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Human well-being depends on the Earth’s natural system. While there is awareness of the impact of human activities on the environment, the reverse – nature’s role in human well-being – is usually not as clear. For decision makers and people to recognize the role of nature in human well-being, we need scientific evidence and ways to monitor trends that will ensure environmental policies are well designed and on track for long-term sustainability. We present a participative process to relate nature to human well-being and identify the important contributions from nature to different aspects of well-being. Our process is irrespective of classification systems for nature’s contributions and can use either ecosystem services or nature’s contributions to people (ES/NCP) concepts. Two criteria, impact and substitutability, have been used to rank the importance of the ES/NCP for well-being. We applied our approach in New Zealand, where the government has pioneered a well-being framework to measure wealth beyond GDP. The framework defines current well-being based on twelve domains, with intergenerational well-being dependent on four capitals (social, built, human and natural capital). By using a participative process, we designed a process to identify the important ES/NCP and well-being relationships. Our results showed that regulating ES/NCP contributed to the six broader categories of well-being, with non-material ES/NCP contributing to health, social relations, material well-being, and environmental quality categories. Material ES/NCP, such as food, energy, and timber, contributed mainly to material well-being, with small contributions to social relations and environmental quality well-being categories. This process can raise awareness and help stakeholders recognize the value of nature-based solutions for human well-being. It provides a structured approach to underpin fit-for-purpose indicators for monitoring and reporting the relationship between nature and well-being, target policy initiatives and identify potential trade-offs, and prioritize investment decisions across multiple outcomes.

As New Zealand charts its course toward a low-emissions economy, the quality of energy-sector and multi-sector modelling is becoming increasingly important. This paper outlines why models are useful for answering complex questions, provides a stocktake of energy-sector and multi-sector models used for climate change mitigation modelling in New Zealand, and makes suggestions for improving future modelling work. While New Zealand is fortunate to have a range of different modelling tools, these have historically been used in a sporadic and ad hoc way, and underlying datasets are deficient in some areas. As the foundation for a more strategic development of New Zealand’s modelling capability, this paper profiles some of the energy-sector and multi-sector models and datasets currently applied in New Zealand. New Zealand’s modelling capability could be strengthened by collecting and sharing data more effectively; building understanding of underlying relationships informed by primary research; creating more collaborative and transparent processes for applying common datasets; increasing international collaboration; and conducting more integrated modelling across environmental issues. These improvements will require strategic policies and processes for refining model development; providing increased, predictable and sustained funding for modelling activities, underlying data collection and primary research; and strengthening networks across modellers inside and outside of government. Many of the suggested improvements could be realised by creating an integrated framework for climate change mitigation modelling in New Zealand. This framework would bring together a suite of models and a network of researchers to assess climate change mitigation policies regularly. Core elements of the framework would include a central repository of data, input assumptions and scenarios, and a “dashboard” that synthesises results from different models to allow decision-makers to understand and apply the insights from the models more easily.

The National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) establishes the need to set and manage water resources within limits. This report is the first national assessment of the indirect impacts of the NPS-FM on New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). The water quality improvement aspect of New Zealand’s freshwater reforms are expected to drive significant changes in land and water management across the country. Emissions benefits through the freshwater reforms could potentially result in significant savings for New Zealand by starting the transition to low emissions in the agricultural sector and helping to achieve New Zealand’s overall climate goals. For farmers, changes in land use and management to meet water quality targets will reduce their potential future exposure to needs to reduce GHG emissions. GHG emissions reductions are a combination of reduced emissions through changes in management and de-stocking and increased carbon sequestration associated with planting riparian buffers or afforesting part of the farm. Key results are that without land use change, agricultural GHGs (primarily methane and nitrous oxide) could be reduced by 2.4% or 0.82 million metric tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent per annum (MtCO2e/yr) along with an additional 0.11 MtCO2e of forest carbon sequestration as a result of planting riparian buffers and pole planting for erosion control (for a net reduction of 0.92 MtCO2e/yr or 13%). If afforestation is perceived to be a feasible freshwater mitigation option, up to 800 000 ha of additional trees could be planted, thereby increasing carbon sequestration by 5.4 MtCO2-e/yr. In this case gross (net) GHGs could be reduced by 2.9 (8.2) MtCO2e/yr, primarily through reduction in stock numbers and increases in forest carbon sequestration. This option could reduce New Zealand’s net land use emissions by nearly 80%, to about 2.0 MtCO2e/yr. The majority of the emissions impact occurs in the sheep and beef sector, with a gross (net) reduction of 0.61 (0.72) MtCO2e/yr. Nitrogen targets most strongly drive on-farm GHG reductions for all the modelled scenarios that limit mitigation to on-farm changes. This is primarily because actions to mitigate N are most closely related to practices that can also mitigate GHGs (e.g. stock management).

Existing scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) have important limitations and gaps that constrain their usefulness for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Specifically, they fail to incorporate policy objectives related to nature conservation and social-ecological feedbacks, they do not address the linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem services, and they are typically relevant at only a particular spatial scale. In addition, nature and its benefits are treated as the consequence of human decisions, but are not at the centre of the analysis. To address these issues, the IPBES Scenarios and Models Expert Group initiated the development of a set of Multiscale Scenarios for Nature Futures based on positive visions for human relationships with nature.The first step of this process was a visioning workshop with stakeholders and experts on 4-8 September 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. A total of 73 participants from inter-governmental organisations, national government organisations, non-governmental organisations, academia and the private sector, from 31 countries, and with a range of sectoral expertise on biodiversity topics, from urban development to agriculture to fisheries, worked together in a visioning exercise. This report documents the results from this visioning workshop to inform further stakeholder consultation and the development of the associated multiscale scenarios by modelers and experts. This creative visioning exercise was carried out in four steps based on a suite of participatory methods that were used to develop visions of alternative futures. First the participants identified important themes to develop the visions. Next, thematic groups identified the main trends for BES in each theme and a set of “Seeds” of emerging initiatives leading to positive futures for our relationship with nature. Implications of what would happen across a range of sectors were identified for each seed. Then a pathway analysis of how the current regime in each theme may be transformed into the future desirable regime was carriedout. Narratives were then built for the visions emerging from each group. Finally, commonalities of visions across the groups were identified, and the regional relevance of each vision for different parts of the world was assessed.

A recent paper by Doole and Marsh (2013), questioned the validity of using the New Zealand Forest and Agriculture Regional Model (NZFARM) for New Zealand agri-environmental policy analysis. We respond to their critique by clearly describing the model structure, explaining the NZFARM parameterisation, calibration, and validation procedure, and presenting estimates from a series of nutrient reduction policy scenarios to highlight the utility of the model. In doing so, we demonstrate that NZFARM generates logical and intuitive results that can be used for robust agri-environmental policy decision-making.