An Institutional Framework for Sustainable Resource Management: The New Zealand Model

Abstract

During the late 1980s, New Zealand underwent a period of dramatic economic, social, and administrative restructuring.Among the most fundamental reforms was the establishment of sustainable management as the guiding principle for decisions affecting the allocation and use of natural resources and the maintenance of environmental quality.The adoption of sustainability has been accompanied by numerous changes in land use and environmental planning processes and institutions.Prescriptive planning models have been replaced by a performance based planning paradigm.Environmental impact assessment has been strengthened.There has been widespread consolidation of governmental units and the creation of new, more powerful local (regional) governments, with boundaries drawn using a hydrologic criterion.Decision making processes have been shifted from central government agencies to the local level.This paper provides the context for the restructuring process, analyzes the administrative and legislative changes that support sustainable management, and, finally, discusses that critical issues that have affected implementation of sustainable management as well as offering comments about the future of the New Zealand reform process and its applicability to other nations.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.