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New water policies could cause even more harm to the already damaged Tukituki River. Phillip Capper/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Balancing the environment with development is tricky. One way for policymakers to include the value of ecosystems in development is to set limits for pollution and other environmental impacts, known as environmental bottom lines (EBLs). These can be a helpful way of embedding into an economy the value of ecosystems. They also help protect natural assets in order to maintain a sustainable cash flow.

Unfortunately, bottom lines also risk developments meeting limits without actually helping the environment. Bottom lines form a significant part of environmental policy in New Zealand, in particular in the areas of freshwater and greenhouse gas emissions.

Bottom lines should not have as much influence in New Zealand policy as they do. So how can we make better policy that actually helps the environment?

Setting a low bar

The New Zealand government is reviewing its National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and is emphasising the need to maximise an economic return on fresh water as a commodity.

In addition, the statement identifies various bottom lines for local councils (such as maximum acceptable concentrations of pollutants and/or minimum water quality attributes), as well as mechanisms to protect minimum flows.

The combination of listing bottom lines while looking for the best economic return can lead to perverse outcomes. For example, the proposed Hawke’s Bay Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme would protect water supply for intensifying farming, but increases the risk of worsening the already ecologically crippled Tukituki River.

The bottom-line philosophy is so entrenched that environmental groups recently celebrated a ruling that developers could not pollute a river so badly that it would kill off organisms. A bare minimum standard must be met, but it is not something we should aspire to celebrate.

On the other hand, many regional councils are trying to do better than this by specifying goals for improving water quality in certain areas. The Rotorua Lakes and Lake Taupo are examples of central and local government working together to improve conditions.

Lake Taupo Sids1/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

But without clear central government support, those councils that want to go beyond the bottom line and make more significant environmental improvements may end up facing legal action brought by those suffering real or imagined erosion of their property rights.

The same is true of greenhouse gases, particularly those related to transport development. The current benefit-cost approach to investment in roads is not assessed against national emission reduction targets. This leads (as one example) to nationally signficant road projects being approved without accounting for transport emissions increases.

While better roads increase fuel efficiency and so lower emissions per vehicle, they also generate more car use, meaning a net increase in emissions. Road transport emissions have increased 72% between 1990 and 2014.

True, the government has voiced support for electric cars and use of biofuels and also funded more public transport, walking and cycling, which will help reduce emissions. But overall the lack of joined-up thinking and a bottom-line approach – we will pollute, but only this much – protects economic growth rather than the environment.

While water quality and greenhouse emissions are less bad than they might have been with no policies at all, the bottom-line concept implies that ecosystems can be maintained at some measurable minimum acceptable standard, with the option of improvement when conditions allow.

Unless matched with clear timelines and goals to improve ecological health, the result is a continued trading down of ecosystem assets in order to boost economic ones.

Positive developments

An alternative to the bottom-line mindset would be to implement environmental policies that call for net positive ecological outcomes – so-called “positive development”.

This integrates ecological decline and improvement into economic decision-making. The human and ecological history of a place would be accounted for. You would look not only at whether the materials for, say, a building came from sustainable sources, but whether you were contributing to improving ecosystems.

For example, protecting and enhancing biodiversity is done in Australia and New Zealand to offset development impacts. The preference is not just to minimise harm, but to improve things.

In the same way that economic investments need to demonstrate a positive financial outcome, so positive development will require a demonstration of how human activity will contribute to improving ecological health – water quality, biodiversity, local and global air quality, and so on.

Attached to resource consents, it could mean failure to demonstrate net ecological benefit means no permit. This shifts things from, say, just rehabilitating a mine site to requiring demonstrated improvement in its post-mining ecological value, or contributing to improving ecological values elsewhere.

As explained by Janis Birkeland in her 2008 book Positive Development, this approach goes beyond reducing use of materials, carbon and energy (the kind of outcomes attached to such initiatives as green buildings), to requiring improvements in total ecological health over the life cycle of a proposed development.

