Farming group makes, then breaks, environmental policy

A law change to abolish “significant natural areas” is being celebrated by the very same farmers’ lobby group that worked to create them.
Under the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity, regional and district councils were tasked with identifying and defining significant natural areas on private land across the country.
But this year, Associate Minister for the Environment Andrew Hoggard announced an intention to do away with them, and came close to breaking the law when he preemptively told councils it would be “unwise to bother” worrying about them.
In a select committee, submitters from primary industries and conservation groups voiced shared concern over the removal of significant natural areas. Conservationists argued it would lead to environmental degradation, while industry bodies bemoaned the potential of having to re-litigate environmental decisions under a new regime. 
Federated Farmers, led by Hoggard from 2020 to 2023, had been one of the bodies that designed the policy statement in the first place.
The National Policy Statement was designed by the Biodiversity Collaborative Group and came into effect in August 2023, just a few months after Hoggard stepped down from his role at Federated Farmers to run for Parliament.
But when the minister announced his intent to abolish significant natural areas, he was quickly backed by the Feds.
The entire point of the policy statement was to provide clarity around biodiversity requirements set out in the Resource Management Act 1991, the cornerstone of New Zealand’s environmental legislation and the origin of the term “significant natural area”.
The Biodiversity Collaborative Group’s draft report said vague requirements within the Resource Management Act had led to “uncertainty, debate, and significant and costly litigation”, because it didn’t actually define what “significant” meant. 
When their report was written in 2018, the assessment of significant areas varied by region. Some were specified in district plans, while other districts only assessed those on public land. Others only assessed them on private land. Some didn’t assess them at all, and only looked into the issue when a consent application was lodged that was known to overlap with native bush.
The group decided it was important to map out exactly which parts of the country could be considered significant and to introduce assessment criteria for what defined them. It was a diverse team, whose core members were Forest & Bird, Federated Farmers, the New Zealand Forest Owners Association, the Environmental Defence Society, an Iwi Chairs Forum representative and representatives from infrastructure industries.
Sally Gepp KC, an environmental lawyer submitting on behalf of Forest & Bird, told the select committee “there was agreement that significant natural areas should be identified by all councils across New Zealand. That was not in dispute.”
The group didn’t agree on every single aspect, said Gepp, but did agree on three principal matters that resulted in the blanket significant natural area approach listed in the policy statement: people were alarmed by the rapid decline in national biodiversity, people agreed these areas wouldn’t ‘lock up’ the land, and people recognised the alternative to SNA identification was not simply no regulation at all, but rather blanket regulation through vegetation clearance rules applied everywhere – regardless of the ecological value of the vegetation concerned.
At the very least, the regulations would give certainty to those in an uncertain system.
When the policy statement came into effect, it was the product of an agreed-upon effort by all these parties.
But the idea of a national-scale rollout of significant natural areas was promptly met by outrage by multiple groups.
A hīkoi in the Far North opposed them altogether, as 42 percent of the Northland District was set to be designated, sparking fears of another land grab by the Crown.
The mayor of Greymouth said farmers would “bowl over” native trees to escape the incoming legislation. Farmers baulked at infringements on their private property rights.
When Hoggard took the reins as minister, he jumped the gun by telling local councils not to bother about classifying significant areas as he intended to scrap the policy; not just the national policy statement, but the entire concept of significant natural areas.
Legal experts chimed in to say advising councils to ignore the national policy was probably not within the confines of the law. Hoggard walked back his statement but reiterated his intent to scrap the areas.
As a part of the coalition Government’s Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, the policy statement would be amended to suspend the requirement of councils to identify significant areas for three years, while the Government replaces the Resource Management Act.
Before the Primary Production select committee last week, various industry and environmental groups took the stand to offer their perspectives.
Environmental groups and industry representatives agreed repealing significant natural areas would reopen a legal can of worms.
Representatives of the telecommunications industry expressed concern that undoing this process would mean “a restart” for a considerable amount of work. Graeme McCarrison of Spark said another approach “might be simpler, but we’ve got this far in support with local government and generally with environmental groups”. 
McCarrison said: “We’ve just suggested clarity to make sure that we don’t have to go back and litigate 30 or 40 different plans”. He was speaking about existing practices, as “the thought of having to restart processes on long-established years of work was just too much”.
Concern expressed about significant natural areas generally centred on them being a deterrent or a liability rather than a safeguard. Groups like Beef + Lamb NZ warned that should a significant area be identified on someone’s private property, it came with the assumption of fees associated with fencing off or otherwise protecting that area, and opportunity costs associated with the cessation of activities within it. 
Existing activities have been a point of contention. But according to Federated Farmers’ original 2020 fact sheet on the draft national policy statement, there’s “a bit of a misconception” afoot.
The sheet tells readers having an SNA imposed on your property doesn’t mean you need to “lock it up” and can’t use it. “It’s also been said that you need to fence it all off – that again is not true.”
Under the policy statement, existing use rights remain on a property unless those activities intensify or their effects worsen, or the significant area itself is damaged or destroyed.
Despite Federated Farmers helping design the policy. and previously disputing the view that a significant natural area was first and foremost a liability to landowners, the group celebrated Hoggard’s announcement that they’d be abolished.
The lobby group headlined its press release, ‘Another Unworkable Farming Rule Bites The Dust’.
Another critique of significant natural areas was offered to Newsroom this week by Resources Minister Shane Jones, who said they’d “fallen prey to wokeism”, but this concern was not echoed in the select committee. 
Other public concerns centred on the blanket approach to defining significant areas, which were sometimes identified by aerial imagery rather than on-the-ground surveys.
One Farmers Weekly opinion column, by semi-retired Wairarapa farmer Alan Emerson, congratulated Hoggard for his announcement and claimed many significant natural areas lacked a basis in fact.
It derided local councils for “ignorance” and failure to do their research before concluding, “you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs” – an adage Emerson attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.