Progress with Implementing the Environmental Assessment Requirements of the Resource Management Act in New Zealand

The Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) has introduced environmental impact assessment (EIA) into the operations of territorial authorities at the regional and district level in New Zealand. The system established by the RMA is not only devolved in administrative terms, it is also comprehensive in its application. This paper reports the findings of an interview-based survey of key personnel in selected regional and district councils, along with others from government departments, planning consultancies and law firms. The purpose is to assess the success of the councils in developing appropriate and workable procedures, and to identify the main problems likely to inhibit the development of an effective EIA system in New Zealand. Overall, the task of implementing the EIA requirements has been tackled positively by councils, but there are signs of major differences emerging in the EIA procedures they are developing. Key issues that need to be considered by councils include: the need for explanatory documentation for, and verbal advice to, resource consents applicants at the earliest stage possible; the lack of public involvement in the EIA activities and the need for council staff to encourage and facilitate such participation; and problems with ensuring the adequacy of EIA information in such a devolved and comprehensive EIA system.     

Innovation in environmental policy: the National Environmental Policy Act of the US and the Resource Management Act of New Zealand

On enactment, both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1970 of the US and the Resource Management Act (RMA), 1991 of New Zealand received accolades for innovativeness. However, is such praise justified when these acts are explored through the literature on policy innovation? This paper suggests that it is. More importantly, recognizing how different attributes of innovation contribute to having a policy adopted suggests what the crafters of future environmental policies might do well to consider. It is critical to attend to the political climate in which a policy is being drafted.     

From concept to practice: Implementing cumulative impact assessment in New Zealand

In 1991, provisions for environmental impact assessment in New Zealand were changed significantly with the enactment of the Resource Management Act. Among other provisions, this act requires consideration of cumulative impacts in environmental assessment activities undertaken by planners in newly created regional authorities and district and city councils. The institutional context in which the act is being implemented offers both opportunities and constraints to cumulative impact assessment. A lack of methods for CIA is a recognized problem. However, methods that have been developed for environmental impact assessments can be modified to incorporate second-, third-, and fourth-order impacts as well as to identify the direction and magnitude of additive and synergistic impacts. Layered matrices and combined networks are examples of such methods. While they do not allow for scientific prediction, they do provide the practitioner with the ability to consider the cumulative impacts of decisions. This is crucial in New Zealand, where statutory requirements are ahead of established methodologies.     

Cooperative Solutions for Sustainable Resource Management

n -person game theory are most appropriate for these problems because they focus on the conditions for engendering and sustaining the necessary cooperation among the involved stakeholders. These solution concepts seek to ensure that the allocation is based on some norm of equity and, most often, also to minimize the incentive for any player to defect from the cooperative venture. We illustrate these solution concepts with an application to a water resource project in Southern California. We argue how the rigorous mathematical nature of these solution concepts should not hinder their application to actual situations and how, with the use of heuristic rules and inexact notions of comparable worths, we can employ these concepts even in approximate fashion. We remind ourselves that the goal of such an endeavor is to convince stakeholders of the equity of a proposed solution and, in so doing, maximize the prospect of sustained cooperation. The alternative to cooperation, on the other hand, may be endless stalemate.     

Facilitating Integrated Resource and Environmental Management: Australian and Canadian Perspectives

It is widely believed that improved resource and environmental management outcomes would occur if those responsible took a longer term view, considered whole systems rather than their components in isolation, and co-ordinated and integrated their activities with each other. There has been substantial action in many countries to achieve these ideals but with mixed success. Why has it not been possible to have a more co-ordinated and integrated approach to resource and environmental management (IREM)? We briefly review various conceptual issues regarding the purpose and character of IREM. The core of the paper is analysis of the factors contributing to success or failure, including the requirement that IREM, in practice, must be based on a careful analysis of the need and scope for integration in a given context, the significance of leadership, information access, and the links with other planning and management activities. Obstacles arising from these and other shortcomings, including the focus regarding what IREM involves, bureaucratic resistance, adverse financial arrangements and property rights problems, are also discussed. The paper concludes with five recommendations as to how to enhance integrated resource and environmental management dealing with need, scope and context, best management practice, information accessibility and integration, financial arrangements,and strengthening local and regional planning capacity.     

The Use of Geographic Information Systems for Resource Evaluation: A New Zealand Example

Over the last decade, New Zealand has implemented innovative reforms in respect of natural resource and environmental management. These include the Resource ManagementAct 1991 (RMA), a notable feature of which is the adoption of 'sustainable management' as the key principle guiding resource allocation and use. This and other features of the new administrative context for resource management strongly suggest a prominent role for geographicinformation systems (GIS) and related spatial information technology. In this paper we present an outline of the Regional Resource Evaluation Project (RREP), a project that has been established to explore and demonstrate the capabilities of GIS and related spatial information technology in the context of resource analysis and decision making. To date, the RREP has achieved important outcomes in terms of database design and development. An extensive information base which incorporates data on the physical and natural environment, patterns of human activity, and on social and demographic characteristics has been assembled. We describe the information systems, as well as some of the technical issues that attend to database design and development.We also provide brief reviews of two applications of the GIS to resource evaluation. One relates to the evaluation of changes in regional land use, with a focus on natural habitats. The other is concerned with land suitability assessment for plantation forestry.     

