Playing the Water Game ~ Ever So Badly!

The Dying Waters of Canterbury

After decades of abuse and misuse, Canterbury’s watersheds are in a disgraceful condition. Now that its water resources are rapidly degrading, water quality has plummeted, toxic algae is proliferating and the rivers are dying. Yet in this catastrophic situation who would imagine that stakeholders are engaging in a lolly scramble to grab the last remaining water allocations. What little attention is afforded to watershed abuse and water resource misuse is glossed over, with a little embarassment, so the focus can return to what’s left and up for grabs.

It beggars belief that in a region with overly abundant water resources and such a small population of people that there is even a problem at all. It seems something is very, very wrong with watershed management in Canterbury ~ perhaps all over NZ. Then my thoughts returned to the meeting I was encouraged to attend ~ “Will the zone committee for the Waitaki Basin be able to diagnose the problems and sort them out?” I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

Watersheds Supply Water Resources

Planning, developing and managing watersheds and their overflowing aquifers to ensure reliable water flows to springs, streams, rivers and lakes requires high levels of expertise in a wide range of disciplines from geology and ecology to economy and engineering. Taking water for irrigation without first protecting the asset from which it is taken is simply not good business nor is it good science. Too few really care. Sadly what’s happening is more about taking than giving.

In a logical and rational world, one committed to sustainable development and environmental protection, people picked to sort out water problems in our high country watershed would be the the very best ~ the top experts in their fields ~ with a close working knowledge of the Basin’s watershed systems. After selection on merit, they would be coached into a highly effective multi-disciplinary project team with a strategy to chart how to restore the watershed to full functionality: to map aquifers, wetlands and surface waters; and to assess landuse impacts on critical watershed habitats so water resources can be protected. Only then would they identify the seasonal surpluses of water resources available for allocation. Like the All Blacks rugby team they would be committed to getting it right and winning against all odds as a matter of national pride.

Winners or Losers

A few years back while flying to Hong Kong I found myself sitting next to an assistant coach for the All Blacks rugby team. I was on my way to run training sessions for watershed teams in remote areas of India and China. After discovering we were both coaches, albeit in different realms, we started discussing some of the challenging issues that teams face on their way to success or failure.

In response to my question “What’s the role of meetings?” he laughed. “In the All Blacks we have a saying” he said. “Winners celebrate ~ losers have meetings!”

We both laughed. As team people we both knew implicitly that meetings are for managers and other non-team people who cannot or are unable to play the game. In simple terms, from the team perspective committees and meetings are for those who don’t know how. That is why meetings seek input from those who do and often discuss and debate elementary stuff at length. It is only when teams are consistently doing badly and failing repeatedly that it is necessary to resort to meetings. Then it is time for the shame and blame that sorts out those failing to do their job.

“Upper” Waitaki Zone Committee

The All Blacks team axiom came to my mind again while I was sitting in an Upper (sic) Waitaki Basin Zone Committee meeting operating as part of the Canterbury Water Management Process. Shame they didnt check the geographic names for our watershed ~ the zone committee’s area of responsibility covers the whole Waitaki Basin ~ all the “catchment” above Waitaki Dam. The “Upper” Waitaki does not include the middle Waitaki known previously as the Waitaki Gorge; now partly flooded by Waitaki and Aviemore Dams.

While checking through the list of members as they announced themselves, I pondered the chances of this group improving the water situation in the Waitaki Basin by asking myself “Is this a winning team?”

What? Did I hear correctly? Only one zone committee member claims expertise in water related sciences? And he is more notorious in the Waitaki Basin as the biocidal maniac who sought Council’s consent to aerial spray our rangelands and rivers with toxic poisons. He said he wanted to kill the regenerating trees and forests which he claimed had no rightful place in the high country. Try telling that to our foresters. Here we are blessed by world leading forestry ventures and extensive aboreta proving the commercial potential of watershed ecoforestry. In the not too distant future they will provide year round employment for our community to complement the salmon industry. Fish farming and forestry systems are natural watershed partners in many Asia-Pacific countries committed to sustainable development of watersheds.