Applied to water quality, it would require developers to show how they would improve water quality and associated ecological values, rather than merely meeting minimum defined standards. And in terms of climate change, it would require proof that transport funding would result in a decline in emissions, rather than simply limiting the rate of increase.

What is needed is a government that is willing to go beyond requiring that development minimises harm to requiring that it does actual good.

Stephen Knight-Lenihan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Burneside, Cumbria I walked a narrow bank, the mill race on one side and a steep drop to the swirling Sprint on the other. And I thought of last December’s flood

Sprint Mill sits in a small wooded gorge below a cascade of sinuous waterfalls on the river Sprint. There has been a cloth manufacturing or processing mill on this site since at least the 1400s, all dependent on water power provided by the river. The current owners have restored the 19th-century mill with the help of a grant from Natural England; the front wall had developed a worrying bulge. When work began, they found that this three-storey building had been constructed without foundations.

The Dales Way weaves around the most recent mill race, hollowed out of the earth like a small canal and used until the mill closed in 1954. Ahead of me, long-tailed tits fidgeted, tails flicking up and down as they moved on, their ratcheting, rolling contact calls travelling on the breeze.

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ANU scientists achieve record solar thermal efficiency of 97% – a breakthrough that could cut CST electricity costs by 10%.

Spot prices were below last year, in all States, possibly reflecting good level of wind generation, soft demand and that most interconnectors seem to be working.

Shishmaref is one of dozens of indigenous villages in Alaska that face growing threats of flooding and erosion due to global warming.

Originally published in the Guardian on 26 August 1966

HAMPSHIRE: The wondrous fine days of last week have come just right for the harvesters. Although tractors with trolleys are not so picturesque as horses with wains, there remains a flavour of the sacred earth at harvest-time. The more especially in large fields with men and girls scattered at various jobs. And I have seen a young fellow, stripped to the waist, and as brown as a South Sea islander, with a girl beside him, her hair neatly plaited in pigtails, both holding on to a jolting bar, as they returned to the farm after work. The quality remains, in spite of the combustion engine. In many fields the straw is being trussed, and not wastefully burnt. Various uses are being found for it besides the bedding down of animals; in right conditions cabbages can be grown, also seed potatoes bedded and grown, with great saving of labour. If for no better use, it can be made into compost. The hot days have brought swarms of flying ants, fat, juicy, young queens, that birds relish. Starlings, that naturally have quick, gliding flight, learn to hover, not very well, but sufficiently slowly to snatch at the flying ants in midair. The starlings fly at a low level over fields and gardens, and, higher up, seagulls circle to taste the formic acid flavour. They remind me of the time when I have eaten honey-ants in West Australia that were dug up by aborigine girls. These were the only form of sweetmeats that the bush provided, and very good too. I was sorry to learn that the Scops owl had escaped, with but poor chance of survival I fear.

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An exotic visitor, that should should have been sunning itself by the Mediterranean, attracts crowds of birdwatchers to the Ham Wall reserve

My birding friend Rob may have got married only the day before, but nothing stops him from looking regularly at his pager to check out the latest sightings of rare birds. Fortunately, he then took the trouble to text me the news: that a collared pratincole had turned up at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve, just down the road from my home.

It would have been rude not to pay this bird a visit, especially as it should have been sunning itself on some Mediterranean marsh, not flying around the Somerset Levels. I had never actually seen this species before in Britain, so I walked along the disused railway line that bisects the marshes with more than the usual spring in my step.

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Scalloped hammerhead, a species that is listed as endanged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Mark Priest, CC BY-SA

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently raised over A$200,000 to buy shark fishing licences in Queensland’s waters. They estimate the licences, for operating nets in and around the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, could have been used to catch 10,000 sharks each year.

Retiring these licences is a new development in Australian shark conservation, but may also limit locally caught seafood.

But do Australia’s sharks need saving, or can we eat them? It depends on where you look.

