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diff --git a/assignment3/conclusion.tex b/assignment3/conclusion.tex index 8d52b57..8b68523 100644 --- a/assignment3/conclusion.tex +++ b/assignment3/conclusion.tex @@ -1,23 +1,39 @@ \section{Conclusion} -% TODO +To summarise, there is little opportunity for the general public to +influence the decision on resource consent applications, because only +a fraction of them is publicly notified. The decision whether to +notify or not is made by the council and depends on the quality and +coverage of the local plan. Overall, plans are of medium to poor +quality, making it difficult for planners to evaluate a proposal and +its accompanying assessment in the intended spirit of the policies. -- there is little opportunity for the public to influence the decision -on resource consent applications, because only a fraction of them is -notified. - -- overall, plans are of rather poor quality, making it difficult for -planners to evaluate a proposal and its accompanying assessment -in the intended spirit of the policies. - -- councils are subject to capacity bottlenecks which gives rise to an +More importantly, however, the implementation of a plan is influenced +by the responsible council's capacity and the attitude of the council +officers assigned to evaluate resource consent application. Councils +are subject to capacity bottlenecks which give rise to an implementation gap, i.e. the use of less sophisticated procedures and -methods than declared in the plans. +methods than declared in the plans. As a result, inadequate +assessments of environmental effects are more likely to pass through +the review stage. +Since consultation is not a mandatory part of the resource consent +process under the RMA, non-notified applications may never be exposed +to much needed independent scrutiny. Notified applications with +assessments that are hard to understand for lay people may require +members of the public to gain access to expert knowledge and +professional representation to have their concerns heard and accepted +as valid. -% - Consultation is not mandatory under the RMA, but is encouraged -% - results from consultation / mediation process are not binding -% - there is a history of underestimating the size of the group of `directly affected' people -% -% - government wants to shift power from the local councils to -% national entity, at the expense of community consultation +Grinlinton's statement seems to imply that councils are purposefully +negligent in the evaluation of applications that are expected to have +economic benefits, or at least accept this bias. This analysis, +however, suggests that this is not the case. While it may be true +that individual councils are primarily interested in the economic +effects of a proposal and only take a secondary interest in the +environmental or social impacts, it seems that the two major +difficulties in consent processing are a lack in the capacity to +implement plans and a history of underestimating the size of the group +of `directly affected' persons. As a result, the ability of the +general public to participate in the decision-making process under the +requirements for consultation laid out by the RMA is severely limited.
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