Water Management

Water is the resource on which all life depends. There is no other resource like it on our planet. Unique among the world's food sources, if freshwater is unavailable there is no alternative. In the Asia Pacific region, some 600 million people live without access to safe drinking water or safe sanitation. Our region also has the lowest per capita freshwater availability of any of the worlds regions.

The provision of safe, affordable water for drinking and sanitation is a basic human right. This human right must be given the highest level of protection and priority. New Zealand has been pleased to work with Russia on a joint resolution that addresses this issue and sets a framework for further cooperation and collaboration between all our countries.

In New Zealand, we remember a time when our rivers were clean and teeming with a diversity of life. We remember that they provided sustenance to a variety of species and New Zealanders could swim in them and drank from them without fear of sickness. Water extraction and pollution have degraded many of our rivers. Water quality is affected by pollution and contamination from intensive farming operations and commercial operations, as well as wastewater treatment and excessive extraction.

As many as 95% of our lowland rivers have been deemed unsafe for swimming or drinking. A large number of our nationally important rivers are threatened by large-scale hydro or irrigation proposals. Some volcanic lakes areexperiencing annual toxic algae blooms as a result of excessive nutrient inflows from the surrounding land. Sewage and industrial wastewater continue to pollute many rivers. Waterways and public drinking water supplies are inadequately protected from the impacts of intensive land use. Rates of infection from waterborne diseases are far too high and pose a significant public health risk.

At the moment the rapid increase in the commercial use of water is placing immense pressure on ground and surface water ecosystems.

Technological solutions to water shortages (e.g. storage dams) also have serious ecological and social implications. With scarcity of water a looming issue, there is increasing demand for more efficient ways of allocating water for commercial use, and this has put pressure for measures such as water trading mechanisms to be adopted which will result in further commodification of water.

Because of the importance of water to public and environmental well being, it is critical that the management and regulation of water (whether used by public or private bodies and when in natural or artificial water bodies) must remain under public control. To do otherwise places our freshwater sources at risk, outlined by the delegates who spoke before me.

The New Zealand government is currently developing a Sustainable Water Programme of Action to address some of these issues. However, the government has not yet addressed the Treaty implications of such a programme. Water is a taonga, or treasure for Maori. Rivers and lakes remain an important food basket. Since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Maori have had serious concerns about water, especially its contamination and the pollution of rivers and lakes.

However, many of these concerns have fallen on deaf ears until quite recently. However, despite some progress on pollution issues, the government has not yet addressed the key issue of the ownership of water and the interests that Maori will still have in freshwater under customary title. Until that issue is resolved it will be extremely difficult to achieve a sustainable program of action that will stand the test of time. Unjust processes are never truly sustainable.

In the New Zealand experience there is the lesson that indigenous communities in colonised countries must be part of the discussion and decision-making over precious natural resources such as water. To do otherwise is to continue the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their customary rights and practices. And no country can truly make progress when indigenous peoples continue to suffer the effects a 21st century colonisation.