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Fresh water provides us with considerable natural advantage. It is abundant and supports our
economy, our environment, our recreation and our national identity. There are many values
associated with fresh water for all New Zealanders, and particularly for Māori. Moreover, the
state of our fresh water is the environmental issue of highest public concern.
In recent years there has been an increasingly complex and at times confusing public discourse
about fresh water. It is clear that fresh water is an issue on the minds of many New
Zealanders. Accordingly, following discussion with Prime Minister Key, I undertook to produce a
paper explaining the issues surrounding the state of fresh water in New Zealand, and this is
something that my Office has been working on independently for some time.
Until relatively recently the issues of conservation and issues of economic development have
been largely seen in isolation. We have been proud of our environment as reflected in our
extensive portfolio of national parks and the conservation estate. However, waters outside
these areas have been seen primarily through the lens of development. Now, the need for more
holistic and integrated practices of ecosystem management – something long-recognised by
Māori – is more generally understood. But such management practices do create challenges in
dealing with legacy issues: to ensure the quality of our freshwater estate on one hand, while
balancing development interests on the other. These scientific and policy challenges are
compounded by the inherent complexities of freshwater-associated ecosystem maintenance and
enhancement. It is these complexities and challenges that the reports that follow are intended to
elucidate.
The recent release of the Government’s ‘Clean Water’ discussion document and proposed new
standards for the swimmability of our fresh waters has brought some of the issues to the fore.
Therefore I have accelerated completion of this paper so that it might assist those who wish to
engage in the consultation on those proposals.
The report is in two sections. The first is a summary report written from my Office with the
assistance of the Departmental Science Advisors from the Department of Conservation and the
Ministry for the Environment. This overview avoids technical detail but tries to explain the core
issues of public concern that have implications for policy development. The main body of the
report is a more technical and scientifically referenced document that reviews the state of fresh
water in New Zealand and issues related to restoration. The initial draft of the technical report
was prepared by the Freshwater Group from NIWA, and was then subjected to iterative review
assisted by a number of academics, the Departmental Science Advisors and my Office. The final
draft has also undergone external peer review. I want to acknowledge the extraordinary amount
of work done by Dr Bryce Cooper and his team at NIWA. We are lucky that New Zealand has a
large number of world-class scientists in both the CRI and university sectors who have extensive
knowledge from diverse perspectives on the challenges presented by our diverse catchments,
lakes, rivers, estuaries and wetlands. These issues extend from geomorphology and hydrology to
understanding the ecology of our native plants, fish, insects and birds, and consideration of our
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pastoral agricultural system and the impact of urbanisation and industrialisation. The likely
impacts of climate change are a further and critical concern.
It has been inevitable since humans and their accompanying animals and plants came to New
Zealand and altered land use that there would be impacts on the quality of fresh water. This has
been particularly so since the arrival of Pakeha and the rapid expansion of pastoral farming. The
latter, and particularly its very rapid intensification in recent years, creates enormous challenges.
On one hand it is at the core of our economy, on the other it has led to rapid changes in land use,
particularly through dairy expansion, with concomitant major and adverse impacts on the quality
of our fresh water estate. Agriculture and horticulture are also creating some supply-side issues
in some catchments – that is, there are places and times where there simply is not enough water
to meet everyone’s needs. The urbanisation of New Zealand is a further source of reduced water
quality. Accompanying issues are created by the impact of hydroelectric and geothermal power,
industrialisation and the arrival of exotic invasive species that have all had further impacts on our
fresh water and its associated biota.
There are many measures of water quality – reflecting its physical, chemical and biological
characteristics. However, no single measure is sufficient to understand the state of fresh water
and the analysis is further complicated by gaps and inconsistency in the monitoring regimes. This
is reflected in the current confusion over the proposed new water standards, which this paper
seeks to explain. There is an inherent and pragmatic logic in having nuanced definitions that take
into account what is an acceptable risk, consideration of the seasonal changes, the relationship
to extreme weather events etc., but the impacts of such complexity must be interpreted and
communicated clearly.
Water monitoring in New Zealand is imperfect, with sampling site distribution not fully
representative of the environmental variation that occurs, sub-optimal site density in places, and
variable quality of sampling and analysis protocols. Despite these challenges, the data very
clearly shows that water quality and quantity is being adversely affected primarily by changes in
land use and the diffuse contamination arising from pastoral farming and urbanisation.
While the public understandably might hope for rapid restoration of water quality across all
rivers and lakes in New Zealand, this is unrealistic and scientifically impossible. In some cases we
are dealing with contamination that occurred decades ago, and the legacy effects may take a
similar time to flush from the system. Moreover there are no silver bullets in water restoration –
multiple actions are needed, requiring partnerships between central and local authorities, iwi,
citizens and businesses including farmers.
Climate change can only put additional pressures on our freshwater ecosystems. In a number of
regions drought will become more common requiring either better water management and/or
changes in land-use. Considerable research is needed to pre-emptively identify the strategies to
employ.
Freshwater research has certainly been accelerated by the National Science Challenge processes,
and water issues have been highlighted further in the recently released Conservation and
Environment Science Roadmap. These issues will also be referenced in the soon-to-be-released
Primary Sector Science Roadmap. The linkage between these two roadmaps highlights the
intertwined nature of the challenges ahead.
The brief Q&A section and the two papers that follow are intended primarily to inform the public
and policy makers regarding the associated science rather than to point to specific policy
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initiatives. There are clearly very complicated trade-offs between public expectations, economic
drivers and recreational considerations in protecting our fresh water. This will require sustained
commitment by governments, industry, local authorities and community groups, and an ongoing
commitment to monitoring and research across multiple modalities.
I hope that this report will be of value in enhancing public and policy understandings of the
opportunities and challenges ahead. |
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