Challenges for freshwater science in policy development: reflections from the science–policy interface in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Resolving challenges at the science–policy interface is key to improving the management of cumulative effects of pressures in catchments to meet societal goals for freshwater ecosystem health and water quality. This paper briefly reviews shifts in freshwater policy in New Zealand over the last six years, identifies implications for demands on science, and then offers a framework of topics to help guide freshwater scientists better help water resource managers both develop and implement policy. Key themes include: (i) being clear about the various potential roles of scientists and the particular importance of the ‘honest broker’ role at the interface; (ii) informing policy decisions on capacity for resource use, by predicting consequences of future scenarios; and (iii) integrating and communicating multidisciplinary technical and community-derived knowledge, including handling inevitable uncertainty. Understanding and practising these topics will contribute to improved policy for managing cumulative effects and benefit New Zealand’s freshwaters and communities.

KEYWORDS:

• New Zealand
• freshwater policy
• cumulative effects
• science–policy interface
• uncertainty

Introduction

Many countries including New Zealand have struggled with the management of ‘wicked’ water problems such as allocation of water for use and the control of point and diffuse source discharges that can affect water quality (OECD 1996, 2012). The Resource Management Act 1991 (the RMA) is the principal framework for freshwater management in New Zealand, which seeks to manage the effects of human activities on natural and physical resources. Under the RMA, there is a hierarchy of national, regional and local institutions (ministries and councils) responsible for developing and implementing policy documents (national and regional policies, and regional and local level resource management plans). These documents must each help give more specific effect to the generally broader policies from the layer above.

While the RMA has been lauded for integrating air, water and land management in one place (e.g. Pyle et al. 2001; Gow 2014), the RMA has also been criticised for not providing adequate national policy and direction, contributing to development of weak regional resource management plans (from here, plans) in the first decade or so of its implementation (e.g. Memon 1997; OAG 2005), and inadequate handling of cumulative effects of resource use on the environment (e.g. Oram 2007; Peart 2007; Milne 2008). During the same period, there were increasing pressures on New Zealand’s natural resources, increasing public concern at freshwater degradation (Hughey et al. 2010) and calls for efforts to rehabilitate degraded ecosystems (MfE 2016a). In response freshwater researchers (from universities, crown research institutes or within regional councils) in New Zealand embarked on fundamental research programmes to fill gaps in biophysical understanding to better manage the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on aquatic environments, and improve the success of aquatic rehabilitation efforts.

In parallel to advances in fundamental biophysical science, the national and regional policy framework was evolving in ways that has implications for how science is communicated and used in water resource management decision-making. For those scientists directly involved in policy development (i.e. at the science–policy interface) there is a need to act as integrators and translators to ensure that science is addressing the right management questions, and that policy-makers understand the implications and limitations of science information. However scientists can play different roles at this interface. Pielke (2007) analysed the various roles of science in policy and identified four roles that scientists might choose or be asked to play: the ‘Pure Scientist’, the ‘Issue Advocate’, the ‘Science Arbiter’ and the ‘Honest Broker’. Pielke suggested that while all four are valid roles it is important that scientists explicitly recognise which role they are playing and the implications of that role.

In this paper we reflect on our experience as action research scientists and practitioners working on the ground at the freshwater science–policy interface in New Zealand. We first briefly review recent shifts in regional and national policy. We then identify key implications of those policy shifts for science and scientists, especially for those operating in roles at the science–policy interface. We then offer our view on important areas for improved science contribution and recommend three areas in particular where improved focus may assist future policy development. Our purpose is to help guide other scientists on ways to effectively contribute to policy development for managing cumulative effects under New Zealand’s freshwater policy framework.

Recent New Zealand regional and national freshwater policy shifts

A review of regional and national freshwater policy development in New Zealand since 2000 can be found in Rouse et al. (2016). Since around 2009 there have been some rapid shifts in regional and national policy, and in management practice, stimulated by a few key events.

A consequence of the aforementioned weaknesses in early (i.e. 1990s) plans was that much freshwater decision-making happened through case-by-case assessments of environmental effects of individual proposed activities. Many regional level councils (from here, councils) made progress in the 1990s and early 2000s with management of water quantity and point source pollution, particularly by setting environmental minimum flows in plans to protect instream habitat, and standards for point discharges. During the early 2000s some councils led the way in trying to tackle cumulative effects by developing more structured and strategic plans, incorporating measurable objectives and standards for water quantity and for point and diffuse source quality management. However even these detailed plans struggled to manage cumulative effects on water quality (OAG 2011). They also took a long time to develop; a national study (Devlin 2008) found that the average time required before a plan became operative was 8.2 years.

