Assessing Aotearoa New Zealand’s National and Regional Natural Environments: A Review of Existing Environmental Indices and Development of a New Regional Index

Environmental monitoring and reporting must be clear, well-coordinated, and consistent to preserve our natural environments and protect important socio-cultural and economic assets. Currently, Aotearoa New Zealand’s approach is fragmented and ad hoc, hindering comparisons of environmental quality across different regions of the country. Furthermore, the fragmented monitoring data used in existing global indices makes it difficult to determine whether country ranks are accurate. This research had three key objectives: (1) to quantify national rank variations in global environmental indices, exploring the impact of conceptual frameworks and methodological choices on rankings, (2) to identify challenges and data gaps in regional-level environmental monitoring, reporting, and enforcement in Aotearoa New Zealand, and (3) to develop a regional environmental index (the New Zealand Environmental Quality Index, or NZ—EQI) and data dashboard to quantify differences in the quality of natural environments across Aotearoa New Zealand. Three research chapters are presented addressing each of these questions.

In Chapter 2, a series of correlation analyses revealed significant variations in country ranks across four multidimensional and six environment-only indices. Notably, high-income nations (such as Aotearoa New Zealand) scored well in multidimensional indices but poorly in environment-only indices, while low-income nations exhibited the opposite pattern. This suggests that the conceptual framework and indicator choice can affect ranking and produce a more, or less, optimistic view of a country’s natural environment. The inclusion of indicators related to human health and welfare in multidimensional indices complicates interpretation and results in an overly optimistic perception of environments in high-income countries. My review helps to guide and inform the design of new indices and highlights that if an index is intended to measure the environment-only, indicators related to human health and welfare, or policy should be excluded. In Chapter 3, five key issues were identified in regional-level environmental monitoring, reporting, and enforcement, with recommendations for how these issues should be addressed. These issues encompassed weak legislation, lack of independent monitoring, patchy data coverage, data misuse, insecure funding, and political interference. Proposed solutions include legislative reform, centralisation of funding and certain roles, making roles and funding independent of government interference , and establishing a centralised research council. As the Resource Management Act (RMA) is currently set to be replaced with three new pieces of legislation, it is essential to identify weaknesses in current legislation to ensure than incoming legislation addresses them. Finally, Chapter 4 describes the development of a novel regional environmental index. The NZ—EQI, Aotearoa New Zealand’s first regional-level (subnational) environmental index was developed alongside a data dashboard for in-depth exploration of environmental issues and regional disparities in specific indicators. To my knowledge, this is also the first regional environment-only index in the world. The regions with the highest (worst) ranks are those with a major agricultural base (Waikato, Canterbury, Taranaki) or large urban populations (Auckland). While regions with the lowest (best) ranks were characterised by lower agricultural intensity and urban populations (Marlborough, Nelson-Tasman). In addition, I examined relationships between environmental quality and socioeconomic indicators. My findings suggest that quality of natural environments and levels of deprivation are not related, and the economic gains associated with environmental degradation are not distributed evenly across the population of different regions. The methodology developed can be replicated to develop regional environment-only indices for other countries.