Local and Regional Partnerships in Natural Resource Management: The Challenge of Bridging Institutional Levels

Although collaboration and multi-stakeholder partnerships have become a common feature in natural resource management throughout the world, various problems are associated with attempts to up-scale community-based natural resource management from the local to the regional level. To analyze the reasons behind these problems, this article reports on two examples of collaboratives in Australia: local Landcare groups, and regional natural resource management (NRM) bodies. Recent government-induced changes have shifted the focus from local Landcare group action to strategic planning and implementation by regional NRM bodies. Two typologies of collaboratives are applied to analyze the characteristics of both these groups. The study uses data from 52 qualitative interviews with key informants at the local and regional level in Victoria and Tasmania, participant observation, as well as literature and document analysis. The article illustrates how the groups’ distinct characteristics can cause conflicts when the different types of collaboratives operate in parallel. In addition, the article reports how stakeholders perceive the level of community participation in decision-making processes. The key message is that the benefits of community participation and collaboration that arise at the local level can be lost when these approaches are up-scaled to the regional level unless there is an intermediary or ‘mediating structure’ to facilitate communication and create the link between different types of collaboratives.     

Implementing Agri-environment Policy: A Landscape Ecology Perspective

An integrated, landscape-scale approach to countryside management argues for whole farm or business targeting, and for inter-farm co-operation to enhance current Agri-environmental Policy (AEP) and to meet Agri-environmental Policy objectives. This paper describes the preliminary results of a study in the Lake District Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA), using the ArcView GIS. Spatial data describing the characteristics of farms, farm businesses and farmers are analysed. It is suggested that there is scope for spatially adjacent farms to co-operate through multi-farm management agreements, to achieve and advance the stated aims of the Lakes ESA. The discussion focuses on the potential of AEP schemes to be reoriented away from their present focus on individual farms and holdings, towards a broader geographical coverage and an integrated approach to the management of land across ownership boundaries.     

The Use of an Ecologic Classification to Improve Water Resource Planning in New Zealand

The Resource Management Act (RMA) legislates the management of most natural resources in New Zealand. The RMA invokes ecosystem-based management by requiring that regulation be based on managing the effects of resource according to “the life supporting capacity” of the environment. The management of water resources under the RMA is carried out at the regional level by regional councils. Regional councils can develop regional water plans to establish objectives and criteria for water management. Regional water planning under the RMA has been problematic, and regional plan objectives developed under the RMA have been criticized as too broad and not sufficiently quantified. As a consequence, many resource users are unconvinced of the need for the regulatory criteria promulgated by plans, whereas other groups are concerned that the environment is inadequately protected. This article proposes that a lack of ecologically relevant management units has prevented regional water plans from fulfilling their intended function under the RMA. Then it introduces the use of River Environment Classification as a means of defining units for assessment and management, and provides three case studies that demonstrate its potential to support regional water management planning. The discussion shows that the specificity of regional assessments can be increased if ecologic variation is stratified into distinctive units (i.e., units within which variation in the characteristics of interest is reduced) as part of the assessment process. The increased specificity of the assessments increases the possibility that regional objectives and criteria for water management can be derived that are quantitative and justifiable and that provide certainty for stakeholders. The authors conclude that greater choice and meaning can be generated in regional planning processes if regional variation in ecologic characteristics is stratified using a classification, and if classes are used as units for assessment and management.     

北京故宫的世界遗产资源管理与可持续发展研究

阐述了北京故宫的突出价值,并将其与世界部分同类宫殿进行对比.分析了故宫的管理现状和存在的问题,在管理机制、法律法规、技术手段、旅游开发方面提出相应的建议,为北京故宫世界遗产资源的管理和可持续发展寻找一条科学之路.     

Strategic Connectivity,Sustainable Development and the New English Regional Governance

This paper examines the institutional impacts of the new English regional sustainability framework and highlights the tension between the need for regional involvement and the central desire to control the debates and intentions of the regional actors. The paper argues that the regional sustainable development frameworks have been worth writing because they have had a strong demonstration effect: they have allowed regional chambers to become more proactive bodies independent of the regional development agencies (which chambers were created to scrutinize). They have also allowed pluralistic conceptions of sustainable regional development to develop in the English regions alongside the economistic perspectives of national policy makers.     

