Development along New Zealand’s coastlines often has poor outcomes for indigenous marine habitats and biodiversity. We need to find a balance between providing for and protecting human interests along the coast and preserving and giving resilience to the marine environment. This issue is exacerbated by limited guidance and evidence for the efficacy of marine offset and compensation efforts; a consequence of having limited baseline information and large gaps in our ecological knowledge of marine species, habitats, ecosystems, and related processes.
Regional authorities in NZ have a responsibility to maintain and improve environmental health and there is strong national direction to protect and restore indigenous marine biodiversity and coastal processes. If we continue to allow the huge range of coastal development projects to proceed without robust or strategic guidance and advice on how to effectively compensate for impacts, we risk the loss of significant areas of intertidal habitat, and irreversible impacts to our subtidal communities and coastal processes.
We will present on a multi-agency project to provide a stock take of current knowledge and tools relating to marine mitigation, offsetting, and compensation, and identify gaps, with an emphasis on approaches to offsetting and compensation for addressing residual adverse effects.