The Ministry for the Environment commissioned several reports to help understand barriers to more strategic freshwater regional planning, in particular one on case law regarding limits for freshwater quality and environmental flows (Simpson Grierson 2010), and one to help clarify terminology and outline some of the technical considerations involved (Norton et al. 2010). This latter report summarised and defined concepts such as measurable or numeric objectives, and capacity for resource use of freshwater systems, based on theory and council practice at that time. The concept of capacity for resource use requires a step away from the sequential case-by-case consideration of effects of individual activities to ask instead what the system-wide capacity is for multiple different cumulative uses. It involves pre-emptive determination of the amount of resource use that can be accommodated in a catchment (i.e. limits to resource use) while still achieving agreed environmental objectives. The idea is that establishing such objectives and limits provides greater prior clarity for would-be resource users and environmental outcomes, and defines acceptable cumulative effects.

In parallel, and inextricably linked with the regional level journey, there have been changes in national freshwater policy. An influential group at the national level has been the Land and Water Forum (LAWF), formed in 2008 by a number of environmental and industry groups to try to resolve differences over freshwater management that had arisen and persisted through the adversarial approach of early RMA implementation. This Forum involves over 60 stakeholder groups as well as active observers from local and central government, and has central government backing. LAWF has contributed to a major shift in how freshwater planning is done in New Zealand through a series of intensive collaborative meetings. The Forum gained government support and their first report (LAWF 2010) was a driving force behind the promulgation of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (from here, NPS-FM) introduced in 2011 (New Zealand Government 2011) and subsequently amended in 2014 (New Zealand Government 2014). Subsequent reports (LAWF 2012a, 2012b, 2015) have continued to provide input to freshwater policy direction, not least in the area of collaborative processes to establish freshwater objectives and limits to resource use. Most recently LAWF has commented on the next generation of challenges including matters relating to management within limits, such as the concept of assimilative capacity and potential for discharge allocations (LAWF 2015; MfE 2016a).

The fundamental shift brought by the NPS-FM was the mandatory requirement for councils to set objectives and associated limits to resource use, both for water quantity and quality, embracing capacity-based management. The 2014 amendments were intended to provide greater direction and support to help councils apply the NPS-FM in a consistent way across the country (MfE 2015a). A set of national values were provided, with two of these (human health and ecosystem health) being made compulsory across all regions. A National Objectives Framework process was provided to guide objective and limit setting, including an initial suite of compulsory attributes to be used for setting objectives for compulsory values, and numeric definition of the national ‘bottom-line’ state for those attributes (MfE 2015b, 2016a). In addition, a collaborative process for regional planning was suggested and supported through subsequent national level government guidance material (MfE 2015a, 2015c).

Implications of the new policy and evolving demands on science

The evolving freshwater policy and planning scene in New Zealand has had implications for many areas of our science and our scientists. Our focus in this paper though is on the particularly significant implications for those scientists directly involved at the science–policy interface. We focus here on the two arguably most influential developments:

• the shift from predominantly case-by-case assessments of effects to an approach based on pre-emptive definition of the capacity of natural resources for use, that is, limit setting in plans made mandatory by the NPS-FM; and

• the shift towards collaborative processes for resource management decision-making, as piloted regionally by some councils and at the national level by the LAWF processes (2009–2016) and now widely encouraged for regional planning.

These policy shifts have placed evolving demands on scientists over the last decade. Our action research at the science–policy interface over the same period has involved active participation in the policy development at both national and regional levels, and as practitioners assisting councils to actually implement the new national policy (NPS-FM) by first setting and then implementing limits in plans. Through this experience we have identified and characterised challenges to implementing a capacity-based (i.e. limits) approach, and also challenges with using more collaborative processes to do so (Norton et al. 2010; Rouse & Norton 2013; Rouse et al. 2013). We have also progressively identified and begun to characterise solutions to those challenges through time. At this stage in New Zealand’s evolving approach to freshwater management we suggest that solutions lie within all of the interrelated areas in the conceptual framework offered in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A conceptual framework to help guide scientists contributing to freshwater policy development under New Zealand’s NPS-FM.

