Freshwater national direction

The Government is committed to safeguarding freshwater for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

New Zealanders rely on freshwater for a wide range of uses, both essential (eg, drinking water) and recreational (eg, swimming and fishing). Water is crucial for many industries and underpins the primary sector. Farmers and growers in Aotearoa New Zealand are leading the way in global farming practices, including taking action to clean up waterways and revive wetlands.

Freshwater is under increasing pressure. A growing population and land-use changes have contributed to deteriorating water quality in some areas. The demand for freshwater is increasing, and climate change is contributing to shortages in some parts of the country at certain times.

The approach to managing freshwater has become too complex and expensive to implement. It will not deliver the outcomes for freshwater that New Zealanders expect. Councils have said that the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 (NPS-FM) is inflexible. It does not allow them to take account of matters that they should be able to when managing freshwater, including differences between regions and catchments. 

The NPS-FM has been amended many times since it was introduced in 2011. The frequency of change has been inefficient. In seeking a balance that better reflects the interests of all water users, the Government aspires to freshwater management settings that will be enduring. The proposals in this document will enable feedback on how to achieve that.

This discussion document covers the following topics:

• rebalancing freshwater management through multiple objectives 
• rebalancing Te Mana o te Wai
• providing flexibility in the National Objectives Framework
• enabling commercial vegetable growing
• addressing water security and water storage
• simplifying the wetlands provisions
• simplifying the fish passage regulations
• addressing remaining issues with the farmer-facing regulations (ie, synthetic nitrogen fertiliser)
• including mapping requirements for drinking water sources.

Impact analysis

This document is partnered with impact analysis covering these topics. The impact analysis documents are available on the Ministry for the Environment's website. They provide detailed information to support you to make informed submissions. This includes information on regulatory settings, how these might change, and estimates of the costs and benefits of those changes.

The impact analysis documents also include a Treaty Impact Analysis. Freshwater management is an issue of significance to tangata whenua, and all of the options in this document intersect with Māori freshwater rights and interests in some way. The Treaty Impact Analysis looks at the potential impacts of these options on Māori rights and interests, and on Treaty settlements.

Further impact analysis will be completed once final policy proposals are developed following this consultation.

The Government has already paused regional councils’ ability to notify freshwater planning instruments⁸ while it is working through changes to national direction and a significant reform programme to replace the RMA.

That is why we are also seeking feedback on whether any of the changes proposed in this discussion document should be implemented now, or if they should instead be incorporated into or made under the upcoming replacement legislation for the RMA.

Further information on implementation options for national direction more broadly is included in Section 3.

^{8 Through amendments to section 80A of the RMA by the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2024.}