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  • Impact Connector
    • Issue #16 SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing >
      • SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing: Intro
      • The drivers and agents of on-farm change in Aotearoa New Zealand
      • Social-ecological assessment for remote and island communities
      • The Impact of Substandard Rural Housing on Resilience and Wellbeing in Te Tai Tokerau
      • Success factors for planning regeneration in rural areas
    • Issue #15 Economic methods and Impact Assessment >
      • Economic methods in impact assessment: an introduction
      • The Nature of Economic Analysis for Resource Management
      • The State-of-the-Art and Prospects: Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Environmental Impact Assessment
      • Economic impact assessment and regional development: reflections on Queensland mining impacts
      • Fonterra’s policy on economic incentives for promoting sustainable farming practices
    • Issue #14 Impact assessment for infrastructure development >
      • Impact assessment for infrastructure development - an introduction
      • Place Matters: The importance of geographic assessment of areas of influence in understanding the social effects of large-scale transport investment in Wellington
      • Unplanned Consequences? New Zealand's experiment with urban (un)planning and infrastructure implications
      • Reflections on infrastructure, Town and Country planning and intimations of SIA in the late 1970s and early 1980s
      • SIA guidance for infrastructure and economic development projects
      • Scoping in impact assessments for infrastructure projects: Reflections on South African experiences
      • Impact Assessment for Pacific Island Infrastructure
    • Issue #13 Health impact assessment: practice issues >
      • Introduction to health impact assessment: practice issues
      • International Health Impact Assessment – a personal view
      • Use of Health Impact Assessment to develop climate change adaptation plans for health
      • An integrated approach to assessing health impacts
      • Assessing the health and social impacts of transport policies and projects
      • Whither HIA in New Zealand….or just wither?
    • Issue #12 Risk Assessment: Case Studies and Approaches >
      • Introduction
      • Risk Assessment and Impact Assessment : A perspective from Victoria, Australia
      • The New and Adaptive Paradigm Needed to Manage Rising Coastal Risks
      • Reflections on Using Risk Assessments in Understanding Climate Change Adaptation Needs in Te Taitokerau Northland
      • Values-Based Impact Assessment and Emergency Management
      • Certainty about Communicating Uncertainty: Assessment of Flood Loss and Damage
      • Improving Understanding of Rockfall Geohazard Risk in New Zealand
      • Normalised New Zealand Natural Disaster Insurance Losses: 1968-2019
      • Houston, We Have a Problem - Seamless Integration of Weather and Climate Forecast for Community Resilience
      • Innovating with Online Data to Understand Risk and Impact in a Data Poor Environment
    • Impact Connector #11 Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation, and Impact Assessment: views from the Pacific >
      • Introduction
      • Climate change adaptation and mitigation, impact assessment, and decision-making: a Pacific perspective
      • Climate adaptation and impact assessment in the Pacific: overview of SPREP-sponsored presentations
      • Land and Sea: Integrated Assessment of the Temaiku Land and Urban Development Project in Kiribati
      • Strategic Environmental Assessment: Rising to the SDG Challenge
      • Coastal Engineering for Climate Change Resilience in Eastern Tongatapu, Tonga
      • Climate-induced Migration in the Pacific: The Role of New Zealand
    • Impact Connector #10 Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation >
      • Introduction
      • Is a “just transition” possible for Māori?
      • Adapting to Climate Change on Scale: Addressing the Challenge and Understanding the Impacts of Asia Mega-Cities
      • How responding to climate change might affect health, for better or for worse
      • Kanuka, Kereru and carbon capture - Assessing the effects of a programme taking a fresh look at the hill and high country land resource
      • Wairoa: Community perceptions of increased afforestation
      • Te Kākahu Kahukura Ecological Restoration project: A story within a story
    • Issue #9 Impacts of Covid-19 >
      • Introduction to Impact Connector Issue 9 – Impact assessment and Covid 19
      • Covid-19 fast-track consenting: climate change legacy key to success
      • Tourism – the long haul ahead
      • Making sense of the impact of Covid-19: planning, politics, and the public good
    • Issue #8 Social Impact Assessment >
      • Challenges for Social Impact Assessment in New Zealand: looking backwards and looking forwards
      • Insights from the eighties: early Social Impact Assessment reports on rural community dynamics
      • Impact Assessment and the Capitals Framework: A Systems-based Approach to Understanding and Evaluating Wellbeing
      • Building resilience in Rural Communities – a focus on mobile population groups
      • Assessing the Impacts of a New Cycle Trail: A Fieldnote
      • The challenges of a new biodiversity strategy for social impact assessment (SIA)
      • “Say goodbye to traffic”? The role of SIA in establishing whether ‘air taxis’ are the logical next step in the evolution of transportation
    • Issue #7 Ecological Impact Assessment >
      • The future of Ecological Impact Assessment in New Zealand
      • Ecological impact assessment and roading projects
      • EcIA and the Resource Management Act
      • Professional Practice and implementation of EcIA
      • EcIA in the Marine Environment
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      • Introduction
      • Lives and landscapes: who cares, what about, and does it matter?
      • Regional Landscape Inconsistency
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      • Landscape assessment and the Environment Court
      • Natural character assessments and provisions in a coastal environment
      • The Assessment and Management of Amenity
      • The rise of the THIMBY
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Landscape assessment and the Environment Court
Marion Read

