What Drives Environmental Decisions in a Contested, but Loved, Landscape?

This case reviews the policy settings contributing to the landscape changes in New Zealand’s majestic Mackenzie Basin and examines possible drivers of the environmental decisions creating the changes. This case creates a systematic way to examine decisions affecting environments and natural resources in other countries. It concludes that science, economics, party politics, public pressure, and the law each has a role. But none is as influential as we might expect. One thing seems clear in identifying environmental challenges to the Mackenzie: environmental decisions themselves seem the greatest threat and the strongest driver of landscape change.