It is not our intention in this paper to discuss all of the topics shown in Figure 1 as each is substantial in its own right and an overview is provided elsewhere (Rouse et al., 2016). In the remainder of this paper we focus on three interrelated themes we suggest are crucial at this stage for improving the contribution of scientists to policy development under New Zealand’s NPS-FM. These are:

1. being clear about the potential roles of science and the particular role of the ‘honest broker’ in evidence-informed policy development;

2. helping to inform the identification of capacity-based limits to resource uses, specifically by using scenarios to predict and describe consequences of options; and

3. increasing the attention given to multidisciplinary integration and communication, including handling inevitably uncertain information.

Theme 1: Being clear about the roles of scientists in collaborative freshwater policy development

The four potential roles for scientists identified earlier (Pielke 2007) are shown in Figure 2. The implications of various potential roles in advising policy development in New Zealand have also been addressed by the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman, from both an international and New Zealand perspective (Gluckman 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015). Gluckman reminds us that science is only one input into policy-making, which is a complex and non-linear process that must balance social values and political perspectives in the weighing of decisions. However he notes that the science evidence-base is vital, and needs to be kept separate (i.e. not conflated with) the values that may be debated as part of policy-making (Gluckman 2013). Both Pielke (2007) and Gluckman (2014) argue that the policy process is helped if it has access to intermediary knowledge brokers (i.e. science advisors) and, as Gluckman puts it ‘the preferred position for the professional researcher embedded within the policy process is as an honest broker explaining what is known, what is not known, and thus the implications of the options that emerge’ (Gluckman 2013, p. 12).

Figure 2. Four potential roles for scientists (After Pielke 2007).

Individual researchers may choose to advocate for particular positions based on their expertise, but Gluckman (2013) warns that they risk losing their objectivity in the course of advocacy. While it is doubtful that scientists can be truly independent objective advisors and not influence the politics of a process in any way (Pielke 2007), it nevertheless is arguable that scientists can, and probably should, aspire to the honest broker role when advising a freshwater policy process.

Our experience as practitioners helping councils run collaborative plan development processes for freshwater management (e.g. Macdonald et al. 2014; Norton et al. 2015; Norton & Robson 2015) is that it greatly assists if at least some scientists identifiably play the honest broker role. Some aspects of the honest broker role are familiar to many New Zealand scientists because the role is consistent with the attributes required of an expert witness operating in a resource management hearing under the RMA, made explicit through the New Zealand Environment Court’s Code of Conduct for Expert Witnesses. However in collaborative processes we suggest it is important that these scientists operate in accordance with an honest broker role from the beginning of the process, not just in hearings at the end. Not doing so is likely to lead to failures of trust which hamper collaborative processes. It is useful if scientists participating in policy development processes are constantly aware of how presentation styles, analytical frameworks, models and modes of thinking influence what kind of knowledge is considered valid by others for policy development.

Having scientists identifiably playing the honest broker role also helps to transparently separate the process of providing objective technical information from the social process of making value judgements. This is inextricably linked to the likelihood of success with the approach to identifying capacity-based limits that we describe next.

Theme 2: Informing the identification of capacity-based limits by describing effects of scenarios

Capacity for use and environmental ‘bottom-lines’

With the introduction of the NPS-FM, the fundamental questions from New Zealand policy-makers to scientists changed. Rather than ‘What is the effect of this particular individual water take or discharge of contaminants?’ for decisions on individual proposed activities, the need to set objectives and limits in plans meant the questions instead became ‘How many of these water takes and/or discharges of contaminants in combination could this catchment accommodate while maintaining the desired environmental state?’, or in other words ‘What is the “capacity” of the catchment to accommodate or assimilate cumulative effects?’.

New Zealand’s NPS-FM embodies the notion of making choices about the capacity of the environment for resource use. It does this by requiring the development of indicators (called ‘attributes’) to be used to numerically define optional levels of environmental state, including minimum acceptable state (the national ‘bottom-lines’) for certain key values of concern (currently ecosystem health and human health; MfE 2015b). Developing such attributes and providing optional levels above bottom lines has been, and continues to be, a considerable challenge for scientists and others involved in the policy development process. Defining the bottom lines at national level for a short list of compulsory attributes has necessitated consideration of the wide range of water body types and resource use contexts that exist across New Zealand. It has also involved national value judgements on the level at which the bottom lines are set, thus to some extent constraining the discretion available for councils to make such choices at the regional or local level. Not surprisingly this has been challenging and contentious, and is not yet complete; future additions to the bottom lines are anticipated (MfE 2016a).

