Integrated Sounds Management
Aside from being one of our most unique and special places, the Marlborough Sounds are also one of the most complex areas in New Zealand to manage.
The blend of land and sea, the competing interests of residents, business and boaties, and the low permanent population all make the area a challenge for any agency to manage.
And, to make it more difficult, the management of the Sounds is split amongst several agencies, all of which have different goals and objectives.
The Marlborough District Council, Department of Conservation, Ministry of Fisheries and Port Marlborough are all responsible for different aspects of the Sounds and the four local iwi with manawhenua in the Sounds also have a vital role to play through the Treaty of Waitangi.
On top of that, it occasionally seems as though the various agencies are competing with one another, rather than co-operating or seeking common agreement amongst themselves.
And for the community, the split in management responsibilities means it can be a difficult process to exert enough pressure for change, or even to find the right agency with which to engage.
Given such a situation, the Guardians of the Sounds believes there is room for improvement. We call it ‘integrated management’ and we believe it is an idea whose time has come.
Quite simply, we want to see three things achieved for the Marlborough Sounds:
- Agreement on a joint management direction between the various agencies.
- Increased co-ordination between the various agencies in achieving that management goal.
- Increased engagement with the Marlborough Sounds community on how that management goal should be achieved.
Integrated management should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat, to the current status quo.
After all, in the past few years, integrated management has been successfully implemented in two areas that face similar management complexities to the Marlborough Sounds – the Hauraki Gulf and Pauatahanui Inlet, on Porirua Harbour, near Wellington.
Both areas face the same set of problems that we have in the Sounds – there is a diverse set of agencies with different management responsibilities for the area. They don’t always work together and the diversity of agencies makes it difficult for the community to effectively engage when seeking change.
The Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Forum was established by an Act of Parliament and enabling legislation, while integrated management of Pauatahanui Inlet was achieved by all the key agencies voluntarily agreeing to co-operate.
Both models allow each management agency to retain its current powers and responsibilities, with integrated management providing a forum for community engagement and voluntary co-operation only.
Of course, integrated management could be achieved in other ways, such as by re-establishing a variant of the former Marlborough Sounds Maritime Park Board – which would assume some statutory power to decide how the Sounds are managed.
However it is achieved, the Guardians believes integrated management can only be good for the Marlborough Sounds.
The fast ferry debacle, for example, might never have happened if the key agencies and the community had got together in 1995 to work out a common approach between themselves. Instead the issue dragged on until it reached crisis point in 2000, when the Marlborough District Council introduced its navigational safety by-law to slow the ferries down.
Similarly, the Marlborough District Council has only progressively developed a sensible approach to marine farming in the Sounds, through its Marlborough Sounds Resource Management Plan process. This is still going on, and the council has still not got it right in the opinion of much of the Sounds community. The Guardians believes the council could have got on top of this issue far earlier if it had been sitting around the table with all other key agencies, iwi and the community at an early stage.
Thirdly, instead of having a range of separate compliance services in the Sounds (for example, the Council monitors resource consent compliance and harbour by-laws, DOC monitors marine reserve and Sounds Foreshore Reserve compliance, Customs monitors suspicious boating activity and Fisheries monitors fisheries compliance), wouldn’t it be sensible if they all worked together to put in place a single monitoring and compliance presence in the Marlborough Sounds? Such a ‘Sounds Patrol’ would ensure efficiencies and cost-saving for each agency, and would improve the end result for the local community.