Landscape assessment is a key aspect of the work of landscape architects, particularly for those whose professional life intersects with our local government planning systems governed by the Resource Management Act 1991. There are two aspects to this work. One aims to provide assessments of the quality of landscapes in order to determine if they warrant protection under S6(b) of the Act as ‘outstanding natural landscapes and features’. This would usually be done in relation to the development of a District or City Plan. The other aspect entails the assessment of the impacts of proposed developments on the landscape to determine if they comply with local planning documents, and ultimately with S6(b) and 7(b) of the Act. Should decisions within either of these aspects be appealed they will be heard in the Environment Court and landscape architects take the role of expert witnesses in these hearings.

The Environment Court is constituted by a judge, providing legal expertise, and commissioners selected from a wide range of environmental professions, including landscape architecture. It is the final arbiter of matters of fact in relation to the cases that it hears. Appeals against its decisions can only be made in regard to matters of law. Consequently the role of the Landscape Architect in the Environment Court is to assist the Court by providing evidence to enable it to determine the matters of fact upon which it will make its decision (Skelton, 2000).

One of the generally accepted defining features of a profession is the possession of a generalised and systematic body of knowledge. Professions are also expected to demonstrate a sense of social responsibility and a high level of self-regulation, particularly in regard to training, licensing and quality of work (Dsur, 2008, Freidson, 2001). This implies that the arbiter of best practice within a profession is that profession, and that, at least ideally, consistency of theory, method and results should be anticipated. Issues have, however, been raised over many years regarding the quality and consistency of approach to landscape assessment in this country.

In 1999 the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects (NZILA) held a conference focusing on landscape assessment followed in 2008 by a series of workshops at which practitioners discussed the ‘problem of landscape assessment’. These workshops led to the publication of a best practice note entitled ‘Landscape Assessment and Sustainable Management’ at the end of 2010. As a practitioner, there was little which I found to be helpful in this document beyond a confirmation that I was on the right track, in a very general sense. In 2013 the British Institute of Landscape Architects published an updated ‘Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment’. The NZILA Education Foundation toured one of its authors around New Zealand, presenting master classes based on the processes detailed in what is, essentially, a manual. At that time it was considered by many that these guidelines could be adapted and adopted by the NZILA for use in this country, and many practitioners, myself included, adopted them as a sound basis for our assessment work. They were not adopted by the NZILA and disquiet about process continued. In late 2017 a further series of workshops on landscape assessment were held around the country. The notes from those meetings suggest some movement towards a more consistent approach is occurring, but also show that considerable variance in opinion and practice remains.