The remaining stakeholders on the zone committee seemed either to be competing for water allocations, riding a particular hobby horse or attending as elected members of local councils. A bunch of smilingly nice people dedicated to their committees and meetings. But are these sound credentials for a winning watershed team pursuing sustainable development and environmental protection of our water resources?

What ~ surely not? Only two of the twelve zone commuttee members live in the Waitaki Basin! But how can they possibly know and understand the intricate geography and watershed ecology of our high country Basin and the way various land use activities impact on the performance of watershed systems? Lack of local geograpic knowledge is apparently not an impediment to selection. No wonder the zone committee needs lots of presentations to brief them on elementary water matters in the Basin. Perhaps one would have thought this was necesssary prior knowledge and that expertise in water resources was a prerequisite skill for selection!

The technical presentations to the zone committee by water experts were overly symplistic and a tad rushed. One presentation on ground water resources showed conclusively that the existing knowledge of aquifer systems and data available on ground water resources in the Waitaki Basin is so poor and incomplete that it cannot provide a sound basis for rational decisions on further water allocations. After a few questions from the zone committee members that demonstrated more than anything else a rather poor understanding of ground water resources, the committee pushed on regardless.

The next presentation on environmental health and water borne pathogens was even more alarming. The seasonal epidemic of water borne diseases in Twizel ~ the main population center in the Waitaki Basin ~ is a shameful situation that has been known for a decade even though most cases probably go unreported according to one local medical practitioner. The Twizel water supply is taken from medium depth aquifers (up to 20 meters) fed from the Fraser Stream and Twizel River watersheds. Audits carried out between 1999-2003 by international experts recorded a sudden and alarming collapse of water quality in 2001/02.

The results were conveyed in writing to the Mackenzie District Council with an urgent request for watershed protection of the “Twizel Water Supply Area under the RMA”. Even with public reminders to elected Councillors and Council administrators no reply was received. Much later, a committed Council staff member responsible for planning, advised an informal meeting convened in Twizel that Mackenzie Council had no intention of protecting the Twizel watershed by prohibiting poisons being applied in waterways or restricting farming activities with deleterious impacts ~ “But why?” we asked in surprise.

Because we were informed, Council felt it would set a precedent !!

Cultural Conflicts

After the presentation to the zone committee on water quality, I cast my mind back a few years to when my teenage son (a student representative on the Twizel School Board) returned from his early morning walk to the Fraser Stream/Twizel River. He went straight inside to phone Ecan’s pollution hotline to report cattle wandering in the Fraser Stream near Twizel’s town water intake. He felt proud to have“done the right thing” by reporting the incident.

Later however, when the local Ecan officer sent to investigate arrived, he was clearly annoyed that a complaint had been laid at all. I watched the Ecan officer as he haranged the shy teenage student into submission for having the timerity to lodge such a complaint ~ announcing that farmers have a legal right to graze their cattle in streams and rivers. My son was clearly traumatised by this brow beating saying “I will never report any incident again”.

Later I discovered that the offending cattle pollutting our town’s water intake belonged to the offending Ecan officer and that furthermore, his grazing cattle were a continuing problem for his neighbours as well. The local doctor reported to me that she had complained to the same Ecan officer a number of times about his cattle defecating in and polluting their domestic water supply. She said he didn’t share her concern; nor did he stop his cattle grazing in her water supply ~ so she moved her family to another region.

Many cultural conflicts are a product of cognitive dissonance ~ a subconscious predicament where people view the same things from entirely different perspectives and then end up disagreeing on most everything. A motto sometimes displayed by leaders and shakers when introducing new paradigms, says the same thing more simply:
I dont have an attitude problem
You have a perception problem!

In the fields of human ecology and environmental pyschology, the performance of different cultures is sometimes compared and contrasted to reveal indicators of ecological sustainability in terms of Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is the flip side of WTO rules guaranteeing free trade. Free trade is subject to two fundamental constraints requiring that: (1) there is no significant bioscecurity risk and (2) the goods are certified as sustainably produced by properly accredited auditors under A21.

