Simon Upton Photo: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/eu2017ee/35725837402flickr]
The Parliamentary commissioner for the environment has told a group of MPs there is no way to know if parts of the environment are getting worse or better based on the state of New Zealand's data.
Simon Upton called on MPs on the Environment Select Committee on Thursday to spend money improving the quality of environmental data, which he said would help both land developers and environmental protection.
"We simply do not have the quality of environmental information we need to make claims either that things are getting better or getting worse."
There were environmental trends where it was possible to know which way progress was going, but many where it was not, he said.
"On something like biodiversity, where we know we have pretty significant pressures across a whole range of living classes of biota, if we knew more, frankly, we'd be in a better position to know just how close to the edge of the cliff we are or we aren't."
"If we don't know more, then fairly logically people say 'well, don't we need to err on the side of caution,' because if we don't really know, this might be the last and then we're in big trouble."
"This is why people shouldn't see pure environmental data gathering as a cost, it can actually make life a lot easier in your consenting situations."
The commissioner wanted better sharing of information gathered by Crown Research Institutes, universities, developers, insurance companies, councils and government departments.
"It's collected in silos it is expensive to access, in some cases it is not even not even accessible."
"My plea to anybody in Parliament who has any influence in this area is please make this a priority, it is probably the single most important priority in the environment portfolio. We don't have the information to make the claims we'd like to make," said Upton, during a lengthy exchange from MPs across all parties.
"You have to invest in the system to make it work and the investment in that system has been plateau for years and years. Governments have come and gone they have spent huge sums of money on all sorts of environmental stuff, this has never been sexy, it has never been a priority so i'd say if you are looking at your spending priorities this should have a higher claim than some other things."
"I'm sorry to say, there's no way you can get away from the need to invest in this stuff, it won't happen by magic."
He called out the lack of LiDAR satellite 3D mapping of much of the country's productive land as an example of gaps in information collection.
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