Water, water everywhere, nor any a drop to drink...

Two cases highlight how governance of our water is struggling for credibility.

First, in Hawkes Bay where over 5,000 residents of Havelock North (pop. 14,000) were struck by gastroenteritis after drinking the local water. The cause of the outbreak was E. coli but the source of the E. coli is not yet confirmed, though the intensification of farming (and particularly dairying) is thought by many commentators to be the problem.

Minister for the Environment Nick Smith in his recent State of the Environment speech at Lincoln University acknowledges Maori have an integral role in ensuring water quality:

Water issues often come down to a clash of values between environmentalists and land owners. Maori have a foot in both camps and are proving to be valuable bridge builders over these troubled waters.

Initial data from GNS shows water in the Havelock aquifer was less than a year old when it should have been 50, which suggests an infrastructure problem which ultimately links back to governance and, dare I say, ownership.

Havelock North residents walking for water right now! (Sept 3rd).

Now we all now the NZ government's position: no one owns the water. Well, that's working out great for sales of toilet paper in Havelock North but most of us forsee only more costs and risks. Des Ratima of the Takitimu District Maori Council is quite explicit about the fault:

"The aquifier sits below recognised polluted river called the Tukituki which comes down from central Hawkes Bay full of faeces, both human and animal. That's how central Hawkes Bay disposes of its sewage. It's been told by regional council to sort that out and so they've gone from river to land based sewerage dispersal. Well, that's just arrogant again because that's finding its way back into the water system,"

Maori are not alone in thinking human and industry waste need to be separated from the land and water we source our sustenance from. Papatuanuku is being maltreated and like any mother, when she is sick, we are not well.

Another example is from Canada where oil leaking into the North Saskatchewan River has exposed local governance - private and public -as not being up to the task of protecting the most basic resource, namely clean water.

I visited Saskatoon in the second week of August and, by chance, met two First Nations activists working to draw attention to the disaster (languaging is important; 'spill' doesn't describe the catastrophe that oil brings to socio-ecological systems).

Emil Bell and Tyrone Tootootsis have established the Kisiskatchewan Water Alliance Network. Several organisations have endorsed KWAN, including Idle No More, the Saskatchewan Environmental Society and the North Saskatchewan River Basin Council.

Emil Bell (l) and Tyrone Tootootsis (r).

Emil staged a hunger strike to protest the oil spill.


A collaboration between Idle No More, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the Council of Canadians, the National Aboriginal People’s Circle, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (Prairie Region) led to a report on the disaster. One of the findings is that the James Smith Cree Nation need to be supported in its effort to mitigate and monitor the damage to their traditional territory.

We might hope that Ngati Kahungunu will also be supported to ensure water improves within their territory. 

A significant advance in both Hawkes Bay and Saskatchewan would be the formal incorporation of Indigenous voices into the governance of water. Disasters such as the poisoning of Havelock North and North Saskatchewan River provide the opportunity to reinsert Indigenous voices where they should never have been excluded.

Cabinet paper proposes Treaty of Waitangi breaches

Victoria University Maori academics note "a paper prepared for Cabinet proposing the introduction of a freshwater allocation work programme would breach the Treaty of Waitangi and ignores recent Waitangi Tribunal and Supreme Court decisions in relation to Māori rights to freshwater

The Cabinet paper, dated May, 2016, includes Terms of Reference for a freshwater allocation work programme that propose three “bottom lines”: 1) “nobody owns freshwater”, 2) “no national settlement favouring iwi/hapu over other uses” and 3) “Allocation determined catchment by catchment based on resource availability, efficiency of use, good industry practice and a positive contribution to regional economic development”.

All three of these bottom lines would lead to Treaty of Waitangi breaches say Dr Maria Bargh, a senior lecturer in Te Kawa a Māui – School of Māori Studies at Victoria University, and Dr Carwyn Jones, a senior lecturer in Victoria’s School of Law.

“First of all, water is ‘owned’ in Aotearoa,” says Dr Bargh. “It is owned by Māori according to tikanga Māori, although this ownership is ignored by the Crown at the same time that the Crown allows other groups, including international companies, to make an economic profit from trading water.

“Even under common law, the statement that ‘nobody owns water’ is a gross oversimplification.”

“The Waitangi Tribunal,” Dr Jones adds, “acknowledged Māori proprietary rights in water in 2012, and these need to be acknowledged by the Crown.”