Sustainable sharks

Sharks in general are much more vulnerable to overfishing than other fish. Compared to most fish, sharks have far fewer offspring over their lifetimes. As a result, shark populations cannot tolerate the same levels of fishing that fish can sustain.

Globally, there is great reason for concern over the status of sharks. About a quarter of all sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. The high value of shark fins in Asian markets drives a large and often unsustainable shark fishery that reaches across the globe.

Australia has an important role to play in combating this trend. Many species that are globally threatened can find refuge in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which has an extensive system of protected areas and comparatively low fishing effort. Despite this potential safe haven, some species in Australia still rest on an ecological knife edge.

A white-tip reef shark in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Christopher Brown

For example, the great and scalloped hammerheads (which the WWF says will benefit from the licence purchase) are both by-catch species in the Australian fishery and are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered.

Australian fishermen don’t head out to catch hammerheads intentionally; most people do not consider the meat palatable. However, their hammer-shaped head is easily entangled in nets. Therefore hammerheads may be highly susceptible to any increase in fishing pressure.

Commercial fishers are legally required to have a licence. By buying the licences, WWF can limit the number of active nets in the water.

However, not all shark species are as vulnerable to fishing as the iconic hammerhead. Several shark species in Australia are well-managed. For instance, the spot tail shark is fast-growing and has many young, making it relatively resilient to fishing pressure. Many Australians regularly enjoy these species with a side of chips.

Species targeted by Queensland’s shark fishery are likely sustainable. The latest fishery assessment published by the Queensland government in 2014 found that catches of most shark species were well within safe limits.

Supporting our local shark fisheries is therefore far better than importing shark from overseas where fisheries may be poorly managed.

But it is not all good news in Australia. Both the assessment and an independent review found that while Queensland’s shark catch likely is sustainable, we need to be cautious about allowing any increases.

Importantly, Queensland’s 2014 shark assessment relies on very limited data. A crucial fishery observer program was cut in 2012. The limited data mean that regulations for Queensland’s shark catches are set conservatively low. Any increase in catch is risky without an assessment based on higher-quality data.

Scientists use tag-and-release programs to track the movements and population size of sharks. But more direct fisheries data are needed. Samantha Munroe A win for fishers and fish

Buying up licences in an uncertain fishery may be an effective way to prevent the decline of vulnerable species. Although buying licences is a new move for marine conservation groups in Australia, elsewhere it has proven an effective strategy for conservation and fisheries.

For instance, in California the conservation group Nature Conservancy bought fishing licences for rockfish, some species of which are endangered.

The Nature Conservancy now leases those licences back to fishers that promote sustainable fishing methods. The fishers themselves can charge a higher price for sustainable local catches of fish. What started as a move purely for conservation has had benefits for those employed in fisheries.

The lesson here is that conservation organisations can be the most productive when they work with, not against, fisheries. The recent shark licence purchase in Australia could be a great opportunity for fishers and conservation organisations to work together to maintain healthy ecosystems and fisheries.

But if Australians are serious about protecting sharks, there are other steps we still need to take. Queensland should reinstate the fishery observer program so we have reliable data to assess shark populations. For instance, currently we don’t know how many sharks are caught as by-catch in other fisheries.

A lemon shark seeks its fish prey in the shallow waters on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Lemon sharks are caught by our fisheries, but are not a target species. Megan Saunders

Shark control programs designed to protect bathers are also a threat to endangered shark populations. However, data on deaths from shark control in Queensland were not accounted for in the government’s catch limits.

Accounting for these missing deaths could make a serious dent in our sustainable catch, an independent review found.

There is an opportunity to address these issues in Queensland’s upcoming fisheries management reform. Have your say here.

If conservation groups can work with fisheries, a more consistent and sustainable shark-fishing strategy may emerge. Australians can continue to be proud of our efforts to protect marine life, but can still enjoy shark for dinner.

Christopher Brown receives funding from The Nature Conservancy and the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Australian Marine Sciences Association and the Society for Conservation Biology.

