The Environment
A Clean, Green Environment for all New Zealanders
New Zealand's clean, green image needs to be carefully protected and nurtured. United Future is a green party with a clear vision of New Zealand as a country where we can all enjoy the clean air and safe water and trust that our exposure to contaminants will be minimal.
United Future promises sustainable development coupled with economic progress and balanced by environmental responsibility. We favour natural resource accounting systems that ensure we place proper value on our environment.
Good economic decisions must also be good environmental decisions. We want all consumers to take proper account of the true environmental costs of economic decisions and ensure prices reflect environmental impact. To these ends, we will expect environmental impacts to be reflected, where practical, in all public sector accounting and reporting. We aim to see the format of the Public Accounts altered to ensure that they provide an accurate account of the current state of the environment. Over time, we will work to establish similar forms of accounting and reporting within the private sector.
We will also promote family friendly environment policies, ensuring that policies recognise the vulnerability of our citizens, especially children, to environmental allergens, and passionately preserve access to New Zealand's beautiful natural environment.
United Future will:
- Use market mechanisms and economic instruments (such as eco-taxes and tradeable permits) to regulate environmental behaviour
- Support current targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and the introduction of a fiscally neutral carbon tax, should these targets not be achieved
- Provide assistance to business and market development to demonstrate the government's commitment to environmental sustainability.
- Encourage a greater degree of co-ordination amongst all levels of government, the private sector and communities, in order to make the Resource Management Act (RMA) work more effectively
- Work closely with local government to provide better policy guidance, strengthened environmental data, and further research into how the impact of human activity on the environment might be minimised
- Pursue pesticide reduction and support organic farming and other initiatives to reduce the use of dependent pesticides
- Set concrete goals and targets for environmental policy at all levels of government
- Establish specific goals for the phasing out of the use of ozone depleting substances
- Implement an active programme to clean up contaminated sites
- Devise national policies on energy and climate change; sustainable land management; and the conservation of indigenous bio-diversity
- Seek greater protection of flora and fauna
- Target the transport sector and strive for further development and promotion of more efficient and less polluting transport systems
- Seek greater use of multi-stakeholder decision making processes and voluntary agreements
- Ensure New Zealand remains nuclear free and a world leader on disarmament issues
- Support (and legislate if necessary) for the communication of clear and objective information about genetically modified foods
- Work more aggressively towards the restoration of degraded waterways and coastal areas. Clean water is a key indicator of environmental health and fundamental to the wellbeing of New Zealanders.
United Future Parliamentary Office: Bowen House, Lambton Quay, Wellington
Email: Phone: (04) 471 9890
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