Sustainable Development from Rhetoric to Practice? A New Zealand Perspective

摘要

This article explores the changing conceptions of sustainable development with reference to planning policy and practice in New Zealand. In 1991, when New Zealand introduced its Resource Management Act 1991, the country was seen as being a leader internationally in promoting sustainable development planning approaches. Twelve years later the early optimism has waned and New Zealand is if anything now a laggard rather than a leader in this field. This article explores the ambivalent and uneven relationship with sustainable development that has been evident in central government and within local government planning practice in New Zealand. It goes on to examine the potential that the Long Term Council Community Plans, introduced in the new Local Government Act 2002, offer in delivering sustainable development and transcending the implementation gap between policy statements in support of sustainable development and practice. The example of the city of Dunedin, the first local authority in New Zealand to produce a Long Term Council Community Plan, is used to demonstrate some of the difficulties inherent in achieving sustainable development goals in practice.