ABSTRACT
The concept of integrated management (IM) of natural resources lies at the heart of environmental paradigms in as much as it recognises that the use or abuse of one resource will have flow-on effects on all other resources. It acknowledges that in its simplest form the environment is not made up of component parts, a view that has its roots in economic concepts of resources, but is instead made up of interdependent parts that relate to and have impacts on each other. In the New Zealand context this was neatly summed up in the Environment Court case, NZ Shipping Federation v. Marlborough DC (W038/06), in which IM was deemed to ‘involve the generic integration of broadly defined resources at a wide regional level. The concept recognises that the protection of one resource may have positive or negative effects on the other’. In incorporating the concept of IM in the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), its authors were creating the basis of a new style of planning, given that it would apply to the country as a whole through the actions of the regional councils, with national policy statements (NPS) and national environmental standards (NES) ensuring a unified approach to common issues. Nevertheless, like much of the RMA the actual process of instituting IM was left to local authorities to work out on their own. Given that in the early years of the RMA’s existence there was little or no assistance from central government or NPS and NES, it would prove to be a difficult exercise.
