Meeting of the Regional Planning Committee
Date: Wednesday 19 August 2020
Time: 1.30pm
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Venue: |
Council Chamber Hawke's Bay Regional Council 159 Dalton Street NAPIER |
Agenda
Item Title Page
Information or Performance Monitoring
12. Our Hawke's Bay Environment 2013-18 Key Issues Report 3
Regional Planning Committee
Wednesday 19 August 2020
Subject: Our Hawke's Bay Environment 2013-18 Key Issues Report
Reason for Report
1. This item introduces the Our Hawke’s Bay Environment 2013-2018 – Key Issues Report. This report summarises key issues from a suite of 5-year State of the Environment (SoE) reports recently published by the HBRC Science section for 2013 to 2018 and will be adopted by Council on 26 August for publication.
Background
2. Five-yearly State of the Environment reporting at HBRC has traditionally been delivered via a suite of highly technical reports, with relatively low uptake internally and in the wider community. Technical reports have also been generated by authors working largely in isolation, with little connection made between each domain.
3. This Key Issues report is intended to distil the major findings from the most recent technical reports into a document that makes connections between domains, links issues to HBRC activities and is more easily understood by readers with a fundamental understanding of contemporary environmental issues.
4. Technical reports are listed in Section 5 of the Key Issues report and available at https://www.hbrc.govt.nz/documents-and-forms/ .
Discussion
5. The Key Issues report is placed-based and organises catchments into three subregions:
5.1. Northern
5.2. Heretaunga
5.3. Southern subregions.
6. The report includes key information from technical reports, bounded between an introductory summary at the beginning of each subregional section and a longer summary at the end of each section.
7. This Key Issues report is considered to be a large step in the direction required by the recently published National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) 2020. Section 3.30 of the NPS-FM 2020 directs regional councils to publish a report at least every five years, with content including:
7.1. Assessment of attribute states compared with target attribute states
7.2. Likely causes of degraded or degrading freshwater bodies
7.3. Descriptions of environmental pressures on freshwater bodies
7.4. Predictions of changes that are likely to affect water bodies and freshwater ecosystems
7.5. Assessment of regulatory or non-regulatory actions to implement the NPS-FM
7.6. An ecosystem health scorecard that is easily understood by members of the public.
Next Steps
8. In future, rather than developing a suite of largely descriptive technical reports, the HBRC Science section is proposing to publish a State of the Environment synthesis report that is similar to, but more comprehensive than, the 2013-2018 Key Issues report.
9. Future synthesis reports will fully meet requirements of the NPS-FM and, we believe, will provide more value to Council and Hawke’s Bay communities than previous technical reports have achieved.
Decision Making Process
10. Staff have assessed the requirements of the Local Government Act 2002 in relation to this item and have concluded that, as this report is for information only, the decision making provisions do not apply.
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That the Regional Planning Committee receives and notes the “draft Our Hawke's Bay Environment 2013-18 Key Issues Report”.
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Authored by:
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Dr Jeff Smith Manager ScienCE |
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Approved by:
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Iain Maxwell Group Manager Integrated Catchment Management |
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draft Our HB Environment 2013-18 -Key Issues Report |
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