Similar challenges exist for councils who have responsibility for making value judgement decisions, often at catchment scale, that establish objectives at or above the national bottom lines for the nationally compulsory attributes. Councils must also develop other attributes relevant for their regional circumstances and establish objectives for those accordingly. Furthermore councils must set limits to resource use (e.g. takes and discharges) that ensure their chosen objectives will be achieved. Together the chosen objectives and associated limits are designed to quantify the capacity of the environment for cumulative uses.

Bearing in mind the honest broker role described above, it is clear that such questions of capacity can’t be answered by scientists alone. This is because the answers depend on the desired environmental state (or freshwater objective in NPS-FM terms) that is determined using value judgements to balance capacity for resource use on one hand whilst sustaining all competing values at some identified appropriate level. We suggest based on our experience in recent processes underway in New Zealand that scientists can best help this process objectively by describing consequences of options, and one way of doing this is to explore future scenarios as we describe next.

Helping inform by predicting consequences of future scenarios

One important way that scientists can help inform policy choices when establishing objectives and limits is through scenario testing. For scientists this means making predictions, often using various types of models (e.g. Anastasiadis et al. 2013; Parshotam et al. 2013; Fraser et al. 2014) or analytical inference, of what the future could look like under various resource management scenarios.

Scenario testing provides an important approach to consider the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems, because scenarios can be used to explore multiple stressors (such as the integrated effects of water quantity and quality limits), as well as multiple values, and at multiple time and spatial scales. Scenarios are a valuable approach for exploring information and options with diverse community audiences. Scenarios, in combination with collaborative processes generally, are a recognised approach for tackling ‘wicked’ problems in land and water resource management (Berkett & Newton 2015; MfE 2016b).

We suggest, based on our experience in recent processes, that scenario testing lies at the heart of effective limit setting for sustainable water quality and quantity management (e.g. Rouse & Norton 2013; Norton et al. 2015). Indeed consideration of scenarios is part of the freshwater management process described in NPS-FM implementation guidance (MfE 2015a) and scenario testing has formed a key part of recent processes exploring limits at both national level (e.g. PCE 2013; MfE 2013) and by councils (e.g. Rouse et al. 2013; Palliser & Elliott 2013; Elliott et al. 2014; Snelder et al. 2014; Norton & Robson 2015).

Predicting the future is of course uncertain, and identifying and reducing the uncertainties through improved predictive models and other techniques is a key challenge justifying further attention. However some uncertainty in predictions is inevitable and this justifies acknowledgement and attention in its own right, as depicted in Figure 1 and described further in the next section.

Theme 3: Increasing emphasis on integration and communication, including of uncertainty

Integration

The NPS-FM requires integrated management at a number of levels and so integration generally is fundamental to the role of science in New Zealand freshwater policy development. In a capacity-based limit-setting process it is necessary to integrate:

• the multiple technical disciplines required to predict consequences of scenarios for multiple values, including multiple biophysical disciplines, social and cultural sciences, and economics;

• the implications of resource use for land, groundwater, rivers, lakes, estuaries and the coast, that is, spatial integration from the mountains to the sea;

• indigenous Maori knowledge (mātauranga Māori) and community information;

• land-use planning at local, regional and national levels;

• water quantity and quality management, and the cumulative effects and interactions of multiple stressors, at regional and catchment scales; and

• beyond the sciences to the disciplines of policy, law and community participation including facilitation, negotiation and mediation.

It should be clear then that integration helps address the challenge of managing cumulative effects (Fenemor et al. 2011), not least because the understanding of multiple stressors and the accumulating effects of these on different types of waterbody requires integration from the outset. Advancing knowledge and tool development in each technical discipline means the integration challenge for policy-makers is becoming increasingly complex. Experts within each discipline will need to broaden their interdisciplinary appreciation and communication. Even so there remains a need for some people to specialise as ‘integrators’ across all relevant fields to help move beyond discipline-specific approaches – the notion of transdisciplinary science – which necessarily comes at the expense of depth of attention given to any one traditional technical specialist field. Where this integration role in the past has largely been performed by planners, we argue that the technical complexity of contemporary freshwater policy-making in New Zealand requires specialist integrators to perform this role, working alongside technical experts, planners and community process facilitators (Macdonald et al. 2014). Furthermore we argue it is desirable that such integrators also play an honest broker role.

