New Zealand aims to clean up environmental monitoring

The New Zealand government Thursday announced plans to lift its environment monitoring into line with other developed nations with a proposed law requiring independent environmental reporting. Environment Minister Amy Adams said she was introducing the Environmental Reporting Bill to "mandate credible environmental information that paints an accurate picture, so the debate can be about the environmental issues themselves, not about whether the reporting is accurate, comparable or representative." The bill set out what information must be reported and when, and would ensure the reports were independent and had scientific integrity, Adams said in a statement. The environmental reporting system would provide comprehensive information on five key environmental domains -- air, climate and atmosphere, freshwater, marine and land -- with biodiversity as a theme across all the domains. One environmental domain report would be released every six months, and a comprehensive synthesis report covering all environmental domains would be released every three years. New Zealand is one of a minority of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group of developed countries with no legal requirement for independent reporting on the state of the environment, and the country has been wracked with debate over the degradation of its waterways and other environmental controversies.