Government has outlined the changes it wants to make to insurance cover after natural disasters, including a doubling of the cap on building cover to $200,000.

Environment researchers have made fresh calls for a tax on polluters on the back of an OECD report highlighting rising pressures on our green backyard.

Minister vows to help with rebuild costs tipped to run into the millions, hundreds still unable to return home.

Green Party water spokesperson Catherine Delahunty says new reports from the Parliamentary Commission for the Environment indicate dairy intensification is causing increasing damage to New Zealand'

Major changes to how quickly earthquake-prone buildings will need to be assessed and strengthened have been announced.

The Government has rebooted a scheme which pays farmers and other landowners $1300 a hectare for planting trees on their land.

Peru's government has dispatched troops to a violence-wracked southern coastal valley where protests against a copper mining project have claimed the lives of two civilians and a police officer.

It's likely that plastic trash is an emerging threat to Auckland's famous harbour, though at present this can't be backed up by much hard data.

The commercial value of the Earth's oceans currently measures up to the world's leading economies.

Nearly half of Northland's 965 dairy farms did not meet consent conditions for effluent management in the past year and one in five farms chalked up significant breaches.