News Item

This Law Foundation-funded project is taking a first principles look at how New Zealand’s resource management system operates and will provide an evidence-based perspective on how it could be improved for the coming decades. The third and final working paper from EDS has just been released and is now available online.

Working Paper 3 considers:

• – M?ori and a future resource management system: the Treaty, tikanga, ecosystem-based management and power sharing
• – The rationale for the system (when public intervention is appropriate)
• – The roles a future system needs to play
• – A framework for institutional design
• – Exploring the characteristics of resource management institutions
• – Institutions in a future system.

It also incorporates four think-pieces commissioned from external experts: three concerning the role of the economy and economic instruments, and one concerning compliance, monitoring, enforcement and evaluation. The working paper is intended primarily as a primer for discussion and feedback; it explores options and directions of travel, but does not yet offer a specific set of recommendations. The project’s final synthesis report, due for release at the end 2018, will present concrete options for reform.

Working Paper 3- pdf 194 pages

All three papers are available on our research publications web page

The Law Foundation is contributing $356,000 towards this project

Information of Working Papers 1 and 2:

Working Paper 1 – considered (1) the project’s conceptual framework, (2) the context for reform, (3) ethics and principles, and (4) some key findings from the Environmental Defence Society’s (EDS) international study tour.

Working Paper 2 – addressed a variety of further matters: (1) what the future could look like, and its implications for the resource management system; (2) legislative design; (3) public participation; and (4) New Zealand’s obligations under international law.