Sustainability and the Democratic Process

Abstract

For sustainable management of natural and physical resources, New Zealand is divided into 16 regions overseen by publicly elected councils. These Regional Councils are required to consult widely within their communities when developing policies and rules. Waikato Regional Council is responsible for 70% of the nation’s geothermal resources. Its geothermal policies have been shaped over several years through the input of multiple stakeholders, councillors, and judiciary panels.
This paper describes the iterations that the policies of single operator/multiple operator, reinjection/injection, and sustainable use have gone through since the first version of the geothermal policy was drafted in 1997, and discusses the various stances that stakeholders adopted during the process, and the synergies and in some cases, compromises, reached. The result is a policy package, underpinned by robust scientific evidence, that ensures protection of some geothermal resources and enables sustainable use of others.