ABSTRACT
In a world almost overwhelmed by articles, books and popular polemics on sustainable development or the more popular shorthand term of sustainability, one might ask whether there is room for yet another book on the issue. The answer from the author’s point of view is obviously yes, but not only from a position of self-interest. In 1991, New Zealand, after several years of almost hectic consultation processes, including discussion, toll-free telephone lines and innumerable publications attempting to engage the wider community in the creation of the new legislation, the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) emerged. In international terms this act represented the first real attempt to institute a planning system that was built on a concept of sustainability, even if it did not go to quite the extent of attempting to implement the relatively new concept of sustainable development. The Deputy Prime Minister and driving force behind the Resource Management Bill, Dr Geoffrey Palmer, called it ‘the most massive law reform effort I have ever taken part in’, and went on to describe sustainable management on which the new legislation was to be based as meaning ‘managing our use of the environment so we don’t end up with species extinction, over-exploitation of resources and expensive pollution cleanups’ (Palmer 1990: 93). It was a worthy and perceptive sentiment that seemed to signal that New Zealand was about to demonstrate to the world how at least a limited concept of sustainability, which existed in theoretical form only, could become the basis for all laws pertaining to planning and the environment. As a practitioner at the time it was a difficult concept to question, as such questioning left one open to the charge that you were captured by the past and were unwilling to stride into a brave new and better world. The new approach was a challenge to the planning profession, which had to adapt
to it or face becoming superfluous. Given these sentiments and the real political commitment at the time it is difficult to comprehend how by the early twenty-first century the same legislation was represented in the election campaigns of 2005 and 2008 as ‘a roadblock to development’ and later by Dr Don Brash, an economist, former leader of the National Party and head of the Productivity Committee, as a ‘pain in the neck’ (Radio NZ, 22 July 2009). Clearly the great experiment in sustainability had hit its own roadblock, and after some nineteen years of the new legislation’s operation there was still not complete support for what, in 1991, had been very advanced concepts and policy. The political ambivalence to the act rapidly appeared and the issues with its implementation are demonstrated by the number of times it has been amended – seventeen times in nineteen years, with further changes always expected.
