KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's reputation as a clean green country remains intact but is under siege, a stocktake of the country's environmental status shows.
The Environment 2007 report, released yesterday, said the purity of New Zealand's soil, air and water was under pressure and some aspects of the environment - notably the quality of fresh water, fish stocks and numbers of some native species - appeared to be getting worse.
However, the report - a sequel to a similar assessment released in 1997 - found some steps taken to reduce air pollution had had a measurable impact on smog, recycling had become more widespread, and more vulnerable land was now officially protected.
"The clean green image of New Zealand, in relative terms, is something which is fair. We want to maintain that, though, not only relatively but in absolute terms, and that requires action," Environment Minister Trevor Mallard said yesterday.
"If we continue the way we are in a number of areas, yes, it would be under threat. But that is something which is a long term thing and I am absolutely certain that we can take the action necessary to reverse it, but that will involve sacrifices for all of us.
"That will involve all of us both as individuals and businesses, as farmers, as local authorities, not being able to do the things that are dirty that we've been doing in the past."
Mr Mallard said tighter regulations would be put in place to ensure water quality was preserved, and those rules would allow regional councils to tackle sources of pollution in waterways, such as farm fertilisers and stock run-off.
"Already there is work happening around the Taupo basin and in the Waikato that is going to lead to standards that I think will lead to the intensification [of farming] ceasing and in some cases people may have to move backwards," Mr Mallard said.
On an international scale New Zealand was a green nation but more should still be done to improve the local environment, Mr Mallard said.
Greens co-leader Russel Norman was scathing of the report, which he said showed Labour had done nothing in the past eight years to improve on the previous National government's handling of the environment.
"Not only have they failed to solve the problems threatening New Zealand's biodiversity, which were the key problems identified in the 1997 report, we now have the addition of major problems of environmental degradation caused by land use intensification and increased roading transport, which are also driving water quality problems and greenhouse emissions," Dr Norman said.
National environment spokesman Nick Smith said New Zealand was going to have to significantly lift its environmental performance to live up to the tourism industry's "100 per cent pure" branding.
Local Government New Zealand president Basil Morrison said the main issues raised in the report were not new for councils, which already had strategies in place to improve their environments.
"However, reversing the downward trends, particularly in the areas of water quality, air quality and biodiversity, cannot be solved by local government alone," Mr Morrison said.
The report's finding that households had a big impact on the country's ecology showed individual actions could help improve the environment.
* AIR
New Zealand has good air quality most of the time, but emissions cause pollution problems in 30 locations. 53 per cent of the population lives in those locations.
On a per capita basis, New Zealand is the world's 12th largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
* WATER
61 per cent of 1000 monitored groundwater sites have normal nitrate levels, but the remainder are tainted. At a fifth of 520 monitored sites the water is unfit for consumption.
Water allocation for irrigation has increased from 50 per cent in 1999 to 77 per cent in 2006.
* SEA
15 per cent of assessed fish stocks are believed to be below target levels.
Of 16,000 marine species, 444 are listed as threatened. 62 per cent of ocean-going sea birds are listed as threatened.
* LAND
Native landscapes make up 50 per cent of land cover, pasture 39 per cent, and exotic forest 7 per cent.
Pastoral farming is New Zealand's largest human land use, at just over 37 per cent.
