Tipping point for environment
private property rights and personal freedoms predominate over values such as the collective good or social licence. (By way of contrast, in Japan, rice farmers were traditionally compelled to co-operate to guarantee an equitable share of the limited freshwater resource, so vital to wet-rice agriculture.)
In Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics in New Zealand, I trace the history of environmental politics since the nationwide campaign of 1969 to stop the government raising the level of one of our most spectacular lakes. Since then, environmental governance has progressed markedly.
Whereas 50 years ago, there was no government body dedicated to environmental policy, there are now three agencies with major responsibilities in this area. And there is a body of law relating to environmental decisionmaking and governance, central to which is the Resource Management Act. Scientific knowledge, public awareness, and the public’s ability to participate in environmental decisionmaking have also grown exponentially.
But at the same time, environmental issues have grown significantly more complex – making them vulnerable to obfuscation, as was seen in the government proposal in 2017 to make 90 per cent of rivers and lakes ‘‘swimmable’’ by 2040. Confusion reigned in the wake of the announcement, and it was finally admitted that the threshold against which ‘‘swimmability’’ was being measured had been lowered.
The signs of a growing impetus for meaningful change to address our most pressing environmental issues are tentative, but nevertheless offer hope. Earlier this year, National leader Simon Bridges announced his party would support the Government’s proposal to establish an independent climate commission (albeit with some caveats). If he honours this promise, it will be a rare example of bipartisan support for environmental policy.
The Government has also announced that it intends to introduce tougher regulations on agricultural land use to curb water pollution. This triggered the usual objections that stricter regulation is not required because farmers are doing good things like planting trees along streams, though these were more muted and less emphatic than in the past. And from being an obscure, ‘‘greenie issue’’ a year or two ago, the concern about the proliferation of plastic waste (particularly its effect on oceans) is becoming mainstream, with the Government’s plan to ban single-use plastic bags greeted with widespread acceptance.
To make inroads into our most pressing environmental challenges, the Government not only needs to capitalise on newly emerged public concern, but also take up the mantle of leadership and not be afraid to lead public opinion through awareness-raising initiatives encouraging us all to take more responsibility for the environmental impacts of our everyday activities and decisions.
My hope is that a future historian will be able to reflect back on this period, and identify it as a watershed era in terms of environmental awareness and action – a ‘‘tipping point’’ in environmental history, much like the Save Manapouri Campaign was half a century ago.