Samantha Munroe receives funding from the Save Our Seas Foundation and the Australian Research Council. She is also a member of the Oceania Chondrichthyan Society.

Michael Grange (Letters, 19 August) recommends “not asking the frogs first” before building tidal barrages on the Severn. But we are already being spoken to by the sand eels, mosquitoes, birds, butterflies and even the humble Highland saxifrage (Climate change threatens UK’s mountain plant life, 18 August) if only we would listen.

They are on the move already. The environmental effects of sea-level rise will dramatically alter the Severn estuary, and all its inhabitants, if we do little to deploy alternatives to fossil fuels now. Can the seriousness of the crisis justify the sacrifice of some present wetlands in order to avoid them being found far inland by our great grandchildren?
Professor Terry Gifford
Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University

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In his letter (11 August) Dr David Lowry raised the issue of radon and shale gas quoting studies in Pennsylvania and sought to reinforce his own views by quoting from a study undertaken by Public Health England in 2014. Let me quote the same study, which states, “caution is required when extrapolating experiences in other countries to the UK since the mode of operation, underlying geology and regulatory environment are likely to be different” and “the PHE position remains, therefore, that the shale gas extraction process poses a low risk to human health if properly run and regulated”.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas present throughout the UK at very low levels. PHE recognised that radon may be released to the environment from shale–gas activities, as is the case with existing natural gas supplies, but at concentrations that are not expected to result in significant additional radon exposure. PHE will be undertaking baseline outdoor and household radon monitoring in the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire in areas around Third Energy’s KM8 well near Kirby Misperton at three-monthly intervals. The first monitoring “measurements indicated that the radon concentration in the outdoor air around KM8 is close to the UK average”. There is no indication of elevated radon concentrations in Pickering, a radon affected area in close proximity of KM8. The analysis for the control site in Oxfordshire showed that the radon concentrations were similar to those for the Vale of Pickering.

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Huge swathe of new “protected natural area” in Peru’s Amazon is included within an oil and gas concession run by Canadian company

The creation of the 1.3 million hectare Sierra del Divisor National Park in the western Amazon in November 2015 generated considerable elation and Peruvian and international media coverage. Logging, gold-mining, coca cultivation and narco-trafficking were highlighted by some media as ongoing threats to the new park, but why such failure to acknowledge what is possibly, in the long-term, the most serious threat of all?

The sorry, alarming fact is that approximately 40% of the park is superimposed by an oil and gas concession run by a Canadian-headquartered company, Pacific Exploration and Production. This is despite Peru’s 1997 Law of Protected Natural Areas stating “the extraction of natural resources is not permitted” in parks, while 2001 regulations on Protected Natural Areas state “the exploitation of natural resources is prohibited.” In addition, Peru’s 1993 Constitution “obliges” the government “to promote the conservation of biological diversity and protected natural areas.”

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Report demands mining stop until it can be determined how and at what cost the operation can be made safe

The huge McArthur river mine must stop operations until a public commission of inquiry is set up and has examined whether it can be made safe and at what cost, according to an independent report being released on Monday.

Based on the limited public data on the mine, up to $1bn will need to be spent to safely remediate the site, according to Gavin Mudd from Monash University and the Mineral Policy Institute, who wrote the report.

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As the National Park Service turns 100, a new campaign aims to make the country’s natural spaces more appealing to all Americans, regardless of race, over the next century. It’s vital they succeed

In the sweltering heat of a summer day, I walked along the visitor trails of Yosemite national park. I had just made the five-hour drive from my childhood home in Los Angeles to glimpse a vision of the future. There in the valley surrounded by high towers of stone, I watched as thousands of tourists from all over the world marvelled at the sheer granite walls of El Capitan, Washington Column and Half Dome. Like ancient cathedrals of divine architecture, these magnificent features stand as monuments to the notion that the natural heritage of our nation must be preserved for all time.

