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\section{Discussion}
This section discusses common problems of EIA implementations as they
relate to the RMA, as well as selected issues that are specific to New
Zealand's integrated and devolved approach to environmental
assessment.
\subsection{The quality of assessments}
Since the RMA does not prescribe a specific process that ought to be
followed in preparing and reviewing an AEE, the quality of assessments
and the efficacy of their review through the councils varies
greatly. Furthermore, due to the very broad definitions of
`environment' and `effects' that the RMA adopted, a wide range of
projects falls into the set of proposals that require assessment,
creating an enormous volume of assessment and review
work \parencite{practitioners}.
% TODO: consideration of alternatives: how about the RMA?
According to a survey of EIA practitioners \parencite{practitioners},
the lack of central guidance on impact assessment practise makes it
difficult for the assessors---planning professionals and engineers who
are often minimally trained in EIA---to produce adequate
assessments. The guideline presented by the Fourth Schedule of the RMA
is often overvalued as an issues checklist for assessment. As a
result, assessments are not seen as a means to enable affected parties
and decision makers to find a well-informed compromise that is
acceptable by all participants, although aiding decision-making
processes is a core principle of EIA; instead, a majority of survey
participants primarily aimed to fulfil the requirements of the Fourth
Schedule in preparing an AEE and was not concerned with following
international EIA best practise \parencite{practitioners}.
%- failure to predict important impacts
A review of consent processing performance by the Ministry for the
Environment further revealed that councils rarely reject subpar
resource consent applications as permitted by section 88(3) of the
RMA; much more often faulty applications are accepted and gradually
improved through requests for additional information in line with
section 92 of the RMA \parencite{performance}. It is doubtful whether
poor quality assessments significantly improve through this course of
action. It is clear, however, that this approach not only delays the
processing of resource consents, but also increases the likelihood of
poor quality applications slipping through.
According to \textcite{retrospect}, ``EIA generally continues to bring
about only relatively modest adjustments of development proposals.''
Given the tendency of councils to accept subpar assessment reports and
the fact that only a little more than half a percent of all resource
consent applications are eventually declined \parencite{rma-survey},
and considering that AEE practitioners rarely employ more advanced
means of assessing impacts than overly simplistic
checklists \parencite{practitioners}, it seems very likely that this
statement applies to assessments in resource consent applications as
well.
\subsection{Participation of the public}
Although the use of objective measurements and scientific methodology
is considered EIA best practise \parencite{principles}, EIA is neither
science nor is it an objective process. As environmental impact
statements are produced by project proponents with the goal to
convince decision-makers of the benefits of the project in question,
the report is a subjective statement or even a piece of project
advocacy \parencite{beattie}. In recognition of this inherent bias, the
EIA process calls for the participation of the general public, in
particular the participation of affected individuals or interest
groups \parencite{wilkins}.
It is therefore rather disappointing that even in recent reviews of
international EIA practise, public participation remains on a fairly
low level \parencite{eia-state-of-the-art}. Some of the main barriers
to public participation cited by \textcite{eia-state-of-the-art} are:
poor knowledge of the public about the process; poor provision of
information; failure to influence the decision-making process; poor
execution of participation methods; and regulatory constraints.
While councils usually engange the public during the consultation
phases of the plan formation process, the picture on the resource
consent level is a different one. According to the 2010/11 survey of
local authorities the New Zealand \textcite{rma-survey} carries out
every two years, only about six per cent of all resource consents in
the two-year period were notified in some way, with only four per cent
being publicly notified (``poor provision of information''). Hence,
although the public can influence the framework relative to which
resource consents are evaluated, there is limited opportunity for the
public to affect the outcome of the actual decision-making process;
this situation may result in reduced willingness to participate in
areas where public participation is still possible (``failure to
influence the decision-making process'').
% screening is political because it depends on the values of those
% who perform the screening
\subsection{Cumulative effects and the devolved mandate}
What sets apart New Zealand's approach to environmental assessment
from those of other countries is the devolved mandate. The
distribution of responsibilities to the local levels of government,
however, brings about difficulties in effective environmental
management. Project-level EIA usually does not address cumulative
effects well, i.e. individual minor effects of several projects that
result in serious impacts when combined, because this would require
regulation and monitoring at a higher
level \parencite{eia-state-of-the-art}.
When resource consent applications are processed independently from
one another at the local level, their aggregate cumulative effects are
easily overlooked. Although the RMA specifically includes cumulative
effects in the definition of effects that have to be considered
(Section 3), it is still up to the council to review an AEE with
regards to cumulative effects. The quality of this review crucially
depends on the experience and the resources available at the local
level to scrutinise an AEE that may not properly address cumulative
effects \parencite[p 267]{furuseth}. A joint hearing process has been
used in the past to successfully overcome this limitation for
individual projects that require multiple resources consent
applications to be considered \parencite{fookes}.
%- poor communication
The same problem exists for `Permitted Activities' whose impact is
considered too minor to warrant an assessment of effects. The RMA does
not demand an assessment of the cumulative impacts of `Permitted
Activities'. According to the RMA Survey 2010/2011, a surprisingly
large percentage of regional councils (91\%) carried out monitoring
procedures and reported on `Permitted Activities' for the sake of
assessing cumulative impacts \parencite{rma-survey}. According to the
same survey, however, only 68 per cent of those activities that
required both resource consents and monitoring were monitored by
regional and territorial councils. As a result, it is difficult to
evaluate the accuracy of the predictions of a considerable number of
AEE and the effectiveness of local plans and
policies \parencite[compare][p 49]{sadler}.
The effectiveness of monitoring to anticipate cumulative effects also
depends on the institutional framework in which it is performed. For
local authorities under the RMA, national policy statements and
national environmental standards are supposed to provide reference
points for local plans and policies that determine the `intensity' of
environmental monitoring, yet the Ministry for the Environment has
been relatively slow in publishing these national
guidelines \parencite{miller2010implementing}. Although according to
\textcite{sadler}, the integrated approach to EIA encouraged by the
RMA should, in theory, be sufficient to establish a ``context and
parameters for subsidiary EIAs, which are required for all resource use
consents'', due to slow implementation of the RMA ``local governments
still rely on project EIA rather than undertaking policy and
plan-level assessments'' (p 146). The relative lack of guiding
constraints on local plans favours regional differences in the
implementation of environmental management
practises \parencite[see case studies in][]{discussion}.
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