Collaborative governance of the environment, Scandinavian style.

Collaborative governance is advocated as a solution for the most pressing environmental problem facing the country apart from climate change – the management of fresh water resources. The 2009 conference of the New Zealand Environmental Defense Society that just took place in Auckland, heard the government's Minister for the Environment, Dr Nick Smith, express backing for stakeholders to come together, determine solutions and initiate regulatory change. The concept has already been successfully developed in Scandinavia and involves key stakeholders getting around the table and coming up with an agreed way forward that government then implements. The recently constituted Land and Water Forum is a new kind of authority intended to bring together all the interests in freshwater management – iwi tribal authorities, irrigators, farmers, horticulturists, electricity generators, operators, canoeists, fishers, urban interests and environmental groups, according to the chair of the EDS, Gary Taylor. This is a first for New Zealand and potentially heralds the institution of further institutions of collaborative governance as a solution to conflicts over resource use.

The concern of the conference, entitled 'Reform in Paradise', was the on-going problems with first generation environmental institutions and legislation that have proved disappointing in performance and achievement since their inception over the past two decades. The Resource Management Act and the Fisheries Quota Management System, among others, had created much interest world-wide among reformers of the Rio Earth Summit era. New Zealand's regulatory innovations had raised attention and still do as a model to imitate (see e.g. this recent New York Times editorial Ocean Rescue), because they were ground breaking in adopting sustainability principles to resolve private and public interests. But with growing evidence that natural resources on land and in the sea continue to be in decline, and the conflicts that the existing institutions are embroiled in, enthusiasm has given way to disappointment.

The need for new ideas is in line with the newly elected government's emphasis on reform. While the government's priorities will, according to policy and media statements, lie with improving the country's economic capacity, the willingness to turn to collaborative approaches represents a step away from the emphasis on devolution of government to local authorities that accompanied the previous phase. This endeavour, with its accompanying economic orientation, is part of a wider reform process that the new government has begun, touching in radical ways on local government, infrastructure development and even international aid. The success of the environmental management reforms will to a large extent depend not only on getting stakeholders together, but on whether mutual appreciation and shared visions can emerge from such an encounter, outcomes which are fundamental to achieving effective collaborative governance.

Papers from the conference are available at www.edsconference.com