In 2010/2011 I undertook a piece of original research examining the influence that the Environment Court and its decisions had had on the practice of landscape assessment. This research concluded that the Court had exerted a strong influence. This was quite explicit in some instances, practitioners reporting that they simply repeated what seemed to be preferred by the Court. Practitioners also, however, often followed what they referred to, incorrectly, as ‘case law’. What the practitioners meant by ‘case law’ was a presumption that previous Environment Court decisions were in some way binding on their practice. This is a misunderstanding of what ‘case law’ actually is, and the role of the LA as an expert witness.

‘Case law’ has a narrow and particular meaning and is a part of the system of jurisprudence based on judicial precedents. It is made up of a body of reported cases and the interpretations of the law in those cases become binding on lower courts. It is certainly a fundamental part of the New Zealand legal system ensuring consistency of approach between levels and divisions of the wider court system. The key point, however, is that it focuses on the correct interpretation and application of the law and as noted above, the role of the landscape architect is to assist the Court in the determination of the facts.

Section 4 of the Evidence Act 2006 defines an expert as ‘a person who has specialised knowledge or skill based on training, study or experience’. Experts are able to provide opinion as well as factual evidence. Such experts must qualify themselves to the Court by evidence of qualifications, experience and membership of an appropriate professional body. Consequently the locus of the professional’s abilities and their qualification as an expert lies with the profession to which they belong, and it is to this profession that individuals must look for the answers to definitional and procedural questions, and not to the Court.

That having been said, it is the case that the legislation within which landscape assessment practice occurs is, in my opinion, problematic. Section 6(b) of the RMA requires the protection of outstanding natural landscapes and features from inappropriate subdivision use and development. It is strongly my opinion that this needs to be amended, and it appears from the 2017 professional workshops that this opinion is gaining traction within the profession. This clause has engendered arguments within the landscape profession which remain unresolved after 27 years regarding the meaning of ‘outstanding natural landscape’ and how these should be determined. My particular issue with this clause is that it is the case that most of our most outstanding and most natural landscapes are already protected by our network of national parks. We have many landscapes which are highly valued but also highly modified and at times it seems the ONL/ONF concept has been stretched to fit. It would be far better, in my opinion, to amend the Act to require the protection of ‘outstanding landscapes’ enabling communities to protect the landscapes which are important to them, whether urban or rural, modified or pristine.

With regard to landscape assessment practice, the outcome of the 2017 workshops is promising. It is clear there is an appetite within the profession for greater consistency of practice and a clarity that this must come through the determination of concepts and processes from within the profession. As well as calls for an updated practice note a strong emphasis on ongoing professional development from the NZILA and an acknowledgement of landscape planning and assessment as an advanced specialism within the profession are, in my opinion, positive and likely to address successfully some of the weaknesses identified to date.

References:
​
Dzur, A. W. (2008). Democratic Professionalism: Citizen Participation and the Reconstruction of Professional Ethics, Identity, and Practice. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Friedson, E. (2001). Professionalism: The Third Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Read, M. Landscape Boundaries: an examination of the practice of landscape assessment in twentyfirst century Aotearoa/New Zealand. Pp134-142, Proceedings of the 50th IFLA World Congress, 2013.

Skelton, P. (2000). Being an Expert Witness under the Resource Management Act: Lincoln University.

Resource Management Act 1991.

Evidence Act 2006.

