'Making the connections'New Zealand Freshwater Sciences Society and New Zealand Ecological Society combined conference, Nelson.

Good morning, I’m delighted to be at this conference this year. I’d like to thank the Chairs of both societies, and the planning committee, particularly Trevor James for inviting me to speak today. And I congratulate the Freshwater Sciences Society and the Ecological Society on holding a joint conference this year.

The conference theme ‘ecology at the water’s edge’ will link the interests of both societies, providing a useful focus on wetlands and the margins of rivers and lakes.
Your theme – ecology at the water’s edge – sets the scene for working together. It crosses conventional boundaries, making important connections between the worlds of ecology and of the freshwater sciences.

This meeting is a great opportunity for you to develop contacts and share knowledge between both societies. The results of your discussions will benefit all of us because doing good science, and telling people about what you have discovered, is critical for making good environmental management decisions, and developing good policy.

As Minister for the Environment, concerned about the health of our natural world, I am pleased to tell you what the Government is doing towards addressing biodiversity and freshwater management issues.

When I took on the environment portfolio in 1999, the issues I faced included:
·Local water quality and allocation problems
·disparate data and information sets for the environment
·no clear path for achieving sustainable management of our freshwater resources, or establishing priorities for action

Let me tell you what we have done and then I’ll talk about what we still need to do, and the direction we will need to take.

So, first, what progress has the government made in improving how we manage our environment?

We have made good progress in developing a robust and functional set of environmental management tools over the last six years. These tools help us understand our environment more clearly, and make better management decisions.

These tools have been developed through the efforts of NIWA, Land Care Research, Terralink and some regional councils, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment.

River Environment Classification (REC)

The River Environment Classification or REC, was launched last year. This classification system is an innovative, world-first tool which enables us to group rivers with the same physical characteristics, including catchment climate, topography and geology. Classifying rivers helps us design management approaches to suit particular types of rivers with the same physical conditions.

Rivers classification is a powerful tool that can be applied at different scales and levels of detail, from single site investigations to national reporting. The Ministry for the Environment is using the classification to track changes in water quality over time in different river classes. At the national scale, for example, are we managing collectively to curb the deterioration of river water quality in our most intensively developed catchments? The Classification will help us identify nationally significant trends in water quality and target our policies accordingly.

The Classification has been used successfully by regional councils in the Southland, Canterbury, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay regions for environmental reporting and decision-making. Check out these councils’ state of the environment reports!

Another, similar tool for classifying the marine environment has also been launched recently -- the Marine Environment Classification, or MEC. Like the REC, this is a tool that will help acquaint us with some of the mysteries of our marine environment and give us valuable information about the links between the marine and freshwater environment.

Land Environments New Zealand (LENZ)

Another tool developed to assist environmental management is the Land Environments New Zealand classification. This one is popularly known as LENZ. It can be used to map New Zealand’s different environments, allowing us to see where similar terrestrial ecosystems are across New Zealand’s landscape.

LENZ is a superb example of putting science into practice with policy. By providing a nationally consistent environmental classification system we can now monitor the state of the environment as well as inform decisions about conservation and land management issues.

LENZ is used by a wide range of people – people who work in conservation, for instance, or in farming, forestry, horticulture, public health and resource management. And if that’s not enough, the Department of Conservation has been working on a LENZ-like counterpart for freshwater – FreshWater Environments New Zealand. Yes, it’s the FWENZ. DoC and the Ministry for the Environment are working on the interface between this tool and the Marine Environment Classification.

And, if you haven’t had enough of acronyms yet, here's another.
It’s the LCDB2.
Land Cover Database 2
The Land Cover Database 2 was launched last year and is the second part in an ongoing series of land cover snapshots for New Zealand. This Database is another tool for monitoring and reporting on the changes to the state of our environment.

It’s a Crown database that can be used by central and local government to make decisions about changes in land cover and land use. It’s very clever. The database translates satellite images of New Zealand into information on the different types of land cover that exist on the ground. The database will be updated over the years and any changes from the images will be able to be seen.

Like the other tools I’ve talked about the Database provides a nationally consistent classification system which can be used to meet both international obligations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and domestic needs like infrastructure planning.

Science forms that basis of these tools, and, we can use all these tools together to define further research and answer management questions.

Together, they provide a comprehensive set of resources to help us understand our environment. They also provide a solid foundation for making good management and policy decisions, from mountains, to rivers, through to the sea.

On the world stage, New Zealand is leading the way in the development and use of tools like these.

As you know, we are grappling right now with some big issues around how we manage the environment, and we can’t wait until we have all the scientific knowledge before we deal with these issues; all the more reason for us to keep working together to get a better understanding of how our environment functions.

You will all be aware of some of the thorny problems we are facing with managing our freshwater resources in a way that sustains them to support their full range of ecological, economic, cultural and social values.
Water is one of the four key issues in the Government’s Sustainable Development Programme of Action established in January 2003. Water is a priority. We're serious about it. There are issues to address and we will fix them.

