In October 2015, Statistics New Zealand published the first comprehensive and independent report on the state of the country’s environment. This provided information on five ‘domains’ — air, atmosphere and climate, fresh water, land, and marine. The report was the first in a three-yearly cycle that reports on one domain every six months and provides a combined, comprehensive picture once every three years.

At the time of its release the Minister for Statistics, Craig Foss, stated:

This is the first comprehensive report on New Zealand’s environment produced by Statistics New Zealand. It puts into practice the maxim that you manage what you measure. Robust, independent financial reporting has helped achieve significant improvements in New Zealand’s financial management and our ambition is to achieve the same for the environment.

Similarly, the Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, explained: New Zealand’s environment is so important to our quality of life, our successful exporting industries and our nation’s brand that we need robust, independent reporting. It enables us to know where we match up, what areas need more attention, and helps us figure out what we need to do about problem areas.

As the country’s population increases, its economy develops and lifestyles change, pressures on its natural resources grow. For example, there have been longstanding issues associated with dairy farming polluting rivers, referred to as ‘dirty dairying’, with at least 151 prosecutions over a four-year period from July 2008 to June 2012 involving 300 charges for unlawful discharges of dairy effluent.

Regular and independent monitoring of the state of those resources is a first and vital step towards stopping, and hopefully reversing, further degradation. 

Required

(a) With the use of online data, search for evidence that the dairy industry in New Zealand is working to prevent ‘dirty dairying’.

(b) Is it possible for you to know the conditions under which the products you purchase are produced? Why?

(c) Is it possible for managers of a dairy cooperative, such as Fonterra, to know with certainty that their outsource partners comply with agreed-upon working conditions? Why?