Throughout my life I have enjoyed spending time in the outdoors. Despite having grown up in the urban heart of LA, I frequently ventured into the wild places of California, from the slopes of the San Gabriel mountains to the summit of Mount Whitney. Though I was blessed, thanks to sacrifices of my parents, with a lifetime learning and playing in nature, on this occasion, as with many visits to the valley, I noticed that I was among the very few people of colour there. And though I felt no less welcome to enjoy the splendour of this magnificent place, I wondered how it might be possible to encourage tourism to Yosemite – and other national parks – that reflects the diverse population of the US as a whole.

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Scientist Peter Wadhams believes the summer ice cover at the north pole is about to disappear, triggering even more rapid global warming

Peter Wadhams has spent his career in the Arctic, making more than 50 trips there, some in submarines under the polar ice. He is credited with being one of the first scientists to show that the thick icecap that once covered the Arctic ocean was beginning to thin and shrink. He was director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge from 1987 to 1992 and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge since 2001. His book, A Farewell to Ice, tells the story of his unravelling of this alarming trend and describes what the consequences for our planet will be if Arctic ice continues to disappear at its current rate.

You have said on several occasions that summer Arctic sea ice would disappear by the middle of this decade. It hasn’t. Are you being alarmist?
No. There is a clear trend down to zero for summer cover. However, each year chance events can give a boost to ice cover or take some away. The overall trend is a very strong downward one, however. Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship. There will still be about a million square kilometres of ice in the Arctic in summer but it will be packed into various nooks and crannies along the Northwest Passage and along bits of the Canadian coastline. Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.

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We call it ‘smog’ or ‘haze’ but it’s a real killer. There are ways to find out where it’s worst, and clean air campaigns which are well worth supporting

These days fresh air is hard to find, even in parks. Nearly a quarter of London’s green open spaces now breach laws on nitrogen dioxide pollution (the stuff that spews out of diesel exhausts).

When the air in the park is worse than at the side of the road, that’s a new low. If you’re a Londoner, type in your postcode at Asi Open Data to find the nearest park where NO2 emissions don’t exceed 40 micrograms per cubic metre.

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Ban on all fishing, rafting and other river activities in the US river will remain until fish stop dying, say officials

Closures on a 183-mile stretch of the Yellowstone river and hundreds of miles of other waterways could continue for months while biologists try to prevent the spread of a parasite believed to have killed tens of thousands of fish.

The closures will remain until the waterways improve and fish stop dying, according to officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The ban includes all fishing, rafting and other river activities.

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With the future of Hinkley Point in doubt and the government committed to assist British business, now is the time to get behind wind power

Cancelling the planned new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point will be a huge victory for the offshore wind industry. The word from inside No 10 is not clear yet, but there are so many Tories, including the prime minister, unsettled by the prospect of the Chinese building a plant in Britain to an untested French design that the prospects of it going ahead appear slim.

As if to emphasise the continuing success of Britain’s elegant turbines in the sea, the government cleared the way for a new array off the Yorkshire coast earlier this week.

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Firefighters in California gain ground in tackling the massive Blue Cut wildfire, containing around 40% and allowing many evacuees to return home.

The Rio Olympics, wildfires in Europe, the continuing violence in Aleppo – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

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New Forest It’s a muddy hole that holds water all year round. We could so easily have walked by without seeing it

The walking group stop as they see me peering into a net. “Can we ask what you’re doing?” I explain that I’ve heard there were shells in this pond and have come to find out what they are. As we talk, a blue-bodied dragonfly circles over the water. I tell them what it is and say that it has chosen this mucky pool as its breeding patch, and is probably waiting for a mate to arrive. “Thanks for the nature lesson,” they say with a smile, and head on.

This pond isn’t easy to find. We have only a rough idea where to look. To get to it we cross heavily cropped grassland with tufts of heather and ground-hugging gorse in among which is petty whin. This is a member of the pea family whose yellow flowers are carried on stalks with vicious thorns. We see it because it’s still flowering, much later than the guides say to expect it.

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