The decision of the Supreme Court in the NZ Māori Council vs Attorney General case 2013 indicated that the Crown acknowledged “Māori have rights and interests in water and geothermal resources” [145] and that these were being identified and “that no disposition or creation of property rights in water will be undertaken by the Crown without first engaging with iwi” [144].

Drs Bargh and Jones say the proposals for the freshwater allocation work programme would undermine these Crown reassurances to the Supreme Court.

In addition they say the “bottom line” proposing a catchment by catchment assessment needs to also consider the hapū and iwi of those catchments, and the onus for proving “positive contribution to regional economic development” needs to be on industry and businesses and supported by robust environmental and scientific evidence.

The Government has appointed a technical advisory group with terms of reference derived from the Cabinet paper to advise on the impact of the proposed options."

For more information contact Dr Maria Bargh on 021-025 06003 or Dr Carwyn Jones on 021 665 287 

'Water Underground'

Water still a potential graveyard for politicians it seems.

This post content through from an ex-Lincolnite, promoting a song by Anthonie Tonnon...

"We're used to vocal (often artistic in one way or another) individuals like Sam Mahon who have been highly critical of the removal of the democratically elected Councillors in 2010 and the associated 'grab' for Canterbury's water. In recent times there has emerged another artist who has joined the fray  - though from a different perspective. Former Dunedin singer-songwriter Anthonie Tonnon, who I'd argue is also a great storyteller having seen him play live recently, has written and sung about arguably the core the government's 2010 decision Canterbury's groundwater, the Water Underground..."

I'm still in awe 

at how you pulled it all off 

and driving through the drylands 

seeing irrigators installed 

I think about the coup 

you turned the rules on themselves 

you engineered that miracle 

to free the water underground 

they said you'd never take the council down 

but you just found your way around 

called it a national crisis 

you were in bed with the press 

you understood from experience how to 

make it fast and hard to digest oh you 

left them dumbfounded, unemployable 

chose their replacements yourself 

all their science from the cities couldn't keep you 

from the water underground 

they said you'd never take the council down 

but you just found your way around 

nine years out of power 

you had time to think it out 

she was one of those friends 

followed the rabbit hole to its end 

and you knew what it meant 

to get involved 

and the industry couldn't help you 

no, none of the farmers who owed you 

they let you fight in that pit alone 

but with elections still on hold 

with the cattle turning up by the truckload 

you can hear the drills working now 

on that water underground

DCD and the 'Sleeping giant' that is/was the Maori economy

But are the dogs running or sleeping?

Me and dogs.

I don't mind dogs. We got a Dalmatian last year, Lila, lovely dog, killed a massive rat in our lounge once.

And I use to fish the Tutaekuri River which ran a few minutes walk from our whare in Kauri Street, Taradale. Dogs can be kai.

looking upstream of Tutaekuri, towards the Otatara pa .

I expect to see at least two guard dogs in every truck yard I pass, like the yard on the corner of Vickerys and Washbourne Roads, back of Sockburn by the old airbase. One of the dogs there - they used Dobermans, Rottweilers, the occasional Alsatian- was three-legged. Dangerous work, if you can get it.

sunrise through the HotDip galvanising plant

the old burger bunker, a wreck before the quake...

Nice.
In Capitalist korero there is the term running dogs of capitalism...which Wikipedia tells me is a "literal translation into English of the Chinese/Korean communist pejorative zǒu gǒu 走狗, meaning lackey or lapdog, an unprincipled person who helps or flatters other, more powerful and often evil people. It is derived from the eagerness with which a dog will respond when called by its owner, even for mere scraps.


I also know to Let sleeping dogs lie, remember the film? I was somewhat stunned by the synopsis:

 Following the break-up of his marriage caused by his wife's affair with another man named Bullen (Mune), "Smith" (Neill) arranges to live on the Coromandel peninsula on an island owned by a Maori tribe. Meanwhile, political tensions escalate as an oil embargo leaves the country in an energy crisis. Tensions boil over into a civil war and guerrilla activity. However, Smith enjoys his peaceful island life and has little interaction with the rest of society.

Well, we all know what happens to Smith. (Actually, I forgot, so I had to look it up.)

What we don't know is what's happening to the 'Sleeping giant' of NZ Inc that is the Maori Economy?

With so much riding on the dairy sector, it poaka-fisted attempts to control korero on its soil management strategies must. give. one. pause. to. think.

I recall Ingrid Collins, chair of Parae Whangara B5 which took out Te Ahuwhenua, saying we/they had reached the limits of intensification, and they're mainly sheep and beef.

Pity the lowlands.

i think this water is looking for the Heathcote...near Tower Junction...

