EPA achieves major milestones in challenging year

The EPA says it has progressed all its major initiatives in the past year, despite the cloud of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A transformation of chemical management, and significant changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme, feature in the latest annual report from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).

Over the past three years, the EPA has made a shift to place more emphasis on compliance, monitoring, and enforcement. A new organisational structure to support this took effect in October 2020.

Within the Emissions Trading Scheme, They’ve overseen the introduction of new penalties and supported the introduction of auctioning of New Zealand Units.

After many years of development, in July 2020 they launched the Mātauranga Framework – acknowledging Māori knowledge, experience, values, and philosophy. The creation of this framework has been a huge advance for the EPA as it allows them to fully consider mātauranga evidence in decision-making.

View the 2021 Annual Report web summary and read the full document