A review of the first five years of the NZ Biodiversity Strategy

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There are two reports:

1. The synthesis report: Turning the tide? A review of the first five years of the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy (PDF, 377K)
   
   This synthesis report summarises achievements from core funding and from the Package programmes over the period.  It also makes a number of recommendations covering all ten themes.
2. Review of the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy themes (PDF, 3400K)
   
   The synthesis report is based on this companion report that is an in-depth assessment of the ten themes.

Introduction

1. The New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy was launched on 29th March 2000. The Strategy marks an important milestone in New Zealand’s collective commitment to reverse the decline in the state of New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity. It established a strategic framework for action, to conserve and, where appropriate, sustainably use and manage the biodiversity of both indigenous and valued introduced species. It also represents New Zealand’s commitment under the Convention on Biological Diversity to contribute to global efforts to stem the worldwide losses of biodiversity. Government committed an additional $187M over the following 5 years to help implement the priority initiatives. This is referred to as the Biodiversity Package.
2. The Strategy includes a vision, four overall goals and thirteen principles to guide management and implementation of the Strategy. The actual ‘doing’ part of the Strategy is developed under ten themes, each of which follows the same structure. Each theme starts with a ‘desired outcome’ statement that describes biodiversity or management outcomes to be achieved by 2020 to realize the goals. Detailed action plans, consisting of objectives and more specific actions, then provide the entry points for what needs to be done.
3. The Strategy specifies that a ‘substantive review’ be undertaken after 5 years to assess “goals, roles, governance arrangements, objectives and priority actions” (p 130). The authors were commissioned to undertake this independent review and this is our detailed report on what has been achieved within each of the ten themes. In this report we look at progress to date under each of the 147 actions, including the 43 actions that were identified as ‘priority actions’.