Water Programme of Action
The Sustainable Water Programme of Action is looking at how we can apply a sustainable development approach to freshwater management. I am sure some of you participated in, and provided useful insights and recommendations to the consultation programme earlier this year. The Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry received nearly 300 submissions, and more than a thousand people attended meetings and hui around the country which shows that here is a lot of interest in how we manage our freshwater.

If you want to get an idea of the wide range of views expressed in this consultation, you can read the summary reports available on the Ministry for the Environment website. There were some strong themes that ran across the different sectoral interests and some of these relate to what you will be thinking about in this conference.

People were very clear about the important role of science in managing freshwater effectively – for understanding the resource better, for setting environmental bottom lines, for understanding the impacts of land management and water use and for developing management tools. We were also told that we need to get better at making sure this information gets out to the councils and land and water users who make decisions that affect the water resource.

Some people also made the point that uncertainty about science is no excuse for not acting to address the pressures on our water bodies. There was support for developing flexible approaches so that management can be adapted to take account of new information as it becomes available. There was also strong support for collaboration between government, councils, scientists and the community to find solutions together.

Officials are now working through all the ideas and concerns that were raised in consultation to help design an integrated package of actions that we can start to implement next year.

The government is already taking part in collaborative action to address some of the urgent freshwater problems. I would like to update you on these projects, which are leading examples of science being used in a practical way.

Lake Taupo
First -- Lake Taupo, our largest lake and a national treasure. Scientists for many years now have told us that Lake Taupo’s water quality is threatened by nitrogen inputs from farms as well as some leaching of nutrients from urban areas. These inputs need to be cut by at least 20 per cent simply to maintain current water quality in the long-term. As well as its important cultural and ecological values, the condition of the lake is crucial to the future of tourism in the Taupo region.

Last year the government confirmed funding of $36.7 million towards an $81.5 million programme to improve Lake Taupo’s water quality, with Environment Waikato and the Taupo District Council committed to funding the remainder. In partnership with these councils and Ngati Tuwharetoa, we are working to reduce nitrogen inputs using a mix of measures. These include research into land uses with low nitrogen production, advice and funding assistance to encourage change in land use, land use controls, development of nitrogen trading and community planning for the future of the lake.

The Lake Taupo programme is a practical example of sustainable development in action. We are seeking to protect a high quality environment while promoting economic development to sustain the social and cultural values of the community. The project is very long term – the problems we are seeing in the lake today are the result of land use up to 50 years ago. It is a challenging path but we are making good progress.

Managing excess nutrient run off is also an issue that affects other parts of New Zealand. What we learn from Lake Taupo, we can apply to other resource issues. We will all learn by doing in the context of Lake Taupo.

Rotorua Lakes
The Rotorua lakes are also important national assets and the water quality problems there are more obvious than those of Lake Taupo. Algal blooms stimulated by excess nutrients in Lake Rotoiti not only affect tourism, but are also becoming a public health concern. There is no silver bullet to fix these problems but the government is involved in several initiatives to address them.

The Ministry for the Environment commissioned a review of short-term management options for Lakes Rotorua and Rotoiti in 2003 and is working with Environment Bay of Plenty, Te Arawa Maori Trust Board and Rotorua District Council to develop medium and longer term plans to address the water quality problems in the lakes. Government funding is helping with short-term remedial works, land user initiatives, sewerage upgrades and scientific research.

Professor David Hamilton at Waikato University has recently been awarded a $10 million research contract through the Foundation for Research Science and Technology for a 10-year programme on tools for restoring degraded lakes. This will focus on the Rotorua lakes, but the findings will be applicable more widely. Professor Hamilton’s research will lead to a framework through which high quality lakes will remain stable and important degraded lakes may be restored. It will involve community groups, councils, consultants and the water industry to ensure methods to improve and protect New Zealand’s lakes can be practically applied.

A collaborative approach has also been fruitful in dealing with the important issue of riparian management. Two years ago the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord was agreed between Fonterra Co-operative Group, the Minister for the Environment, the Minister of Agriculture, and regional councils. The parties to the Accord agreed to work together to achieve clean healthy water bodies in dairying areas.

Dairying makes a substantial contribution to our economy – we export dairy products to 140 countries around the world – but we don’t need cows in streams damaging freshwater ecosystems. I’m very pleased that Fonterra has recognised this and is taking real steps to address the problem. It's an approach that involves 13,000 suppliers of one of our largest companies in our largest export business in to environmental improvement.

Part of the government’s commitment to the Clean Streams Accord is to facilitate development of tools to help implement the Accord. We have agreed to work with Fonterra and regional councils to look at what science and research is needed for implementation.

So far the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Ministry for the Environment have done some work on tools for nutrient budgeting and guidelines for bridge and culvert design. Funding has also been provided through the Sustainable Management Fund and the Sustainable Farming Fund for development of best management practice. Issues identified in the first year of the Accord that need further work are the impacts of tile drains and current gaps in information on regionally significant wetlands.

