamme IA, and project scale IA.
Pene Ferguson, ​a World Bank Safe Guards Specialist based in New Zealand, talked about the application of SEA to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in the Pacific and REDD+, which stands for programmes to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation.  Vanuatu and Fiji are examples of countries that have received funding to support development of a REDD+ strategy.  Strategic environmental and social assessments are used to integrate bank safeguards into the development and implementation of REDD+, including mitigation of particular impacts and risks.  Strengths in this approach include effort put into situational analysis, and to identifying social and environmental priorities as part of strategy development, along with ongoing stakeholder engagement and institutional strengthening. 
Carolyn Cameron ​provided an overview of progress and insights from an Australian perspective.  She outlined legal provisions for SEA under Australian Federal law and gave examples of SEA from different states.  These examples cover integrated urban development, natural resource protection for Great Barrier Reef, bushfire management and large-scale mining.  She emphasised that SEA is more than just a big EIA but establishes an enduring decision making framework that specifies desired outcomes and ways to achieve these through community involvement, collaboration, leadership and excellent management processes. 

Applications of SEA in the primary sector

​Helen Shaw ​discussed the approach taken by Environment Canterbury to develop a sub-regional land and water plan for the Waitaki catchment as part of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy. The approach to this SEA combines phases of science (information gathering and testing of scenarios) planning to develop a “solutions package” as a step towards a formal plan change, and community involvement. The technical lead has an important role pulling the SEA together, with a robust knowledge base, in tight timelines while dealing with the inter-dependencies of different sets of technical analysis and modelling, alongside collaborative processes. A key aspect of the process is building sufficient agreement around issues of uncertainty and incomplete information sufficient to reach agreement on planning decisions. 
James Russell ​introduced applying SEA to the Predator Free New Zealand 2050 initiative, a national strategy that combines biological, technical, political, economical and social components to rid New Zealand of mammalian pests such as possums, rodents and mustelids that are destructive to native forest and bird life.  The initiative is combining a range of projects across a number of partners, funders, research organisations, government agencies and community groups.  James called for application of SEA to provide a consistent planning and assessment framework for different locations, science teams and management groups.  He explained how “scaling up” projects from off-shore island eradications can build on experience with social impact assessments to frame SEAs for larger-scale efforts. 
Nick Cradock-Henry ​talked about assessing resilience across primary industries. He proposed resilience as a central concept for SEA in the primary sector in the face of anthropogenic climate change and increasing climate variability in New Zealand.  An operational framework for thinking about resilience is to consider agri-ecological, social and economic aspects of resilient systems.  Using the examples of sheep and beef farming systems and kiwi-fruit orchards, Nick illustrated how an inductive-deductive approach helps to understand the context for change in farming systems by characterising their resilience factors, and developing indicators of resilience, such as land diversification, for use in IA, monitoring and evaluation.  The understanding of vulnerabilities and adaptability to climate change in farm systems enhances policy and planning and subsequent decision making.

SEA for tourism, conservation and recreation

David Simmons ​emphasised the peculiar nature of tourism, combining public and private sector management, and delivering environmental services as well as transport and hospitality services.  The visitor experience is a central feature of the sector, providing a strong feedback loop for environmental management and quality.  Growth in visitor numbers is a strong challenge to the development of polices and plans that ensure there are benefits from tourism activities while the visitors have a good experience and do not degrade the product.  Local government, regional tourism organisations, iwi, the private sector and the Department of Conservation are major investors, but often in a reactive planning mode.  The capacity to plan proactively can be enhanced by the use of SEA to give clear signals around environmental management.
Ken Hughey ​developed this theme, considering visitor impacts on the natural environment, using the risk of physical effects on the giant kauri tree Tane Mahuta as a symbol for the natural realm.  Kauri die-back disease is spread by visitors through their footware, and is typical of an effect that requires a strategic, integrated approach to visitor management.  Solutions to these sorts of problems lie in good science, well integrated with economic and natural resource management.
Rob Greenaway ​then used the Lyttelton Harbour Port Recovery Plan as an example of SEA applied to recreation management in coastal planning.  He found that while SEA in this instance had some “project” characteristics, this example was an application of SEA because of the wider legislative mandate for the recovery plan, and the need to define a longer-term framework of planning and decision making for the port.  An interesting aspect of SEA for the coastal environment is the link Rob showed between physical factors such as wave height and water clarity and their effects on recreation activities.                         

