Ranking New Zealand river values

Ken HugheyDepartment of Environmental Management

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Acknowledgements

A big thanks to:

• Mary-Anne Baker of TDC for first raising the question;

• FRST, for funding this Envirolink Project;

• The multiple participants who have worked together, and ‘separately’ on this project.

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The challenge• Need a ‘prioritisation’ tool now, for multiple

statutory and non statutory purposes.• A tool that works regionally but also has national

level application potential.• A tool that will work with the best available

information.• A tool that is user friendly.• A tool that, when applied, provides defensible

(e.g., Environment Court) results.

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The approach• We established a project steering group.

• Initiated a literature review. Some work within values, e.g., whitewater kayaking (but nearly 20 years ago); the WONI project, but of limited value.

• No one, it seems, had developed a system to look objectively/quantitatively or in a standardised, user friendly way within or across a range of values.

• We then much debated and developed a draft methodology and undertook a trial with salmonid angling in TDC.

• We have applied the draft methodology to a range of other values at selected councils.

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The values being tested• Salmonids – Tasman: done

• Irrigation – Canterbury: draft completed; peer reviewed, but still awaiting one report

• Birdlife – Canterbury: done

• Native fish – Wellington: in progress

• Iwi – Southland: in progress

• Natural character – Marlborough: draft completed; being peer reviewed

• Swimming – Manawatu: draft completed; being peer reviewed

• Whitewater kayaking – West Coast: draft completed; being peer reviewed

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The method – multi-criteria driven, standardised numeric scale, and expert panel based approach• Very few in- or out-of-stream ‘values’ have full or up-to-date,

comparable or quantitative, data, either nationally or regionally – notable exception is F&G NZ’s salmonid angling surveys.

• No contemporary data for some values, e.g., swimming or natural character, while others are mixed, e.g., birdlife.

• Used the best available information - filled the gaps with expert judgement.

• Method built around key attributes of river values, populating these where possible with real data, and then converting this information to numeric scales for ranking values = a form of multi criteria analysis.

• Ultimately this led to us using expert panels and best available information as the cornerstones of the project.

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The method – operationalisingAssessment criteria • Step 1: define river value categories and river segments• Step 2: identify all of the value’s attributes – economic, social, environmental, cultural• Step 3: select and describe primary attributes – reduce to a list of <10• Step 4: identify indicators – choose objective over subjective

Determining significance• Step 5: determine indicator thresholds – quantify these where possible and think nationally• Step 6: apply indicators and their thresholds – convert all to 1=low; 2=medium; 3= high• Step 7: weight the primary attributes – preferably equal weighting, but otherwise as

needed• Step 8: determine river significance – sum total and determine overall importance, e.g., in

relation to water conservation order criteria• Step 9: outline other factors relevant to the assessment of significance

Method review• Step 10: review assessment process and identify future information needs, e.g., survey

needs

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Lessons to date• The selection of expert panels (including lay experts) is difficult and

challenging – ultimately, credibility is extremely important.• People (scientists, resource managers) sometimes sceptical/hesitant

until they have worked through the process – to date we have found ‘working through’ mostly removes this concern.

• In any region every river should be listed and subjected to a preliminary scanning exercise to reduce the size of the task, i.e., based on the best available information which rivers are relatively of no importance for this value? Such an exercise allows the final output to be contextualised within the full suite of rivers in the region.

• The method seems to work, i.e., we are producing lists that seem to make sense!

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The where-to-from here question(s)• Will the sum of regional lists equal a national list for each

value? Answer – probably yes but not all regions are participating and so far we have only applied the method to 8 values each applied once to a single region.

• Can we legitimately compare the different rankings for the different values? Answer - probably yes, as demonstrated in a , but this has not been done formally and is not part of the project.

• Are there policy implications implicit in the rankings? Answer – Yes, but we haven’t much time to think of these.

• Other questions? Yes, and many of these have been tabled and others should arise from the presentations yet to come.

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