Topics

Describing the nature of the issue

Covers AS91245

What "the nature of the issue" means

The nature of an issue is what it is, where it is, when it started, who it involves and how big it is. It is the part of your submission a reader who knows nothing could read first and follow everything after.
The standard asks you to describe it, not to argue about it. Your own position belongs in part 5, not here.
Write it as a set of answers, not as a story. Five short sections beat a page of narrative every time.
Everything in the description must be checkable: a figure, a date, a place, a source. A sentence nobody could check is a sentence that will not support anything later.

The five questions to answer

What is happening? Name the process in plain words, and name the thing being measured. Nitrate concentration in the Ōhaupara River is rising, and sediment is reducing water clarity.
Where is it happening? Give the extent, and show the variation on a map. A catchment of about 640 km², with the change concentrated between the bush edge and the bottom of the flats.
When did it start, and what is the timescale? Land use changed between 1998 and 2012; monitoring began in 2015; the plan change is out for consultation now.
Who is involved? Every group with a stake, named. This list becomes part 2, so build it properly here.
How big is it? The scale of the effect, in numbers. 21 days of swimming-hole closure last summer; an estimated 63 per cent loss of estuary seagrass since 2005.

Cause, effect and the difference between them

The description must separate what is causing the issue from what the issue is causing. Submissions that mix the two read as though everything is everybody's fault at once.
In the Ōhaupara case the cause is upstream and the effect is downstream. The 118 dairy farms on the flats, carrying about 41,000 cows, sit between S2 and S3; the closed swimming hole and the shrinking seagrass beds are at S4.
Do not assume the cause from the pattern alone. The readings show where the concentration rises; they do not by themselves prove what raised it. Say what else would have to be true — that the increase tracks the area converted to dairying, that it is highest after rain, that the town's treated discharge enters below S3 and so cannot explain the S2-to-S3 rise.
Naming the one thing that does not fit is a mark of a good description, not a weakness. Here, the small rise between S3 and S4 does not fit a simple more farms means more nitrate story, because the town sits in that reach.

The land-use change behind it

The catchment converted from sheep and beef to dairying between 1998 and 2012. In this invented case, dairy area went from about 6,000 ha to about 27,000 ha — a rise of 21,000 ha.
Irrigation made the conversion possible, and irrigation is why nitrogen leaches: water moving down through the soil carries nitrate below the root zone, where plants can no longer take it up.
Groundwater lag is the fact that changes everything about the argument. Water entering the ground on the flats takes an estimated 10 to 15 years to reach the river. Some of today's readings were caused by land use that stopped a decade ago, and some of today's land use will not show up until the 2040s.
State the lag in your description, because every course of action is judged against it. A measure that works perfectly still shows almost nothing for a decade, and a group that expects results in three years will call it a failure.

How much detail Merit needs

Achieved describes the nature. Merit describes it in detail, using specific information — which in practice means numbers, dates and named places attached to each claim.
The upgrade is not more sentences. It is more specificity per sentence. Water quality has got worse becomes mean nitrate at the estuary mouth is about fifteen times the bush-edge reading, and visual clarity has fallen from 1.6 m to 0.4 m over the same reach.
Give every figure a date and a source. A number without a date cannot be compared to anything, which makes it useless for describing change.
Two hundred words of specifics beat six hundred of general description, and they take less time to write.

Tips and Tricks

Do not write the nature of the issue as an argument. The commonest version of this mistake reads like a case for the environment: farmers are destroying the river and something must be done. That is part 5 arriving four pages early, and it costs you twice — the description loses the marks it was supposed to earn, and your recommendation looks like a foregone conclusion rather than a judgement.

Two smaller traps in the same place:

Do not state a cause as fact when you have only shown a pattern. Write the rise coincides with the reach where 118 dairy farms sit, then give the extra evidence that rules out the alternatives. Markers reward the reasoning, not the confidence.
Do not leave out the inconvenient number. If one reading does not fit your story, say so and say what it might mean. A description that explains its own outlier is more convincing than one that quietly drops it.

Worked Example

Worked example

A student's first draft of the nature of the issue reads:

Rewrite it so it would meet Merit.

Answer:

Step 1 — find what is missing. Test each sentence against the five questions. What is named only as "bad water quality" with nothing measured. Where is absent — no extent, no variation. When is absent. Who is "local people", which names nobody. How big is "a big problem", which is not a size. And the last sentence is a recommendation, which belongs in part 5.

Step 2 — answer the five questions with specifics.

What: nitrate concentration and sediment, both measured.

Where: the Ōhaupara catchment, about 640 km², with the change concentrated between the bush edge and the bottom of the Manukura flats.

When: land use converted 1998–2012; monitoring began 2015; the council's plan change is out for consultation now.

Who: 118 dairy farms, the 6,400 residents of Tarawhiti, the local hapū, the regional council, and Ōhaupara River Care.

How big: 21 days of swimming-hole closure in the 2024–25 summer; estuary seagrass down from about 84 ha to 31 ha since 2005.

Step 3 — separate the cause from the effect, and add the lag.

The rise happens across the reach holding the farms; the effects are measured at the estuary. The 10 to 15 year groundwater lag means today's readings partly reflect land use from the 2010s.

Step 4 — delete the recommendation. Something needs to be done is removed entirely. It reappears in part 5, argued.

The rewrite:

Nitrate concentration and sediment load in the Ōhaupara River rise sharply through the middle of the catchment and are measured at their highest at the estuary. Mean nitrate rises from 0.3 mg/L at the bush edge to 4.6 mg/L at the estuary mouth, about fifteen times, over roughly 31 km; visual clarity falls from 1.6 m to 0.4 m across the same reach. The steepest rise is where the river enters the Manukura flats, which carry 118 dairy farms and about 41,000 cows on land converted from sheep and beef between 1998 and 2012. The effects are recorded downstream: the Tarawhiti river-mouth swimming hole was closed on 21 days of the 2024–25 summer, and seagrass in Te Kūrae Estuary is estimated to have fallen from 84 ha in 2005 to 31 ha in 2025. Because water takes an estimated 10 to 15 years to move from the flats to the river, part of the present reading reflects land use from a decade ago. The regional council has a plan change out for consultation, and the 118 farms, the 6,400 residents of Tarawhiti, the local hapū and Ōhaupara River Care have all made submissions.

The rewrite is shorter than a page, answers all five questions with checkable specifics, keeps cause and effect apart, states the lag, and contains no recommendation.