Is a sea change coming for the way we treat our water?
Everybody has their water. Mine runs north of the Giant’s Causeway, where North Atlantic waves crash onto unforgiving black basalt rocks before they melt into Runkerry Beach. The gales howl, salt clings to your hair and the sea spray stings your cold, numb face.
Right here, right now, it’s the cool emeraldyblue shallows of Wellington’s Shelly Bay, where the smell of bacon frying on the Chocolate Fish cafe´ barbecue mixes with the ocean tang.
Where is your water? Maybe it’s Taylor’s Mistake on a northeast swell, when the waves peel all the way to the beach? Or the white sands and lush forests of Whale Bay?
We follow the water. Humans are pulled towards the ocean’s calming presence, its turbulent power. It soothes us, and yet makes us feel alive.
With 15,000km of coastline, New Zealand has epic expanses of sand and endless ocean views. We swim, surf, paddle, sail and fish in it. We gaze at it, frolic in its foamy rollers, sizzle beside it, walk along it and camp next to it.
Most of us live by the coast. We have close to a million recreational boats and catch around 17 million fish each year on lazy afternoons out.
But it’s so much more than our playground: water is the primary ingredient for survival. Ocean plankton contributes to more than 50 per cent of our planet’s oxygen, the seas regulate our climate.
The ocean supports our economy. Fisheries add $1.8 billion to exports each year and employ around 2500 people. Ports move more than 49 million tonnes of products, with a combined value of more than $75b annually.
So, why don’t we look after our oceans? The marine environment is under siege: ocean
acidification, plastic pollution, sea temperature rise, land-based runoff and overfishing is compromising its health.
Politicians are obsessed with the Resource Management Act. Labour, the Greens, National and ACT all pledged to reform or scrap the 29-year legislation. But the laws that protect the marine environment are almost 50 years old, and long past their best before date.
National proposed new marine protection legislation in 2016, but it addressed only the terrestrial seas, not the wider exclusive economic zone (out to 200 nautical miles) and got no further than the consultation stage.
The last Labour-led government made even less progress, despite promising an overhaul. Proposals for reform were held up by NZ First and the government didn’t even make them public.
We are far behind the rest of the world and failing as kaitiaki. The UN wanted 10 per cent of the world’s oceans protected by this year. At best, just under six per cent meets that goal. But New Zealand has achieved less than 0.5 per cent.
After six years of arguing, the government did finally agree to protection for the south-east’s dolphins and sea birds in 2019, only for Covid-19 to stall the never-ending consultation process.
It failed to agree to an expansion of a subantarctic sanctuary off Campbell Island, one of the world’s most precious biodiversity hotspots. The Kermadec ocean sanctuary (which would protect 16 per cent of the EEZ) is on ice. And two decades since the creation of the landmark Hauraki Gulf marine reserve, it has been overfished to collapse.
NZ First was a useful scapegoat but can’t shoulder all the blame for weak oceans policy.
There is one bright spot on this glittering ocean of failure. In appointing her Cabinet, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has created an ‘‘oceans and fisheries’’ portfolio. It hints at a new emphasis on the health of the marine environment, rather than just a resource to be plundered.
The new minister is David Parker, who also bears responsibility for environment and showed steel in taking on agriculture over freshwater reforms.
Earlier this year, researchers concluded our largest ecosystem is ‘‘remarkably resilient’’ and could bounce back over the next three decades – if we act now.
A third of the country’s land mass is protected in parks and reserves. It’s time to give the same status to the waters that we cherish.
There is one bright spot on this glittering ocean of failure. In appointing her Cabinet, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has created an ‘‘oceans and fisheries’’ portfolio.