Environment commission has new role to fill

Press, 23 June 1978, Page 12

Environment commission has new role to fill

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

L in Wellington

The decision by the Government to continue with the Commission for the Environment, albeit with an altered role, will be widely welcomed. It has been feared in some quarters that the Government’s review of the commission’s functions might lead to its disbai.ding as a department, and that its surviving functions would be apportioned elsewhere, A promise in its 1975 Genera! Election manifesto “to increase the commission's educational role and to simplify the environmental impact procedures without diminishing the rights of public participation’’ made it highly unlikely that the National Government would close down the commission. Having secured the Government’s permission to change its role will, however, be the easier half of the battle for the commission. Details of its new role released by the Minister for the Environment (Mr V. S. Young) now give the commission the practical problem of implementing them.

One of its new roles will be to give greater emphasis to the oversight of other departmental environmental policies and operations. Tact and diplomacy will be needed to do this effectively without so irritating other Government departments as to reduce the value of the work done.

While a pleasant-seeming relationship may exist between heads of departments, it is not always within their power to ensure that the same harmony exists lower down in the ranks. The sin of “trespass” is a heinous one in the bureaucracy.

Then there is the pressing question jf how the commission will fit into the new Town and Country Planning legislation passed late last year and coming into operation now. Instead of being involved with environmental auditing at the end of the planning process, the commission will be involved in .he planning itself. It must .*eek an accommodation with the Nature Conservation Council, which already does this work.

Yet the commission has a double hurdle to leap. It must first become a part of the planning system, but it must to some extent remain an irritant within the system if it is to make the sort of impact intended for it. The commission will be ineffective if treated like a pariah by the other departments, and also if its relationship gets too cosy.

The commission is on firmer ground with its renewed mandate to initiate public discussions, seminars and debates. This sometimes innocuous work can be timeconsuming for the organisers, but also rewarding for the participants if the right people are found to discuss the right subjects.

New Zealand is not yet a part of the international talking circuit, which has the same people meeting in different places to discuss broadly the same subjects; public debate here can still be refreshing and informative for those involved.

But most important of all, the commission still has the power to audit environmental impact reports on Government projects. Even if there are likely to be fewer of these than in the recent past, the continued vesting of this power in the commission is reassuring -for everyone.

“Everyone” does not just refer to the environmentallyminded and ardent conservation groups, but to private and governmental developers as well. The < >mmission in the past may have been seen by some as a barrier to progress by its use of the audit technique, but, once past this barrier, the developer has been given a security no-one else could provide. If only because of this power, the commission deserved to survive its review by the Government. Those alarmed by the prospect of losing the commission, and so the exercise of this power, can now relax.