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August 30, 2024
Framework Supports Regional Council Planners to Explore the Impact of Changing Land Use
A new, easy-to-use assessment tool provides a consistent way to evaluate and explore different scenarios about future regional development, without putting a shovel into the ground.
Land-use change is a complex – and occasionally divisive – issue, which has interconnected impacts on society, culture, the economy, and environment. Existing options for assessing those impacts can be time-consuming, with most involving costly, one-off exercises tied to legal or regulatory processes.
Our Land and Water researchers saw this as an opportunity to develop something new and evidence-led. They developed an easy-to-use assessment tool that provides land managers with a consistent way to evaluate and explore different scenarios about future regional development, without putting a shovel into the ground.
“There's often a disconnect between really sophisticated tools and the actual needs of policymakers within regional councils,” says Dr John Saunders, one of the lead researchers from the Agribusiness Economics & Research Unit (AERU) at Lincoln University. “By going out and speaking to those people, we could ask what they felt they needed, in order to be able to make decisions.”
The requirement for a truly integrated assessment tool – one that could consider the implications of land-use policies for te Taiao, the national purse, and for us as a society – became clear early on.
After 18 months of research, development and rigorous testing with project partners at Greater Wellington, Otago, and Waikato Regional Councils, the Integrated Impact Assessment Framework was launched in February 2024. This tool provides a valuable starting point to assess the interconnected impacts of land-use change, at a district and regional level. With data scored on a scale from high levels of confidence to low levels of confidence, it offers decision-makers a risk-free way to test out policy ideas, before implementing them in the real world.
Two case study regions of Ashburton and Mosgiel allow users to explore the tool’s functionality. These demonstrate the impact of land-use changes associated with a reduction of nitrate leaching in Ashburton district, and of changing agricultural land to urban development in Mosgiel.
More recent updates to the framework allow users from any region to import their own land-use data tables – accessible from Stats NZ – to the framework, to increase the utility and accuracy of the tool’s outputs in that region.
As part of MBIE’s Circular Economy and Bioeconomy programme, Our Land and Water researchers worked with the Ministry to develop a bespoke version of the framework. MBIE is now using this tool in-house to explore the various impacts of land-use change around the motu.
The team are keen to work with more councils and land managers to adapt the framework and extend its geographic reach. Programme lead and AERU Director, Distinguished Professor Caroline Saunders says, “It would be great to make the tool available for decision-makers in all regions. If we can work directly with a council, it means we can provide additional functions related to their specific land-use needs and offer bespoke support.”
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