FMC’s submission on LINZ’s long-term plan ‘Pathways to Resilience’

FMC recently made a submission on LINZ’s proposed Long-term Insights Briefing: ‘Pathways to resilience: Future-proofing Crown land stewardship’.

Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) manages 1.7 million hectares of Crown land, which is eight per cent of New Zealand. This land supports a range of public and private uses, including farming, forestry, tourism and housing. The submission was made as part of a consultation on LINZ’s long-term plan on how to manage the Crown land. 

FMC in general supports the proposed topic and proposed scope for the 2025 Pathways to resilience. However, they need to be more clearly defined. We suggest, without wishing to block innovative future-proofing, that Pathways to resilience’s topic and scope are framed clearly by the relevant legislation.

One of LINZ’ drivers for the topic of resilience and future-proofing is climate change. Without alongside focus on other interconnecting environmental matters,  we find this is too narrow. We suggest this driver for the proposed topic is expanded to include other interconnecting environmental matters: biodiversity loss, non-natural contamination, and natural character loss. These issues are all interlinked with climate change and have a strong relevance to the future health of Crown land. 

One of the areas LINZ proposes the briefing should cover is the examination of the current state of its lands. We’ve noticed that LINZ has achieved a strengthened focus on public values in recent years, so we suggest the examination process should include well-notified public engagement and direct stakeholder discussion.

FMC would also like to see a strong focus on present and potential public recreation and access covered under ‘Exploration of key opportunities and threats’: these include commercial recreation permits, access easements, new conservation land and such. 

We suggest that identifying the opportunities for improvement is developed with close reference to the relevant statutory environment. It should include the development of an empirical science basis for the management of the land as well as making all public information about the land readily accessible.

Photo: Lake Wānaka by Ange Minto