Pour a glass of water out of a kitchen tap throughout the Canterbury region of New Zealand and chances are you’ll be staring at what many consider the finest drinking water in the world. Cool, clear and untouched, it’s originated in the mountains of the Southern Alps, travelled across the Canterbury Plains in the large braided river systems and then filtered slowly through the alluvial shingles before settling in large natural aquifers.
While that may sound a little romantic, it’s a process that’s become entrenched in the minds of generations of Canterbury residents. However, in the past ten year there have been monumental changes in how water is conserved, valued, used and abused in Canterbury.
{sidebar id=290 align=right}Some of this has been driven by changes in land use particularly conversion to large scale dairy farm operations and their requirements for irrigation. But wider awareness that water is not a limitless commodity and that its quality can no longer be guaranteed concerns people who have discovered they can no longer swim and play in their favourite places or drink straight from rivers or lakes.
In Canterbury water quality and availability are now major concerns because of the scale and apparent intractability of the issues and for scientists at Landcare Research studying the consequences of reaching resource limits, this is an ideal location to undertake their work.
Economic and other resource uses and values are increasingly coming into conflict, creating difficult problems of resource governance. Conflicts over water allocation are increasing, as are problems of water pollution. Development of alternative energy resources is often contentious as are many coastal developments. In these and many other cases, there are important and contested issues around what is physically, legally, economically and socially feasible; and then what is physically, legally, economically and socially desirable, in the management of common resources to provide products and services and to protect values of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand as well as wider environmental values.
This led to the innovative ‘Old problems, new solutions” project that looks at ways in which scientists from different disciplines (including economists, social researchers, hydrologists) can work together with policy-makers and stakeholders to enhance the sustainable governance of natural resources. The project, funded principally by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST), began in July 2007.
{sidebar id=291 aign=left}As part of that work we commissioned Professor Neil Gunningham from the Australian National University, Canberra, to study water governance in Canterbury. Prof Gunningham is an internationally renown lawyer and interdisciplinary social scientist who specialises in safety, health and environmental regulation. He is Director of the National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Regulation and Professor in the Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University.
Released in late January, Prof Gunningham’s report highlighted the ever-increasing difficulties in managing water resources and creating effective solutions for future generations and created ripples in the environmental policy community.
The report found that neither of the principal options through which water can be allocated under the Resource Management Act (RMA) – regional plans and consents – are capable of effectively constraining water takes or of ensuring allocation to its highest-value use.
A resource consent allows a person or organisation to do something which may have an effect on the environment such as discharging waste into water, into the air, or on to land, diverting a stream, clear area of vegetation and taking water for stock requirements. The process can be long and divisive due to consultation, hearings as well as potential appeals and court action. Meanwhile, the purpose of regional plans is to promote the sustainable management of rivers, lakes and hydraulically connected groundwater, and river and lake; to maintain and enhance the environment; and to achieve integrated management of these resources.
Prof Gunningham’s report suggests that neither hierarchy (command and control regulation), nor markets (water trading and incentives) offer anything like complete solutions.
He says serious attention must be given to a third approach – collaborative environmental governance which involves a diversity of private, public and non-government stakeholders acting together towards commonly agreed goals, and aiming to achieve far {sidebar id=292 align=right} more collectively than individually. Prof Gunningham also argues that in designing policy instruments we need “smart regulation” – an approach which seeks to use a range of tools in complementary combinations to harness a broader range of stakeholders as surrogate regulators.
Landcare Research principal scientist Bob Frame says collaborative governance can be highly effective but solutions will vary widely from case to case. “They are highly dependent on an appropriate mix of viewpoints and a willingness to participate,” he says. “What we’re seeing in Canterbury today is the intense complexity of these water allocation issues and the involvement of a large number of interested parties. Sadly, we’re at a point where simple trade-off between different options is unrealistic and there may be no ideal solution. Our report doesn’t offer alternatives in the traditional sense. What we have to look for is hybrid ways that will require collaboration between interested parties across a representative range of viewpoints through a process of rigorous debate,” he says.
“We can definitely get there. But it will involve people with widely differing views sitting down together and starting to work out what compromises are acceptable, ‘what do we give and what do we take?’ Because, quite simply, the issues are so complex that there aren’t always win-wins.”
Successful natural resource governance can only be achieved through integration of social, environmental and cultural dimensions with the economics.
The full Neil Gunningham report is available .
Tom Fraser is with Landcare Research, New Zealand
About Landcare Research:
Landcare Research is one of nine New Zealand Government-owned Crown Research Institutes and is the country’s foremost environmental research organisation specialising in sustainable management of land resources optimising primary production, enhancing biodiversity, increasing the resource efficiency of businesses, and conserving and restoring the natural assets of our communities.
The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology:
