Protecting water bodies & freshwater ecosystem health
Step change is required to improve the health and wellbeing of water bodies and freshwater ecosystems.
They cannot decline!
Our NPS-FM position in a nutshell
Protecting the health and well-being of water bodies and freshwater ecosystems is the first priority of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) objective. Your regional plans cannot provide for any more degradation in the health and wellbeing of water bodies and freshwater ecosystems (NPS-FM Policy 5, including no decline in water quality, see also Ngāti Kahungunu v Hawkes Bay Regional Council [2015] NZENvC 50).
To date, New Zealand’s approach to protecting water quality and quantity has not been good enough. The requirement to maintain and improve the health and wellbeing of waterbodies and maintain water quality means all waterbodies in New Zealand are fully allocated. The NPS-FM tells us to think differently about how we protect water. Instead of providing for use and economic activity by incrementally reducing the health and wellbeing of waterbodies, we must figure out how to use what we have, better – or in some cases, reduce that use.
This means when you are drafting regional plans, things will have to be done with the same or less impact on water. We cannot continue to chip away at bottom lines.
The benefits of improved ecosystem health are many. For example, increasing wetlands in Aotearoa and providing room for rivers creates more resilience and redundancy to protect communities from flood events and drought. Planting riparian margins provides shade, habitat and can cool water temperatures required for indigenous, as well as introduced, species such as trout and salmon to survive. Importantly, providing healthy water bodies and ecosystems builds resilience to climate change and the reality that more frequent and increased rainfall and drought events, for example, will put more pressure on freshwater environments.
In some areas real improvements are going to be needed to restore the health and wellbeing of waterbodies. Doing more of what we have always done is not going to be enough to restore and preserve the balance between the water, the wider environment, and the community – in fact, it is likely to make things worse.
The NPS-FM directive
Healthy waterbodies and ecosystems are at the heart of the NPS-FM and form an important part of the fundamental concept of Te Mana o te Wai. The NPS-FM describes what sustainable freshwater management looks like in Aotearoa. The purpose of the Resource Management Act (RMA) includes: ‘safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems’ (RMA 5(2)(b)). Safeguarding life-supporting capacity for water means protecting ecosystem health. Prioritising and protecting ecosystem health achieves the purpose of the Act.
Policy 5 of the NPS-FM directs that you cannot decrease the health or well-being of water bodies. At a minimum, their health and wellbeing must be improved if they are degraded below ‘bottom lines’, and elsewhere (where they are healthy) it must be maintained. You must also improve the health and well-being of freshwater ecosystems and waterbodies a community wishes to improve.
Section 30 of the RMA mandates the management of land use to maintain and enhance water quality and quantity and ecosystems . The National Objectives Framework (NOF) process provides steps for you to implement the NPS-FM to maintain and improve water bodies. The Ministry for the Environment NOF Guidance provides the policy intent and expectations for implementing the NOF.
Ecosystem health is a component of the health and wellbeing of waterbodies. Ecosystem health is defined in the NPS-FM as a compulsory value for all waterbodies and includes five components:
• Water quality
• Water quantity
• Habitat
• Aquatic life
• Ecological processes
Each of the five components that make up ecosystem health are equally important and essential to achieving the ecosystems health (NPS-FM Appendix 1 A - Compulsory values).
All five components of ecosystem health must be maintained or improved across the entire country.
You will need to identify attributes for each of the five components of ecosystem health, for each type of water body, and set Target Attribute States (TAS) for each attribute. These TAS must be set at a level that reflects a healthy waterbody - i.e., they must provide for ecosystem health. Target Attribute States describe the measurable goal that provides for the value. Target Attribute States must be set at a level at or above the ‘baseline’ or current state. This means there can be no degradation.
You must also identify environmental flows and levels for rivers, lakes, wetlands, and aquifers that provides for ecosystem health.
The NPS-FM has only identified some attributes and TAS for river and lake ‘type’ waterbodies. These don’t capture all components of ecosystem health sufficiently (for example, ‘habitat’ only has one NPS-FM attribute). You will need to identify more attributes and TAS for rivers and lakes to build a complete picture of ecosystem health. You’ll also need to identify extra attributes and TAS for other types of water bodies, including wetlands, groundwater, and estuaries.
