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Sustainable Land Management Strategy

In 1996 the Government adopted a Sustainable Land Management Strategy. The purpose of the Strategy is to enable land users, and those who provide support and services to land users, to work together more effectively.

The Strategy defines the problem, sets out the priorities for action and states the outcomes that the Government seeks. It then describes what the Government can do to assist land users directly to improve land use practices, and what it can do by improving the support systems which underpin land management practice.

The Strategy recognises and is designed to complement, assist and strengthen the sustainable land management initiatives which regional councils have already undertaken as they exercise their responsibilities under the Resource Management Act.

The focal point for the Strategy is the land user. The Strategy promotes the encouragement of land users to continually improve and, in doing so, to incorporate the effects their businesses have on the land.

What New Zealand Farmers Are Doing

Increasingly, farmers are taking collective action on many land care issues. At least 55 “Landcare” or community based groups have formed throughout the country to address local problems. Projects these groups are working on include

  • land and water monitoring
  • pest and weed control
  • revegetation and research into alternative management techniques.

Many projects are being worked on in partnership with local authorities and research agencies. Federated Farmers, farm discussion groups and producer boards are also working on a variety of sustainable land care issues.

While some of these issues are significant to New Zealand as a whole, the path towards sustainable land use rests with individual farmers and how they respond to the problems.

The nature and scale of these problems will vary from farm to farm. Some can be dealt with by an individual farmer using existing information. Others, for example a water quality problem, will require a partnership of some kind, e.g. neighbours working together or a group of farmers working with a researcher and a local authority.

Other problems, for example, arresting soil decline in parts of the South Island High Country, require new skills and information.

While partnerships of one kind or another have been a feature of dealing with these issues over the past fifty years, recent changes in market conditions and laws such as the Resource Management and Biosecurity Acts signal a need for a new kind of collective action and cooperation.

The Government has established the Sustainable Management Fund to further encourage and support collective projects. The water and soil section of this fund is aimed specifically at community initiated projects for sustainable land use or reducing non point source water pollution. For more information on these projects visit the Sustainable Management Fund project results.

Last updated: 17 September 2007