Cultural intelligence is not measured by what people claim or say; it is only measured by their performance. Where cultures degrade and deplete their water resources, by converting living water to dying water through activities and in ways that are known to be detrimental and can be avoided, we have a clear case of dysfunctional cultural intelligence. In simpler terms, when a culture fails to maintain its most basic resources in a safe, fit and proper condition for sustaining life, and persists with activities that degrade water resources, the prognosis is a culture blighted by dysfunctional cultural intelligence.

But when a culture persists in denying the deleterious impacts of its rural activities and settlement systems, and ignores repeated warnings from international experts that they are engaged in degrading watersheds and killing rivers and streams through their normal everyday activities, then the prognosis is so much worse. In this situation we have a culture afflicted by PDC Syndrome ~ Profoundly Dysfunctional Culture Syndrome. Among the more obvious symptoms of PDC Syndrome are repeated, unsubstantiated claims that what is happening is normal and necessary; that degrading the environment is part of economic development; and that the problem is really caused by climate change and a wilful, capricious Nature. Sound familiar?

(For more on this theme readers are referred to the UN Report Livestocks Long Shadow and the worldwide desertification crisis described in UNESCO’s digital online Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems EOLSS)

Is NZ Playing the Water Game and Protecting Human Rights?

Under A21 principles, protecting, maintaining and ensuring reliable supplies of fresh clean water from rural landscapes is proving one of the most elementary and powerful indicators of sustainable watersheds while ensuring environmental protection. These principles are further strengthened by international law covering human rights for healthy living environs containing clean water.

A21 provides 27 internationally accepted principles for certifying primary produce as sustainably produced while simultaneously ensuring environmental protection. Ideally, whole watersheds would become compliant with annual certification under A21 ~ thereby ensuring all produce from the watershed gains certification. In the International Year of Trees and Forests, it is worth noting that in NZ only the forestry industry engages in international A21 certification for its participating producers.

Winners or Losers

Meanwhile back to the Waitaki Basin Zone Committee meeting. Imagine if you will, selecting the All Blacks team to play for NZ in the Rugby World Cup but you can only choose from among elected politicians, game administrators, commercial sponsors and enthusiastic fans. Skilled players and team champions are disallowed. In addition, there will be no coaching to build a team with effective leadership; and no team training sessions to forge the skills required to win. Instead, the group selected to play the game is entitled to hold a dozen or so committee meetings before delivering an outcome.

What chance would the team have of winning against the Springboks or Wallabies, or even Fiji or Tonga for that matter. None. On the same note, what are the chances of the Waitaki Basin Zone Committee being a winning team and sorting out the watershed degradation and water resource problems in the Waitaki Basin before recommending further water allocations? The odds are stacked against them.

With a deeply entrenched case of PDC Syndrome compelling NZ’s colonial pastoral culture ever onwards (apparently as of right) there is no room for other perspectives or more sustainable farming scenarious. Despite compelling evidence of widespread deleterious impacts on watershed systems and water resources in the Waitaki Basin, generated by current land use and resource management systems, the Zone Committee will no doubt pursue further allocation of our water resources without any real appreciation of just how serious is the damage to our watershed ; or how further stream and groundwater abstractions will undermine the ability of watershed aquifers to store, cleanse and supply reliable water resources.

Comments

This not the time to cast blame or vilify people on the zone committees ~ they are appointed by others above and perform their duties as best they can for the most part. It pays to remember they are only pawns in the water game ~ a game New Zealanders play ever so badly.

Socrates warns that Nature does nothing uselesslessly. Taking an overarching perspective on the decline of our waterways and water resources, the indigenous toxic algae Phormidium is probably just the beginning. Best be prepared, for given the parlous state of our watershed ecosystems, worse is yet to come.
© Haikai Tane ~ Twizel 2011