Communication

While communication has always been important at the science–policy interface, the recent shift to more collaborative processes in New Zealand has accentuated the importance of effective technical communication (Rouse & Norton 2013). Recent experience by some councils is that communicating complex technical information (including uncertainties) credibly and accessibly for a wide audience is critical (Macdonald et al. 2014; Rouse et al. 2014). Challenges we have observed as practitioners include integration between disciplines as discussed above, but also the use of consistent terminology, translation and simplification of the information for diverse audiences.

Many terms used in limit-setting processes are used with different meanings due to the evolution of such processes across multiple technical disciplines as well as fields of law, policy and public participation. The inconsistent use of terminology continues to cause misunderstandings between professional disciplines, stakeholders and the public, although the NPS-FM has reduced this problem by providing definitions for some key terms.

There is also arguably an increasing need for science advisors or integrators to translate information to a simplified level using more plain language, a task that is uncomfortable for some technical experts more familiar with operating in traditional science fora. Our experience is that visual summary communication tools can assist (e.g. Fenemor 2014; MfE 2016b). For example we have used a matrix to summarise the predicted likelihood that various scenarios will achieve environmental outcomes the community wants (MfE 2016b). Such summarised presentation can be useful for debating options and exploring solutions, provided the simplification is acknowledged and can be supported by underlying technical detail which may be required in some situations, such as inevitably at resource management hearings.

Uncertainty

Handling uncertain information has been explicitly recognised as a key challenge for policy development in New Zealand (e.g. Gluckman 2015) and several commentators have assessed the way that uncertainty is handled (e.g. PCE 2003, 2004; Cameron 2006; Rouse & Norton 2010; Gluckman 2015; Norton et al. 2015). In the context of freshwater policy-making under the NPS-FM there is uncertainty both in our understanding of the current state of the environment (e.g. through uncertainty of measurements) and in the modelled future outcomes that policies are seeking to achieve. In collaborative processes uncertainty is even more challenging because it must be communicated simply enough for non-technical audiences to understand.

Handling uncertainty in policy development is a substantial topic in its own right; our purpose here is to emphasise the importance of the topic in our conceptual framework (Figure 1) rather than provide detail. Based on our experiences at the science–policy interface in New Zealand we have argued elsewhere (Norton et al., 2015) for a three-stage approach (Figure 3) that involves assessing and reducing uncertainty where practical, communicating uncertainty and risk with the community and decision-makers, and thereby incorporating uncertainty into decision-making (MfE 2016b).

Figure 3. Three stages for managing uncertainty when implementing the NPS-FM (Source: Norton et al. 2015).

Conclusions

There have been significant shifts in both national and regional level freshwater management policy in New Zealand that have changed the demands on science and scientists, particularly those operating at or near the science–policy interface. Key policy shifts include the nationally imposed mandatory requirement for councils to set capacity-based limits to resource use in plans, and the shift towards more collaborative processes for doing so.

We have identified a conceptual framework of topics to help guide scientists who contribute to plan development under the new national policy (Figure 1). Key themes we suggest are crucial for improving the contribution of scientists at this stage are:

1. being clear about the potential roles of scientists and the particular importance of the ‘honest broker’ role at the science–policy interface;

2. informing the setting of capacity-based limits by describing consequences of scenarios; and

3. focussing attention on integration and communication, including of uncertainty.

Based on our experience as practitioners at the science–policy interface we suggest that such implementation of the new policy will help begin addressing the challenge of managing cumulative effects of multiple stressors on our freshwater environments.

More broadly, we suggest that the role of scientists in these processes will continue to evolve. In addition to the traditional role of ‘expert and source of knowledge in the room’, we suggest biophysical scientists will need to become members of multidisciplinary teams, working alongside communities, planners, social scientists and economists to contribute effectively to regional and national policy development. Some scientists will be called upon to act as ‘honest brokers’, elucidating evidence-informed policy options by predicting the consequences of future scenarios for multiple values, and integrating, translating and communicating multidisciplinary information, including uncertainties, for public use in collaborative policy-making.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mal Green, researchers in the cumulative effects team, and other colleagues who have contributed towards the development of our thinking in these areas over the last ten years. We also thank numerous staff in regional councils around the country (in particular Environment Canterbury, Horizons, Gisborne District Council, Environment Southland, Greater Wellington Regional Council, Environment Waikato and Bay of Plenty Regional Council) for welcoming us into their teams and helping progress ideas for policy development and its implementation on the ground. Thanks also to two reviewers and our editor for suggesting significant improvements to the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment under contract C01X1005, Management of the cumulative effects of stressors on aquatic environments.