Download Article as PDF
Marion Read has a PhD in Landscape Architecture from Lincoln University and a Masters of Resource and Environmental Planning with Honours from Massey.  From 2005 to 2013 Marion worked for Lakes Environmental, and its predecessor Civic Corp, both organisations charged with the planning and regulatory work for Queenstown Lakes District Council, as a Landscape Planner.  From 2013 to 2017 she was self-employed doing similar work, but retired at the beginning of this year.  Marion's work has been both in consenting and in policy.   She lives on a small farm (lifestyle block) near Dunedin with her partner and Jack Russell, Freddie. 
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  • Home
    • Environmental Impact Assessment
    • Social Impact Assessment
    • Strategic Environmental Assessment
    • Community & Stakeholder Engagement
    • Management, Monitoring and Reporting
  • About Us
    • Core Group >
      • Core Group Meeting Minutes
    • Our Partners and Affiliates
    • AGMs
    • Constitution changes 2025
    • Ethics
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    • Sign Up for NZAIA Membership
    • 2025 Calendar Year Membership Subscription Renewal
  • Conferences
    • Conference 2024 >
      • Conference Programme 2024
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    • Proceedings from Past Conferences >
      • Conference 2023 >
        • Pacific Day 2023
        • 2023 Students
      • 2022 - Wellbeing, Sustainability and Impact Assessment: towards more integrated policy-making >
        • Posters
        • 2022 Students
      • 2021 - Social Impact Assessment >
        • Posters
        • 2021 Students
      • 2019 - Climate Change >
        • Posters
        • 2019 Students
        • Conference Photos
        • Contact List
      • 2018 - Regional Development
      • 2016 - Strategic Environmental Assessment
      • 2015 - Where to for Impact Assessment?
      • 2014 - Transport Infrastructure
      • 2013 Fresh Water Management
      • 2012 - Mineral Extraction
    • Sign up for occasional updates from NZAIA
  • Impact Connector
    • Issue #16 SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing >
      • SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing: Intro
      • The drivers and agents of on-farm change in Aotearoa New Zealand
      • Social-ecological assessment for remote and island communities
      • The Impact of Substandard Rural Housing on Resilience and Wellbeing in Te Tai Tokerau
      • Success factors for planning regeneration in rural areas
    • Issue #15 Economic methods and Impact Assessment >
      • Economic methods in impact assessment: an introduction
      • The Nature of Economic Analysis for Resource Management
      • The State-of-the-Art and Prospects: Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Environmental Impact Assessment
      • Economic impact assessment and regional development: reflections on Queensland mining impacts
      • Fonterra’s policy on economic incentives for promoting sustainable farming practices
    • Issue #14 Impact assessment for infrastructure development >
      • Impact assessment for infrastructure development - an introduction
      • Place Matters: The importance of geographic assessment of areas of influence in understanding the social effects of large-scale transport investment in Wellington
      • Unplanned Consequences? New Zealand's experiment with urban (un)planning and infrastructure implications
      • Reflections on infrastructure, Town and Country planning and intimations of SIA in the late 1970s and early 1980s
      • SIA guidance for infrastructure and economic development projects
      • Scoping in impact assessments for infrastructure projects: Reflections on South African experiences
      • Impact Assessment for Pacific Island Infrastructure
    • Issue #13 Health impact assessment: practice issues >
      • Introduction to health impact assessment: practice issues
      • International Health Impact Assessment – a personal view
      • Use of Health Impact Assessment to develop climate change adaptation plans for health
      • An integrated approach to assessing health impacts
      • Assessing the health and social impacts of transport policies and projects
      • Whither HIA in New Zealand….or just wither?
    • Issue #12 Risk Assessment: Case Studies and Approaches >
      • Introduction
      • Risk Assessment and Impact Assessment : A perspective from Victoria, Australia
      • The New and Adaptive Paradigm Needed to Manage Rising Coastal Risks
      • Reflections on Using Risk Assessments in Understanding Climate Change Adaptation Needs in Te Taitokerau Northland
      • Values-Based Impact Assessment and Emergency Management
      • Certainty about Communicating Uncertainty: Assessment of Flood Loss and Damage
      • Improving Understanding of Rockfall Geohazard Risk in New Zealand