Without wanting to oversimplify, the reason I'm posting on what was an obscure chemical (albeit one developed on the very campus from which this is posted...) is that Rod Oram touches on the risk to our Maori economy, or at least that chunk still on the land. DairyNZ and Fonterra, through supporting/contracting research on technological solutions to the environmental (and hence social and market contexts), are reaching those limits, both limits to the land, the water, their ecosystems, and to people, the hours they can work, the injuries they can carry.

We've seen the invisible hand reaching to the Pacific all those years ago. Now its is grasping, pummeling, clenching, all too desperate, and all too visible if you know where to look.

I think we are seeing the extremities of the logic of accumulating capital. Maori have seen the land squeezed from our hands, the blood wrung out of us as workers but still. it. goes. on.

So this latest corporate fuck up (and perhaps more in the arrogance of the political arm rather than the technocratic) is merely the latest incarnation of capital's logic. More people are aware, more focused questions can be asked, more scrutiny of the answers is possible.

Ain't the end. Ain't even the beginning of the end. But it might be the end of the beginning.

Eco-N comment from Rod Oram

The straight-faced Rod Oram gives an interesting comment on the Eco-N event. Ol' Rodders is quite dismissive of Fonterras role...

DCP, Eco-N, and milk supply chain management...

As scandals go, it'll probably never reach great heights but for lil' ol' Lincoln campus it is a foot on the ladder.

The product - Eco-N - was developed by Lincoln researchers (led by Prof's Hong Di and Keith Cameron) has been withdrawn by Ravensdown after concerns were raised by foreign markets that the compound around which the IP was wrapped - Dicyandiamide (DCP) - was finding its way into the milk supply.

Staff received an email from the VC's office and links to a couple of press releases, one from Ravensdown (part-owner of the rights to Eco-N) and another from MPI. For MPI, the 'crux' of the issue is the lack of internationally set standards for DCD residues in the food chain: "This is because DCD has not been considered to have any impact on food safety."

Perception, of course, is everything in the premium food stakes we're NZ Inc. has staked its claim. The Wall Street Journal asks 'Is New Zealand milk safe to drink?'...



Talk in the LU staff club was around the products up-take by farmers (500 are claimed, only about 5% of the total NZ dairy estate), and efficacy. One wag said it was less effective the further you got from Lincoln campus...Researcher commissioned by Ravensdown, undertaken by Doug Edmeades, found it had 'little effect' on pasture production. And while a 'positive effect on reducing soil nitrates' was found 'but by how much is still is unknown.'

There was talk of 'commercial sensitivity' and dodgy oversight. Fonterra has known for sometime and sat on the knowledge until they floated their wee shareholder scheme. Lincoln also lost out on a major collaborative strategy with Dairy NZ to Auckland. Small country, everyone knows someone.
Oh well.



As a social scientist, and one with a hankering for more Actor-Network Theory ops, this is a great case study. They need some extra arrows...

As an employee of Lincoln University, I see a hit to our credibility that may ripple on for sometime yet.

Maori views on life, the universe and everything...

Horizon Research recently released a survey - Maori Viewpoint 2012 report - that tracks our views on a range of issues (actually, not that varied a range as it happens...). The survey was done in August and is of 433 adult Maori. (Some of these results are compared with a similar survey from May, 2011).

More of us evidently think Aotearoa/NZ is headed in the wrong direction, 71.8% (compared with 63.1% in May 2011). While consistent across all age groups, concern rises to nearly 80% among rangatahi. Goodbye Gisbourne, G'day Brisbane.

We're also increasingly dissatisfied with the Government’s handling of the economy and more are reporting their household financial positions are worse than a year ago, and more expect them to worsen in the next year. Overall 34.5% of Maori expect household financial positions to crapify.

As for iwi involvement, 5% of Maori are now more involved in iwi affairs than in 2011, though a third are still not active in iwi affairs. 51% have little or no contact with their iwi and 24.6% only rate contact with them by their iwi as adequate or better.

We feel better informed on iwi issues up from 42% in May 2011 to 55%. Nearly 44% of us think our iwi is/are adequately consulting. However, a small majority of 56% feel this consultation is inadequate (it was 72.3% in the previous study). Most of us - 82.3% - want more involvement.
53.7% of Maori say we have received no personal benefit from treaty settlements; 58% feel only a few cousins are benefiting. There has been a 14% fall in the number who feel their iwi are adequately managing their fisheries. Two thirds (64%) feel we have no influence on iwi fisheries policy.
No surprises that 81% of us oppose the Government’s policy to sell shares in state owned energy companies. The party splits are Labour 95%, Mana 100%, Maori party 79% and Green 82.2%. But we're a diverse mob nowadays, so of those who voted National, 67.03% support (14.40% of strongly). There is less certainty over whether Maori own water rights and can attach a value to them: 48.7% say yes, 32% no. The survey was taken in the week the Waitangi Tribunal started hearing an application from the Maori Council and others regarding asset sales and water rights.

