Part A About Environment Aotearoa 2022

Environment Aotearoa 2022 is a synthesis report – bringing together the regular six-monthly reports produced by the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ that cycle air, freshwater, marine, atmosphere and climate, and land domains. The report does not suggest any response as it is out of scope under the report’s governing legislation.

In reviewing the evidence, it is hard to identify significant change in many of the environmental issues highlighted in the last synthesis report, Environment Aotearoa 2019. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s report, Focusing Aotearoa New Zealand’s environmental reporting system (2019) recognises that ‘most of the key environmental issues that concern us have developed over lengthy time frames and are unlikely to be remedied in short order’.

But what has changed significantly since Environment Aotearoa 2019 is our context. The current worldwide pandemic has heightened our focus on wellbeing and how we connect with each other and with the environment. Significant reforms are underway for the environmental reporting programme and the resource management system, challenging us to think about how we report on, and interact, with the environment.

Against this background we have produced Environment Aotearoa 2022. It takes a different focus to previous state of the environment reports, putting environmental change in the context of our lives as individuals, families (whānau), and communities. Environment Aotearoa 2022 brings together evidence to explore how our values and choices place pressure on the environment, the impact of environmental change on the wellbeing of people and communities, and the state and condition of the environment.

As we prepare for a new system of reporting, this report takes a transitional format. This format reflects many of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s 2019 report, and the improvements we wish to make to the environmental reporting system. These include:

• expanding the reporting framework to include drivers and outlooks
• providing broader context to the environmental reporting indicators with evidence obtained from scientific papers, reports, and other forms (including Māori knowledge (mātauranga Māori), social science, health, and economics)
• the interweaving of Māori worldview (te ao Māori) to illustrate national-level issues, connect environmental issues with place, and make reports relevant to a wider audience, including Māori.

In this report we take the view that people are inherently connected to the environment. When we view ourselves as being a part of the environment, we also see that our wellbeing is interdependent on the environment. Our health, our livelihoods, our leisure – our wellbeing – are dependent on a healthy environment, and that is why wellbeing is such a major focus of this report.

To explain the connection between environment and wellbeing, data and insights from our most recent domain reports on air, land, atmosphere and climate, freshwater, and the marine environment are supplemented with the findings from a wider body of peer-reviewed research.

This report also draws more on mātauranga Māori, the body of knowledge arising from the experiences of Māori living in the environment of Aotearoa New Zealand. This was something the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment identified in his 2019 report, stating ‘mātauranga Māori represents the only human record [dating back more than 600 years] we have of the environment of these islands and their surrounding waters. For that reason alone, it is of immense importance. Given how much we do not know, we can ill afford to disregard this traditionally curated knowledge.’

While there is no single accepted definition of Mātauranga Māori, for the purposes of this report we’ve adopted one of the definitions from the Environmental Protection Authority’s mātauranga guide (EPA, 2020). This definition is based on that of Ranginui Walker, who recognises that “Mātauranga has a strong oral tradition – it is transmitted in a variety of forms, including whakapapa, waiata, haka, whakataukī, pūrākau, kōrero tuku iho, and whakairo. Whakapapa is a central principle that connects and orders the universe, linking the physical and spiritual worlds, tracing the universe back to its origins” (Walker, 1993).

We also recognise that understanding how mātauranga Māori can enrich our understanding of the natural world has been traditionally under-resourced. There is greater potential in the future to use mātauranga Māori as a complementary form of knowledge on the environment (Hikuroa, 2017).

It is this interweaving that contributes to Environment Aotearoa 2022 presenting an approach to environmental reporting that is unique to Aotearoa and distinctive from other approaches around the world. This report is a starting point that builds towards a more sophisticated understanding of how to bring different systems of knowledge together but we recognise there is still much to do, and much to learn.

There are many analytical frameworks to describe the connections between the environment and people, and these have been used to interpret the evidence and inform this report. Through discussions with experts from the research community and our Science Advisory Panel, the need for a coherent narrative for the report that would talk to all New Zealanders was identified. We chose to adopt Te Kāhui o Matariki, the nine stars of the Matariki cluster (also known as Pleiades), as an organising structure for the report.

We acknowledge there are regional and iwi variations in how Matariki is observed. This report is based on the understanding provided to us by Māori astronomer researcher Rangi Matamua.

The various stars in the cluster are associated with different domains of the natural world, particularly the earth, the forests, freshwater, salt water, wind, and rain. Matariki therefore helps us tell the story of the many facets of the environment, its connection and interaction with people (tāngata), and provides a link from the past to the present and into the future.

The guiding values associated with Matariki and the Māori new year are outlined in the advice from the Matariki Advisory Committee (Matamua, 2021). They include: remembrance – honouring those we have lost; celebrating the present – gathering to give thanks for what we have; and looking to the future – the promise of a new year. In all dimensions, this feels appropriate for Environment Aotearoa 2022.

The structure of this report is framed on the nine stars of Te Kāhui o Matariki, each representing a different aspect of the environment and people’s connection with it. Table 1 outlines the connection between each star, its domain, and the associated environmental reporting topics.

Following the Environmental Reporting Act 2015, we use the concepts of pressure, state, and impact to report on the environment. The logic of the framework is that pressures cause changes to the state of the environment, and these changes have impacts. Following the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment we have also reported on future outlooks. These are listed in table 1.

The report starts with the star Matariki, in which we further explore the connections between environmental health and human wellbeing. Pōhutukawa is connected to those we have lost, and this section gives an opportunity to reflect on the changes we have made to the environment and how we can learn from our past use of the environment. The next six sections focus on the parts of the environment associated with each star and their connections to individual and community wellbeing: land (Tupuānuku and Tupuārangi), freshwater (Waitī), marine (Waitā), and air and atmosphere and climate (Waipunarangi and Ururangi). The report finishes with the youngest star, Hiwa-i-te-rangi, where we outline impending challenges and aspirations and hopes for the future. (See the Matariki infographic on page 14 for a description of the stars.)

Table 1: Te Kāhui o Matariki (the Matariki cluster) and the Environment Aotearoa 2022 report structure and framework