Target attribute states must be set at a level above at or the national bottom line, however, national bottom lines do not always describe a healthy, thriving state. Instead, they often describe an unstable state of stress with a risk of sensitive species being lost, and that may not be consistent with Te Mana o te Wai. You should set your TAS above bottom lines to ensure you are providing for health and wellbeing of waterbodies.
Once TAS and environmental flows and levels have been set, limits (NPS-FM 3.14) and action plans (NPS-FM 3.15) must be implemented to achieve those target attribute states (NPS-FM 3.11). Limits must be achieved, allocating or using a resource beyond a limit, or making it less able to provide for its ecosystem health value is over-allocation (NPS-FM 1.4 over-allocation). Over-allocation must be avoided (NPS-FM 2.2 Policy 11).
What do we want to see?
As the first priority of the NPS-FM objective, the health and well-being of water bodies and freshwater ecosystems are paramount. We expect this to be front of mind when drafting your regional plans. A healthy freshwater system is the state that is sought for all of New Zealand, now and for future generations. What is good for the health of water bodies and freshwater ecosystems is good for everyone indefinitely.
Environmental outcomes for the ecosystem health value should reflect an ecosystem that has:
a) a healthy structure and function; and
b) a diversity and abundance of flora and fauna, (excluding pests, domestic and farmed plants, and animals), appropriate to the location and time, that can grow and reproduce, and
c) resilience and ability to adapt and recover from change and disturbance, including climate change; and
d) functioning natural connections and interactions between interconnected freshwater, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems.
Target attribute states should be set at a level that provides for those healthy thriving ecosystems. In many cases this will mean setting TAS well above the national bottom line that reflect a state in the A or B band.
Where there are values with more stringent requirements, these should replace the general ecosystem health TAS we recommend here. The habitat of trout and salmon, trout fishing or trout spawning habitat often demand higher water quality and quantity TAS than other species (in part because we understand more about these species requirements than native species), and those should be used where those values are identified. Please refer to the specific ‘Habitat or Trout and Salmon’ practice note for specific TAS.
The compulsory attributes in Appendix 2A and 2B of the NPSF-FM do not cover all the components of ecosystem health, for all the different types of waterbodies. Your regional plan must include attributes and TAS that address all components of ecosystem health for all waterbody types (and as noted above, this means you will need more attributes to build a complete picture of ecosystem health in many cases). There are several important indicators of ecosystem health that should be used alongside the compulsory attributes. We have set these out in Table 1 below. Many of the attributes were recommended by the Science and Technical Advisory Group (STAG report, 2019) that advised the Minister as part of the development of the NPS-FM. They are well researched and there is wide scientific agreement that they are appropriate indicators.
Also see the practice note on nutrient criteria. Nutrient criteria must be identified to support other compulsory attributes, such as periphyton and Macroinvertebrate Community Index (MCI). There is good, published evidence linking nutrients to these ecosystem health indicators (Canning et al., 2021), so nutrient criteria or stand-alone nutrient attributes should be developed that reflect this connection.
Where numeric baseline data is not available, modelling, or incomplete data should be used ( see ‘Best Information Available’ Practice Note). A lack of information is not an appropriate reason to not include a target attribute state in your regional plan. If a numeric attribute is not available or there is insufficient data to determine one, a narrative (qualitative) attribute should be determined, rather than no attribute at all. Narrative attribute states still need to be specific so they can be monitored and assessed.
Table 1: List of additional TAS to be included in regional plans to support ecosystem health. Click here to download a PDF of the table.
Footnotes to Table 1:
1 & 2: Canning et al Nutrient criteria to achieve New Zealand’s riverine macroinvertebrate targets
5: Greenpeace Submission to NES drinking water
6: Freshwater Science and technical advisory group report
7: STAG Report Recommendation 5
8: Sediment Assessment Methods Protocol and guidelines
9: Cawthron Report 1205 Water Quality Guidelines to Protect Trout Fishery Values
10: Forest and Bird Maintaining River Morphology
12: Cawthron Rapid Habitat Assessment Protocol
13: Auckland Council Stream Ecological Valuation Users Guide
14: STAG Report Recommendation
15: STAG Report Recommendation 8
16: STAG Report Recommendation 9
17: STAG Report Recommendation Recommendation 11
18: STAG Report Recommendation 7 reflecting B band ecosystem health
How should the NPS-FM be implemented?
