Landcare Research - Manaaki Whenua

Landcare-Research -Manaaki Whenua

Building a community of practice: sustainability monitoring and reporting

The New Zealand Sustainability Dashboard1 (NZSD) project aims to build a practical tool for sustainability assessment, auditing, reporting and learning. Catriona MacLeod teamed up with Kevin Collins (Collins Consulting Ltd) to identify opportunities for greater collaboration between the NZSD’s researchers, its industry partners, and regional and central government. The purpose of this enhanced collaboration is to create a ‘community of practice’ to improve and harmonise the monitoring and reporting frameworks and systems being developed by all parties.

What is a community of practice?
“A group of people who share a concern for something they all actively do and who want to learn how to do it better through regular interactions.”

Regional councils’ interests and needs
Regional councils are heavily involved in regulating, monitoring and reporting on a large number of activities related to the NZSD. Kevin and Catriona surveyed councils to clarify what they need in terms of sustainability reporting and how the NZSD could be most helpful.

Regional councils were surveyed through the convenors of 20 special interest groups (SIGs), which are made up of council staff with a particular professional background, discipline or interest. Because the NZSD covers such a broad base, it is relevant to a number of the SIGs operating across the regional sector. The survey received 27 responses from 17 separate SIGs, as well as from some individual councils.

Although the NZSD was not well known among the councils, they still indicated a very high level of interest in what it is trying to do.

  • Three-quarters of councils said data on the environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability of primary industries would be extremely or very useful.
  • Many councils wanted a harmonised sustainability assessment framework that could contribute to a national picture of sustainability.
  • More than 80% of councils were interested in collaborating with the NZSD project.
  • Almost all councils said they would share data with primary producers to help them improve the sustainability of their own operations.

The NZSD’s four pillars (see Figure) are well aligned with the councils’ primary interests. Agro-environmental integrity was ranked first or second by 96% of councils, economic resilience was ranked second or third by 72% of councils, social well-being was ranked third or fourth by 83% of councils, and good governance was ranked last by 52% of councils.

Two NZSD services stood out as highly useful to regional councils: ‘standardised sustainability monitoring and reporting tools’, at 59%, and a ‘harmonised sustainability assessment framework to provide a national picture of sustainability’, at 55%. This echoes a conclusion of a Living Standards Framework workshop, recently run by the Treasury, that end-users can be confused by the large number of sustainability frameworks available. There is an opportunity for the NZSD to reduce the confusion among end-users.

Lastly, the survey asked whether credible reporting on sustainability performance might reduce councils’ need to adopt regulations. Responses were mixed, but most felt that it would have only a small impact on the need for regulations.

Overall, there was strong interest from regional councils in collaborating with the NZSD, not only to contribute to its development but also to use its products and services.

Building a community of practice
Regional and central government have invested considerable resources into improving monitoring and reporting practices. The NZSD believes that consciously fostering that kind of community of practice will help to maximise the value of that investment. The team’s research found that:

  • many projects sponsored by central or local government are communities of practice to some degree (e.g. the Land, Air, Water Aotearoa initiative2 and the Environmental Monitoring and Reporting project) but were not specifically designed with community of practice outcomes in mind
  • there is no single entity that captures the range of sustainability monitoring and reporting as well as the NZSD’s four pillars
  • refining the term ‘sustainability framework’ would make it clearer and more useful to end-users, because it currently encompasses a wide range of concepts, including frameworks, methodologies, indices, reporting frameworks, standards and certifications, guidance, principles and agreements3
  • the NZSD is well placed strategically to engage more actively in the existing sustainability forums rather than initiating the creation of a new ‘sustainability reporting’ community of practice.

Next steps for the NZSD
There are a number of key actions to tackle based on this research.

  • At the regional council level the NZSD is best known for its association with biodiversity monitoring. The relevance of the NZSD to high-profile issues such as soil status and water quality/yield needs to be promoted more widely.
  • For the NZSD to collaborate more closely with regulators it is essential to reassure primary producers that such collaboration will also benefit the industries that provide the data.
  • To expand the NZSD’s impact beyond primary producers, the project should develop an engagement plan to connect with several governmental initiatives, including:
    • Land, Air, Water Aotearoa (regional councils and the Ministry for the Environment (MfE)
    • Environmental Monitoring and Reporting group (regional councils and MfE)
    • the Livings Standards Framework (Treasury)
    • regional council special interest groups
    • the Environmental Reporting Act (MfE and Statistics NZ).
  • A workshop needs to be run that includes representatives from councils, government agencies and producers to refine the feedback received from the survey and to explore the reaction of primary industries.

This work is funded by New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment as part of the New Zealand Sustainability Dashboard project (contract number AGRB1201).

Kevin Collins, Catriona MacLeod

1 See www.nzdashboard.org.nz/
2 See www.lawa.org.nz/
3 See http://media.wix.com/ugd/ee198d_d5113dd03ea447a1bf57398e0e3aea2c.pdf