1. The New Zealand Environment

This book addresses three key questions. What are the main threats to the quality of New Zealand’s environment? How are these threats being dealt with? How is the state of New Zealand’s environment to be judged? This chapter sets the context by explaining how New Zealand’s ecological evolution in relative isolation from other ecosystems has left special environmental challenges including vulnerability to invasive species as well as the ‘normal’ pressures on the environment from the growth of population and economic activity. Internationally, three trends are tending to focus more attention on the state of environment: declining resource availability, increased transparency and increasing expectations. New Zealand is affected by this ‘new environmentalism’ which puts its green image under growing threat. Although some environmental stresses have been reduced, many of New Zealand’s endemic wildlife remain under threat as habitat ecosystems are damaged or destroyed and invasive species spread. The serious nature of these problems questions whether enough is being done to protect the environment.