Health, unemployment and secondary education are seen as the most important future challenges. Less important are mining and gas and oil exploration; marine and coastal area rights are still viewed as a priority by most Maori.

The recent eruption of another significant Maori resource issue - water rights - provoked by the government policy of partial-privatisation of four NZ energy companies. The case provides a nice comparison to how the mainstream NZ reacted to the Foreshore and Seabed case a decade ago.

My own iwi, Tuhoe, will be watching with interest as we claim Waikaremoana whose waters run through several hydro schemes. As I often say, we can korero about our waters in terms of myths and legends, but we can also incorporate cumecs and megawatts, dollars and cents.


Joshua Hitchcock has a dissection of the Maori Council's actions:

"The NZ Māori Council have done Māori a great disservice in bringing this particular claim and linking in to the partial sale of State-Owned Enterprises in the manner that it has. By linking this claim to the keystone legislation of the Government’s second term, it was always doomed to fail. The Māori Council is a body desperately searching for relevance amidst the rise of independent Māori political bodies and the more representative Iwi Leaders Group. It no longer speaks with the authority of Te Ao Māori behind it, instead it appears to have been captured by the specific interests of Titewhai Harawira and Donna Hall. It speaks volumes about the strength of their case that the Iwi Leaders Group, a body comprised of the elected leaders of Iwi throughout Aotearoa, refused to support the claim and instead preferred to continue negotiation with the Crown around water rights."

Morgan Godfrey has a comment on the several Maori organisations variously engaged or marginalised by the current National-led government. I've attended several Federation of Maori Affairs (FOMA) hui (and hope to get to this years AGM as well), and like many others am somewhat in the dark about the Iwi Leaders Group (ILG). That the government's approach follows in a long line of colonial 'divide and conquer' approaches makes it no less palatable to Maori.

The usual smokescreens are blowing across the battlefield, including taniwha and a pay dispute. 

No Right Turn is typically scathing of John Key. While I think history will treat Key badly ('It's the economy, stupid...') he has played this with great Machiavellian aplomb. He's 'stood up to Maori' on the one hand, while quietly dealing with the corporate-focused ILG on the other, ensuring the planned share offering can go ahead with at least some Maori 'agreement'. 

Of course, Maori who oppose this strategy may yet go to the courts, in which case all bets are off!

Maori, Water, the Markets, and Surety

We're always told the markets like surety, they like to know what's going to happen. So much interest will turn to the remarkable developments in the claim for water by Maori. First a decision in the Paki v. Attorney General case in which  the descendants of the owners of five blocks of land along the Waikato River at Pouakani have claimed the Crown acquisition of the riverbed was in breach of the Crown's duties.

Essentially this turns on an interpretation of the river being navigable under s14 of the Coal Mines Amendment Act (1903). Where a stretch of river is not navigable, an enforceable interest to the riverbed might remain in the hands of the Maori customary owners.

Some nice turns of phrase by Mai Chen: The philosopher Heraclitus said that you cannot step into the same river twice. Change is constant. It remains to be seen whether the Government finds the Supreme Court's decision in Paki "navigable".

                                                               Venn Young and Eva Rickard 
Source: http://envirohistorynz.com/2010/08/15/from-adversity-comes-opportunity-the-unlikely-origins-of-qeii-trust/

Then the Maori Council takes an urgent case to the Waitangi Tribunal seeking to stop the governments planned sale of State Owned Assets: Mighty River Power, Genesis, Meridian and Solid Energy.

The PM has come out firing:"We don't believe anybody owns water. What we do accept is that people own water rights. We don't think the sale of 49 per cent of Mighty River Power in any way impinges on those water rights."

He goes on: "The Waitangi Tribunal's rulings are not binding on the Government, so we could choose to ignore what findings they might have - I'm not saying we would, but we could." 

Of course if the Government refuses to act on the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal, the Maori Council could take its case to the High Court. 

We're along way from the surety that markets desire. Good job.

Recommended Reading: The Legal Voice of Māori in Freshwater Governance: A Literature Review, by Jacinta Ruru