Key points
People’s attitudes toward the natural environment are an important determinant of environmental actions. Human activity has the potential to either enhance or degrade the Waikato regional environment. In 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2006 Environment Waikato asked randomly chosen adults living in the Waikato region what their public environmental actions were – such as attending a meeting about an environmental issue, or joining an environmental action group.
- Almost half of Waikato people (45.4 per cent) want more say in the way that the environment is managed.
- In 2006, only one in six Waikato people (15.8 per cent) took public environmental actions. This is noticeably lower than in 1998 (26 per cent), 2000 (23 per cent) and 2003 (22 per cent).
- People get involved mainly by attending meetings, joining an action group, writing to councils or other organisations or making a formal submission.
- Most of those who took action felt that their actions were very (31 per cent), or fairly effective (38 per cent).
Source: Environment Waikato
What agencies are doing
- Every three years, we run a telephone survey of over 1000 randomly chosen people in the region to find out what people’s concerns are, what they know about, what actions they take and the attitudes they hold towards the environment.
- Environment Waikato aims to raise people’s awareness of the environment so that people understand that the daily actions in their lives and business can affect the environment. Environment Waikato also wants to help people understand what actions they can take to improve their own local environments, and how they can participate in public processes to ensure that the environment is improved.
- We keep in contact with major resource users and other resource management agencies to make sure they know about the community’s concerns, values and expectations for their environment.
- The trends identified here help us to determine priorities for policy development work and review the objectives for managing the region’s environment. Information from this survey is used in the development of the region’s major policy documents, such as the Waikato Regional Policy Statement, the Regional Coastal Plan, the Waikato Regional Plan, the Regional Pest Management Strategyand the Regional Land Transport Strategy.
What you can do to help
- Find out more about your local environment (for example, join environmental groups).
- Get involved in environmental issues (for example, make a submission on a plan).
- Do more things that are better for the environment (for example, use public transport instead of a car).
- Join or form a Landcare group in your area.
More information
More detail on this indicator, including how and where this information is collected, is available here.
What we want to achieve
The community outcome we are seeking to achieve by measuring people’s public environmental actions is:
- We are aware of what we need to do to look after our environment. Our region is renowned for linking environmental awareness with community action.