Procedural Integration in Support of Environmental Policy Objectives: Implementing Sustainability

Translating sustainability policy goals into concrete action has proven to be a complex challenge for government agencies, municipalities and businesses. Existing planning and decision-making methods, such as Comprehensive Planning, Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Management Systems, are being used to address this focus on sustainability. United States Army policy requires the use of these three procedures by installation planners and managers, providing a unique opportunity for innovation. This paper examines the applicability of these procedures for implementing the Army's sustainable operations policy goals, and explores how the current independent and disconnected implementation can be improved through integration. Included in this analysis is a review of organizational barriers to integrated planning and management. The analysis is applicable outside the Army as these three decision-making procedures are used in many contexts, and installation management shares many characteristics with local government land use planning, federal land management, and corporate business operations.     

A Regional Waterway Management System for Balancing Recreational Boating and Resource Protection

Florida’s coasts have been transformed over the past three decades as population growth and unprecedented demand for individual shore access to bays and estuaries led to the creation of residential canal developments. Thousands of miles of channels and basins were dredged as a by-product of this urbanization process. The navigable waterways that resulted are now being stressed by increasing boat traffic and canal-side activities. Recognizing their common goal to preserve the recreational and ecological value of southwest Florida waterways, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the four-county West Coast Inland Navigation District, and the University of Florida Sea Grant College Program signed a Memorandum of Agreement. The signatories agreed to develop a science-based Regional Waterway Management System (RWMS), which is a new approach to waterway planning and permitting based on carefully mapped channel depths, a census of actual boat populations, and the spatial extent of natural resources. The RWMS provides a comprehensive, regional overview of channel conditions and the geographic distribution and severity of existing impediments to safe navigation and resource protection. RWMS information and analyses result in regional-scale permitting to accommodate water-dependent uses while minimizing environmental impacts and reducing public expenditures. Compared with traditional approaches to waterway management, the science-based RWMS is relatively unbiased, objective, transparent, ecologically sound, and fiscally prudent.     

Integrating Social Marketing into Sustainable Resource Management at Padre Island National Seashore: An Attitude-Based Segmentation Approach

High demand for outdoor recreation and increasing diversity in outdoor recreation participants have imposed a great challenge on the National Park Service (NPS), which is tasked with the mission to provide open access for quality outdoor recreation and maintain the ecological integrity of the park system. In addition to management practices of education and restrictions, building a sense of natural resource stewardship among visitors may also facilitate the NPS ability to react to this challenge. The purpose of our study is to suggest a segmentation approach that is built on the social marketing framework and aimed at influencing visitor behaviors to support conservation. Attitude toward natural resource management, an indicator of natural resource stewardship, is used as the basis for segmenting park visitors. This segmentation approach is examined based on a survey of 987 visitors to the Padre Island National Seashore (PAIS) in Texas in 2003. Results of the K-means cluster analysis identify three visitor segments: Conservation-Oriented, Development-Oriented, and Status Quo visitors. This segmentation solution is verified using respondents’ socio-demographic backgrounds, use patterns, experience preferences, and attitudes toward a proposed regulation. Suggestions are provided to better target the three visitor segments and facilitate a sense of natural resource stewardship among them.     

关于在装备研制过程中推行全面质量管理的探讨

武器装备的质量与研制过程质量管理水平密切相关。现代战争对武器装备的各方面性能都提出了更高的要求,提高武器装备研制、生产过程中的质量管理水平对于提升武器装备的战斗能力具有十分重要的意义。结合国内外质量管理发展历程,分析了全面质量管理的优点,提出企业在目前质量管理体系的建立和运行过程中,一定要将全面质量管理的思想融合进去,一切工作要以质量为中心,贯彻"三全"、"四一切"理念。同时通过案例分析,提出在后续装备研制中,应提升过程控制能力、重视设计缺陷控制,加强软件质量与可靠性工作。     

Light Availability Prevails Over Soil Fertility and Structure in the Performance of Asian Knotweeds on Riverbanks: New Management Perspectives

Asian knotweeds (Fallopia spp.) are considered one of the world’s most invasive species. Restoring habitats dominated by these exotic species requires a better understanding of the importance of abiotic factors controlling the invasive knotweeds performance. We used observational data obtained on the embankment of the Isère River (France) to study the performance of Fallopia spp. under different soil, light, and disturbance conditions. On the Isère riverbanks, light intensity assessed by light quantity transmitted through canopy was the most important factor explaining the variability observed on knotweed performance expressed as above-ground biomass per square meter. Asian knotweeds were more productive under intensive light conditions. Alternatively other factors such as mowing (twice a year), soil fertility, soil texture, position on the bank or exposure to the sun had no significant effect on knotweed biomass production. We conclude that decreasing light resources, for example, by increasing competitive pressure on sites dominated by Asian knotweeds could be included in management plans to control the populations of this invasive taxon.