Strategic assessment of sea-level rise and the effects of climate change

Deirdre Hart ​from University of Canterbury gave us a strong message that SEA never takes place in a political vacuum.  When we are involved in technical processes of assessment it is vital to understand the full social, political and social context in which these take place.  The semiotics of adaptation to climate change, such as coastal hazards, matter, most especially for the people affected by policy and planning decisions.  For instance, in the case of long-term decisions that need to be made about what areas are inhabitable for housing in the longer term given the physical risks they are assessed to face. 
Dr. Will Allen, an independent sustainability consultant, discussed techniques for building futures thinking into SEA using techniques such as scenario development and analysis.  Scenario thinking aims to enhance decision making processes by considering the underlying trends, potential events and connections between sources of effects.  He used the example of climate change scenarios in setting limits to uses of freshwater through policies and plans.  These can involve problem or actor focused scenarios underlain by a variety of technical models alongside engagement with stakeholders. Collaboration between multiple stakeholders is best supported by mixed methods that combine expert and non-technical inputs, while combining exploratory and normative approaches.
Suzanne Vallance ​of Lincoln University completed this session with a discussion of typologies of risk and choppy SEAs!  Mapping of the red-zone areas of Christchurch after the 2010/2011 earthquakes raises issues about the future of these areas as defined in policies and plans.  It is necessary subjectively to understand these places as well as the vulnerability of affected communities to future-sea-level rise and flood hazards.  In order to find ways to solve a problem equitably, affected people must be involved in defining it in the first place.  Together, these speakers provided strong messages about the need for participation of affected people in SEA, especially around assessments for strategies to adapt to climate change.

Strategic assessment for healthy people and communities

Tim Harris ​from Selwyn District Council started by outlining the issues that the district faced, particularly from significant population growth, and associated challenges such as urban sprawl, a lack of employment, loss of character in villages and providing infrastructure. He outlined how the district planned with a strategic approach and how this put them in a good place to deal with the unexpected – such as the Canterbury Earthquakes. He also outlined the importance of ongoing planning and integrating new tools – such as special housing areas – into the existing approach. 
Simon Kingham ​from the University of Canterbury spoke about healthy communities. He outlined the need for good communities and their key features, with a focus on how high levels of traffic can fragment the way we interact within local areas. He outlined research on the need to have good urban design such as walkability, green streets, intimate streets and "bumping" places (opportunities to meet, stop and talk). He identified several grassroots initiatives to achieve better urban quality but noted that public policy is often not aligned well with these, or it is focused on one aspect (e.g. transport or schools) rather than how each can contribute to multiple goals.
Jane Murray ​from the health in all policies team at the Canterbury District Health Board spoke about embedding public health in policy in Canterbury.  She spoke about how many of the factors that contribute to health sit outside the health system, and therefore the Health in All Policies approach is to get all sectors thinking about how they impact health and that the implications for health from all policies are considered. This requires early and collaborative input to policies – an important aspect of SEA. By working together on integrated assessments, the team is able to provide recommendations early in the process on health, and other aspects, so that they are taken into account during plan writing.

Indaba / Open Space 

We concluded by asking the question, how effective is SEA in Oceania and where do we go next with our practice? This final session of the conference was open space (Indaba) where participants met in small groups to address a set of issues that they identified during the conference around the topic of building capacity in SEA in New Zealand/Oceania.  The groups' main conclusions were:
  • The community’s role in SEA – It is good to get the community involved early in SEA processes and important to ensure all sections have a chance to participate fully.
  • Do we need an SEA champion? – The answer was clearly “yes”, with suggestions this might come through the mandate of the RMA, with an agency such as the Ministry for the Environment providing ministerial and institutional advocacy and support for use of SEA processes.
  • What is SEA under the RMA? – The key support is at the national level through national strategies and policy statements, cascading to the regional level.The NZAIA can help establish a coherent and consistent approach to SEA that can be used in different jurisdictions, including beyond the jurisdiction of the RMA.
  • How do you measure the effectiveness of the SEA process? – It is difficult but possible to measure process effectiveness such as community engagement. It is also important to measure impacts and outcomes in the longer term through environmental monitoring, mindful of multiple factors behind any particular outcome.