Children's Access to Justice for Environmental Rights | New Zealand

This report looks at whether the laws and policies in New Zealand make it possible for children to access their environmental rights. 

In New Zealand, the Constitution is drawn from a number of sources, which includes legislation, common law derived from court decisions and established constitutional practices (“Conventions”). This makes it difficult to identify constitutional principles and hinders the ability of the national courts to constrain exercises of power by other branches of government. Although the support for codifying the Constitution and for reforming prominent laws to include natural environment and resources preservation and protection has grown over the past few years, many of them still do not make reference to environmental rights. A great number of the environmental gains in New Zealand have been made with reference to the Treaty of Waitangi, which in its Māori version (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) protects the Māori’s tino rangatiratanga (chiefly right of unqualified political authority) over their lands, villages and all their treasures. However, environmental rights may benefit from Constitutional protection in the future, as focus turns to the needs of future generations and intergenerational fairness.

Although the Resource Management Act (‘RMA’) promotes public participation in environmental decision making by eliminating restrictive rules of standing in both administrative and judicial fora, and New Zealand has broad public interest standing, there are serious access to justice issues in terms of legal aid in the environmental context. Māori may be able to access legal aid for the purposes of pursuing Treaty of Waitangi claims in the Waitangi Tribunal.

New Zealand guarantees the rights of children to freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, access to information and freedom of peaceful assembly. However, some students have faced sanctions after participating in school strikes for climate change on school days. Make it 16, an organisation led by young people who believed voting would give young people a greater voice on the issue of climate change, filed a lawsuit in 2019 arguing that the voting age of 18 is a limit on 16-year-olds right to be free from age discrimination. The Supreme Court ruled in Make it 16 Incorporated v Attorney General (2022) that preventing 16- and 17-year-olds from voting was unjustified age discrimination and in breach of the law. Following this Court decision, the Prime Minister has committed to draft legislation to change the voting age to 16. There is no doubt that this is a landmark judgement for children in New Zealand, which should see an increased number of children using their vote to influence political decisions. Nevertheless, children under the age of 16 continue to be disenfranchised and their rights to peaceful assembly therefore require additional protection.

This report was published in May 2023 and developed with the support of Dr Elizabeth Macpherson, Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Law, University of Canterbury Faculty of Law. It was finalised based on any feedback from the State. If you would like to learn more, please read the full report below. If you would like to discuss the findings in the report further, or feel the information in the report will be useful in your own campaigning and practice then please contact us.