Overcoming Obstacles to Collaborative Water Governance: Moving Toward Sustainability in New Zealand

Abstract

Given that New Zealand has long been known as an innovative, effective leader in natural resource policy, the idea that a major region of the country is facing a water resource crisis will strike many as odd. Yet, much like the many areas of the world experiencing serious water resource management and allocation problems, current water use and development trends in Canterbury (South Island) since 1991 have resulted in the gradual depletion and overuse of key water resources. The regional governing authority, Environment Canterbury (ECAN), and many stakeholders recognize that the current top-down, hierarchical water resource policy and management initiatives are not working and are, in many instances, contributing to the very crisis they seek to avoid. Nor are they making headway toward their desired overarching goal of establishing a network of sustainable communities within the region. The research examines the daunting problem of water resource policy management in the Canterbury area, describes the many obstacles in the way of a collaborative approach to water resource sustainability, and uses lessons learned from the international literature on collaborative approaches to critically appraise the potential for the successful collaborative governance of water resources in the region, specifically for the purpose of engendering sustainable communities.

Reregulating for Freshwater Enclosure: A State of Exception in Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand

“…In practice, the privileging of property rights and the inability to deal with cumulative effects under the Act (Cocklin and Furuseth ) has contributed to a decline in many indicators of environmental health, particularly in relation to freshwater in some regions (Memon ; Ministry for the Environment ). Memon and Weber () argue that within the neoliberalised political terrain central government has failed to offer the support and guidance needed to move beyond an effects‐based focus, to more integrated approaches to environmental management. Access to water has largely been determined according to “first‐in‐time, first‐in‐right”; that is, the first water use consent application is granted use rights, regardless of whether the application best fulfils environmental, social, cultural and economic values (Memon and Skelton ).…”

“…Throughout the 2000s, Canterbury Regional Council (also known as Environment Canterbury, shortened to ECan) experienced severe problems managing cumulative impacts in a rapidly changing, water hungry agricultural terrain (Memon and Weber ) . In the past 20 years more than 8000 consents to draw water from streams, rivers and aquifers have been issued by ECan, fuelling the fastest rate of conversion to dairy of any region in recent years; Canterbury now has approximately 70% of Aotearoa New Zealand's total irrigated land (White ; Williams ).…”

Science, Society, and Water Resources in New Zealand: Recognizing and Overcoming a Societal Impasse

“…As well, the current statutory hearings process can give a single scientist on the local authority, or the Environment Court hearing panel, considerable influence over the outcome (Memon and Weber 2010). In cases of high uncertainty (low precision as to cause and effect), which is the case with groundwater in the Selwyn, such a expert, even if not trained in the multiple fields of science expertise required to understand the full complexity of the wicked problem set, still gets to decide which side has the best science.…”

Camping, climbing trees and marching to Parliament: spatial dimensions of environmental protest in New Zealand

“…With the introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 and subsequent institutional developments, governance of environmental issues has increasingly been depoliticised and devolved. This shift away from top-down policy to a more negotiated and local approach has 'encouraged localised coalitions, grounding movement groups in community concerns' (Downes 2000, p. 487; see also Memon & Weber 2010). The result has seen a decline in the prominence of large national organisations 1 and the emergence of small-scale, locally focused groups (see O'Brien 2013a).…”