Ranking New Zealand river values – a novel approach to managing the ‘chalk and cheese’ problem

In New Zealand, regional councils have the task of sustainably managing rivers andtheir flows. In trying to achieve this task they face enormous challenges including theneed to allocate flows amongst often highly disparate in- (e.g., angling, kayaking,native fish and birds) and out-of-river (e.g., irrigation and hydro energy) values/needs.To aid in this task these councils need to know which rivers or parts of rivers arerelatively more or less important on national, regional and local bases, for particularvalues. This task becomes even more challenging given limited informationavailability for many values, and no overarching policy or decision framework. In thispaper I report on a FRST-funded (and less than 1-year long) project which hasaddressed these challenges. A multi-criteria and expert panel based methodology hasbeen developed and applied to a wide range of values to produce lists of rivers byvalue, ranked according to their national, regional and local importance. Themethodology is described and example applications given. The need to ‘buy-in’ multi-and,ultimately, interdisciplinary participation is emphasized as well as a range ofongoing implementation challenges and further needs.