      • Normalised New Zealand Natural Disaster Insurance Losses: 1968-2019
      • Houston, We Have a Problem - Seamless Integration of Weather and Climate Forecast for Community Resilience
      • Innovating with Online Data to Understand Risk and Impact in a Data Poor Environment
    • Impact Connector #11 Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation, and Impact Assessment: views from the Pacific >
      • Introduction
      • Climate change adaptation and mitigation, impact assessment, and decision-making: a Pacific perspective
      • Climate adaptation and impact assessment in the Pacific: overview of SPREP-sponsored presentations
      • Land and Sea: Integrated Assessment of the Temaiku Land and Urban Development Project in Kiribati
      • Strategic Environmental Assessment: Rising to the SDG Challenge
      • Coastal Engineering for Climate Change Resilience in Eastern Tongatapu, Tonga
      • Climate-induced Migration in the Pacific: The Role of New Zealand
    • Impact Connector #10 Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation >
      • Introduction
      • Is a “just transition” possible for Māori?
      • Adapting to Climate Change on Scale: Addressing the Challenge and Understanding the Impacts of Asia Mega-Cities
      • How responding to climate change might affect health, for better or for worse
      • Kanuka, Kereru and carbon capture - Assessing the effects of a programme taking a fresh look at the hill and high country land resource
      • Wairoa: Community perceptions of increased afforestation
      • Te Kākahu Kahukura Ecological Restoration project: A story within a story
    • Issue #9 Impacts of Covid-19 >
      • Introduction to Impact Connector Issue 9 – Impact assessment and Covid 19
      • Covid-19 fast-track consenting: climate change legacy key to success
      • Tourism – the long haul ahead
      • Making sense of the impact of Covid-19: planning, politics, and the public good
    • Issue #8 Social Impact Assessment >
      • Challenges for Social Impact Assessment in New Zealand: looking backwards and looking forwards
      • Insights from the eighties: early Social Impact Assessment reports on rural community dynamics
      • Impact Assessment and the Capitals Framework: A Systems-based Approach to Understanding and Evaluating Wellbeing
      • Building resilience in Rural Communities – a focus on mobile population groups
      • Assessing the Impacts of a New Cycle Trail: A Fieldnote
      • The challenges of a new biodiversity strategy for social impact assessment (SIA)
      • “Say goodbye to traffic”? The role of SIA in establishing whether ‘air taxis’ are the logical next step in the evolution of transportation
    • Issue #7 Ecological Impact Assessment >
      • The future of Ecological Impact Assessment in New Zealand
      • Ecological impact assessment and roading projects
      • EcIA and the Resource Management Act
      • Professional Practice and implementation of EcIA
      • EcIA in the Marine Environment
    • Issue #6 Landscape Assessment >
      • Introduction
      • Lives and landscapes: who cares, what about, and does it matter?
      • Regional Landscape Inconsistency
      • Landscape management in the new world order
      • Landscape assessment and the Environment Court
      • Natural character assessments and provisions in a coastal environment
      • The Assessment and Management of Amenity
      • The rise of the THIMBY
      • Landscape - Is there a common understanding of the Common?
    • Issue #5 Cultural Impact Assessment >
      • Introduction
      • Potential of Cultural Impact Assessment
      • The Mitigation Dilemma
      • CIA and decision-making
      • Insights and observations on CIA
      • Achieving sustainability through CIA
      • CIA - Enhancing or diminishing mauri?
      • Strategic Indigenous Impact Assessment?
    • Issue #4 Marine Environment >
      • Introduction
      • Iwi, Impact Assessment and Marine Environment
      • Sea-Bed Mining Application in Taranaki
      • The wreck of the MV Rena
      • High Court RMA Controls on Fishing
      • Initiatives in the Pacific Islands
      • SEA in an NZ context
    • Issue #3 Strategic Environmental Assessment
    • Issue #2
    • Issue #1
  • Resources
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    • United Nations Guidance
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    • Natural Systems >
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      • Agriculture & Food Systems
      • Water Management
    • Social Impact Assessment
    • Health Impact Assessment >
      • Climate Change & Health
      • Air Quality Impact Assessment
    • Cumulative Impact Assessment
    • Community and Stakeholder Engagement
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    • Climate Change and Disaster Risk Resilience >
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