A NES for Plantation Forestry – and lessons from three little pigs

While the finer details of the proposed National Environmental Standard (NES) for Plantation Forestry will be ironed out with the stakeholders, I support the overall proposal because of the efficiency it offers New Zealand councils and forestry companies.

I recently attended a talk by Giles Day, of Training Management Solutions, who helps businesses become more efficient. He gave the group an exercise:

1. Draw a pig
2. Draw a pig, based on some step by step guidelines
3. Draw a pig, based on a pig template to trace over.

The first pigs took the longest time to draw, and they were all wildly different. The second pigs still took a fair bit of time, and different interpretations of the instructions resulted in considerable variation. The third pigs were quick to do, and all looked the same.
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Thinking about those pigs and the NES on Plantation Forestry:

1. Section 30 (1) (a) of the Resource Management Act requires district councils to write policies and rules to manage the effects of the use of land and associated natural and physical resources of the district. This is a lot like that first pig, with councils around the country drafting rules from scratch.
   
   
2. A National Policy Statement on Plantation Forestry would provide policies and methods to be interpreted and implemented in each district, like the second pig.
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3. A National Environmental Standard provides the template for each council to trace over, just like the third pig.