AUDIT	A process to check for compliance with conditions of an approval; an internal review of environmental management practices by proponents; a form of site evaluation for environmental liability.
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY OR BIODIVERSITY	The variety of life in all its forms, levels and combinations
BUILT ECOSYSTEM	Ecosystem dominated by buildings, roads, airports, docks, dams, mines, and other human structures. Includes urban and suburban parks, gardens and golf courses.
CARRYING CAPACITY	The capacity of an ecosystem to support healthy organisms while maintaining its productivity, adaptability and capability of renewal.
CONSERVATION	The management of human use of organisms or ecosystems to ensure such use is sustainable.
DEVELOPMENT	Increasing the capacity to meet human needs and improve the quality of human life.
ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT	Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
ECOSYSTEM	A system of plants, animals and other organisms together with the non-living components of their environment.
EFFECTS	Note that the word "effects" is used throughout the document to mean the impacts or effects upon the environment or risk to sustainable or un-sustainable resources. In the same manner the Resource Management Act, 1991 refers to effects rather than "impacts".
ENVIRONMENT	The physical, biological, cultural, economic and social characteristics of an area, region or site.
environmental impact assessment (EIA)	The orderly and systematic evaluation of a proposal including alternatives and objectives and its effect on the environment including the mitigation and the management of those effects. (The process should extend from initial concept of the proposal through to its implementation, completion and where appropriate, decommissioning.)
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ASSESSMENT (EEA)	A process under the Resource Management Act, 1991 which is detailed in the Fourth Schedule to the Act, and which broadens and changes the emphasis of the concept of environmental impact assessment.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS	A philosophy that is based on the recognition that the full social and environmental cost of development should be included along with financial costs in evaluating and making development decisions, and including the methodologies for placing monetary values on such things as natural resources, and environmental and social quality (or degradation).
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT	A document prepared by the proponent to present the case for the assessment of the proposal as part of the environmental impact assessment process.
GREENHOUSE EFFECT	Predicted global climatic change (global warming) associated with the build up of certain gases, in the atmosphere. (The increase in concentration of these gases including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons is believed to be a by-product of industrialisation activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.)
INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY	Equity between the current generation and subsequent ones - a philosophy that no generation should increase its wealth, or generally benefit because of the utilisation of resources, if it is to the detriment of subsequent generations.
LIFE-SUPPORT SYSTEM	An ecological process that sustains the productivity, adaptability, and capacity for renewal of lands, waters, and/or the biosphere as a whole.
MONITORING	The checking of predicted effects of a proposal in order to improve environmental management practices and to check the efficiency and effectiveness of the EIA process.
RESOURCE	Anything that is used directly by people. A renewable resource can renew itself (or be renewed) at a constant level, either because it recycles quite rapidly (water), or because it is alive and can propagate itself or be propagated (organisms and ecosystems). A non-renewable resource is one whose consumption necessarily involves its depletion.
SUSTAINABILITY	A characteristic of a process or a state that can be maintained indefinitely.
SUSTAINABLE USE	Use of an organism, ecosystem or other renewable resource at a rate within its capacity for renewal.
TANGATA WHENUA	People of the land (in relation to a particular area the iwi or hapu that holds customary authority over that area).
TINO RANGATIRATANGA	Maori customary authority.
TENET	A doctrine which is held to be true.