Set Target Attribute States for all components
As ecosystem health is part of the priority in the NPS-FM objective, the five components for ecosystem health (outlined above) should have TAS set for them. Target Attribute States should be set at levels that adequately provide for ecosystem health, not just at the bottom line identified in the NPS-FM. You will need more attributes than those prescribed in Appendix 2A and 2B of the NPS-FM
Set Target Attribute States for all water bodies
All water bodies, not just lakes and rivers, should have TAS set. This includes estuaries, wetlands, and groundwater.
Set additional Target Attribute States
Once you have set TAS that provide for all compulsory values in all water bodies, check if more stringent TAS will be required for other health and wellbeing values. These values will include the habitat of trout and salmon, outstanding waterbodies and natural form and character, among others. In many cases, TAS for ecosystem health will also provide for other values however, where they don’t, any gaps should be addressed with more stringent TAS. Table 1 above outlines additional TAS we expect to see in regional plans.
Ki uta ki tai
An integrated approach (NPS-FM 3.5) to managing freshwater is critical to give effect to Te Mana o te Wai and to protect water bodies and freshwater ecosystems (NPS-FM 3.2(2)(e)). This approach should frame how the NPS-FM is implemented.
Ki uta ki tai demands that freshwater is thought of as interconnected - flowing from inland, over and under land and out to the sea. Freshwater interacts with all the elements of the environment and human activity along its path. You must apply ki uta ki tai when you set TAS. More stringent TAS need to be set where rivers flow into sensitive receiving environments such as wetlands, lakes, and estuaries. The TAS in the river or stream must ensure it achieves the sensitive environment TAS it is feeding (NPS-FM 3.11(8)). This may further require more stringent TAS than are needed to provide for the rivers so that a TAS in a sensitive received environment can be achieved.
This will ensure your waterways are managed as a whole catchment, within the wider context of the receiving environment and surrounding communities.
How we know the NPS-FM is being achieved
Success will look like every type of waterbody having a schedule of TAS that address all the ecosystem health components and other compulsory and identified values. Each TAS will be set at a level that will provide for a healthy thriving waterbody - not just the national bottom line. Additional attributes will be included in regional plans for water quality and ecosystem health (as per Table 1 above). The additional attributes are linked to more specific guidance, which you can read in other practice notes.
Implementation toolbox
This section provides a toolbox that will continue to be developed as new evidence, tools, case studies, resources and examples to implement the NPS-FM become available.
Tools: are helpful diagrams, processes, or ways to support how you should implement the NPS-FM.
Examples: provide text suggestions to help draft objectives (values and environmental outcomes), policies, and rules (limits) in your regional plans, including how and monitoring could be achieved. It includes examples of how attributes and base line states, target attribute states, environmental flows and levels, and other criteria, where appropriate, can be written or presented help to achieve environmental outcomes.
Case studies: illustrate where the NPS-FM has been well applied (or not) throughout the country and provides national or international lessons to help implement the NPS-FM.
Evidence: provides relevant case law to support how the NPS-FM must be applied.
Resources: provide links to supporting literature and best information available to implement the NPS-FM.
TOOLS
[When available]
Examples
[When available]
CASE STUDIES
[When available]
EVIDENCE
Ngāti Kahungunu v Hawke’s Bay Regional Council [2015] NZNvC 50
In this appeal, Ngāti Kahungunu challenged Hawke’s Bay Regional Councils proposal to take an overall approach to manage water quality by allowing some areas to decline if others were improved. The Court explained that it is contrary to the RMA for regional councils to balance activities by allowing one site to degrade, even if they intend to improve another site.
Resources
Diagram outlining the connection between key components required to implement the NPS-FM.
