Progressing the consideration of indigenous biodiversity in farm planning processes in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Farm planning processes have long been based on land evaluation, and although this analysis conceptually includes other biotic and abiotic factors beyond just land, they have typically focused on soils and land-use capability. The need to broaden this scope to more explicitly include biodiversity, ecosystem service provision, and sustainability considerations has been internationally recognised. Indigenous terrestrial and aquatic features represent a considerable asset to the farm system yet, to date, farm planning processes in New Zealand have largely failed to account for this natural capital stock and its contribution to the current or future business. Substantial knowledge gaps and lack of empirical data across many biodiversity metrics, limited institutional capacity, and lack of investment and on-going costs, are all factors contributing to the lack of integration of biodiversity considerations in farm planning processes. The net effect is the on-going depletion and degradation of indigenous biodiversity on-farm. We do, however, have an existing mechanism, in the form of ‘whole farm plans’, that could be utilised to integrate biodiversity natural capital and its management into farm planning and we illustrate the feasibility of this approach using a case study from the Waikato Region.

KEYWORDS:

• Farm resilience
• indigenous flora and fauna
• natural capital
• sustainability
• whole farm plans

Acknowledgements

We thank James Bailey and Nicholas Singers for farm data and information from the restoration plan that formed the basis of the case study, and Peter Taylor and Mike Dodd for insightful comments on an early version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) under the Regenerating Hill Country Landscapes initiative and initial stages were supported by MBIE under the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Resource Management (BEST) project [grant number C09X1307].