ABSTRACT

New Zealand is introducing new legislation aimed at improving both developmental and environmental outcomes. Objectives include protecting and where required restoring ecological integrity, using environmental limits and targets, as well as improving long-term planning processes. This will contribute to protecting and enhancing biodiversity values, and offers greater opportunities to identify and potentially achieve long-term environmental goals. However, reliance on the mitigation hierarchy and a lack of clarity over what ecological integrity means in practice is likely to result in continuing net decline in natural environment values. The proposed legislation could be improved by distinguishing between ecological health and integrity as part of bioregional and ecoregional planning, and requiring net gains in health and integrity to be primary legislative outcomes.

摘要

新西兰正在引入旨在改善发展和环境成果的新立法。目标包括保护和在需要时恢复生态完整性，使用环境限制和目标，以及改进长期规划过程。这将有助于保护和加强生物多样性价值，并提供更多机会来确定和可能实现长期环境目标。然而，依赖缓解等级和对生态完整性在实践中的含义缺乏明确性可能导致自然环境价值的持续净下降。作为生物区域和生态区域规划的一部分，可以通过区分生态健康和完整性来改进拟议的立法，