These are just some of the issues and projects we are addressing at the moment.

We all know we have a problem in certain freshwater environments with land use pressures and declining water quality. The challenge for us now is to fix it. But first we have to define the extent of the problem. Part of this requires committing to suitable long term monitoring networks so that the significance and causes of trends can be identified with more confidence. We also need to strengthen further the links between science and policy development to find effective management solutions.

And that leads me to thinking about the future.

Science plays a role in virtually everything with major implications for our social, cultural, economic and environmental well-being.

Next year is the year for action. The Water Programme of Action will be delivering some real solutions to the issues we have been talking about in our consultation. I’m very happy to say that it has already started: the latest Resource Management Amendment Act (number 5) has already delivered certainty for councils around the ability and responsibility to allocate freshwater. It has also provided greater certainty for existing users, and given the minister the power to ask that a plan be prepared where there’s a need.
We are also notifying a new standard for drinking water sources. This will help put mechanisms in place to ensure that we protect our sources of water, and take into account impacts of activities upstream of community water supplies.

The Ministry for the Environment has a new Reporting and Review Group, which will be taking care of Environmental Monitoring and Reporting, Policy Reporting and Science and Inventory. The Group will report on whether or not New Zealanders are being delivered the environment that they expect and deserve. They will be making good use of these new tools to do this, and to:
·provide decision makers with constructive and useable information about the environment
·motivate New Zealanders to help maintain and improve their environment.

So it’s all about:
·having the right tools and information to do the job
·participating – playing your part
·taking responsibility – doing something about it, even in the face of uncertainty
·working together – taking a collaborative approach
·communication – clear and effective that is, and
·being flexible and able to change course when needed, of course.

And there are some pretty good examples right here in Nelson of this sort of approach making great progress.

The Motueka integrated catchment management project is one. It began five years ago with a goal to conduct multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder research to provide information and knowledge to improve the management of land, freshwater, and near-coastal environments. The project includes participants from Landcare Research, Tasman District Council, the Cawthron Institute, Forest Research, NIWA, IGNS, and Otago University. I’m keen to hear about how the project is going.

Another great local initiative is the Clean up Waimea inlet project. The Ministry for the Environment has committed to provide Nelson City Council $60,600 to remove contamination from the upper Arapiki Stream in Stoke. The outcome will be a healthy wetland – the Waimea Inlet, home to migratory birds and native fish species.

It’s great to see communities working with local government and science providers to work towards common goals.

Just as you will be strengthening your understanding of the linkages between freshwater sciences and ecological sciences, I would like to emphasise the importance of strengthening the linkages between research and decision-making. I know that you all know how important this is.

The work we are doing with the Sustainable Development Water Programme of Action, Lake Taupo and the Rotorua Lakes, and the Clean Streams Accord (just to name a few) is building a solid foundation for strengthening connections between scientists, decision makers, community groups and tangata whenua.

We are making things happen. We know what we have to fix, and we have a fair idea of how we can go about fixing them. Now – even in the face of uncertainty – we need to work together to make progress.

As water managers, water users, recreationalists, environmentalists, scientists, hydrologists, and politicians, and even government policy writers, we need to think seriously about what we want our environment to look like in 20 years, and in 100 years. How do we continue to grow our agricultural productivity without compromising our rivers, streams and lakes? How do we protect those values attached to water that are cherished by all New Zealanders? How do we ensure equitable access to water for current and future users? If we want to continue to enjoy the New Zealand way of life - we don’t want either the environment or the economy to lose out.
The challenges that lie ahead are big ones.
Just before I finish I would like to tell you about a new environmental scholarship programme for young people that I have been asked to launch here today.

Known as the BAYERBoost Environmental Scholarship Scheme, the initiative is the result of a partnership between the global science and research company Bayer and the Royal Society of New Zealand.

As the name suggests, the scholarship programme aims at giving senior secondary school and undergraduate tertiary students a boost during their summer break.

This will be done by awarding scholarships to students taking part in environmental research or restoration work during their holidays.

Students will not only gain valuable experience in environmental work, but will also be given financial support to assist with further study.

Bayer New Zealand will contribute $120,000 to the scholarship over the next three years, which is great. But, I’m told the ultimate goal is to grow the scholarship fund by bringing onboard like-minded organisations willing to make a contribution to environmental education. Clearly, the more funds available, the more scholarships can be awarded.

To apply for a BAYERBoost scholarship, students need to have secured a role with a host organisation.

I’m sure there are plenty of organisations represented here today that could take on students to assist with various research projects and environmental restoration work.

If you want to learn more about BAYERBoost then may I suggest you visit the website www.bayerboost.co.nz.

William Malpass from Bayer, and Peter Spratt from the Royal Society are also available to answer questions as part of the question and answer session after my presentation.

May I say that I applaud the foresight and initiative of both Bayer and the Royal Society for coming together to develop such a worthwhile scholarship.

By giving our young people experience in environmental work we are not only working on solving current issues, but also building capacity through education to ensure we have well educated and motivated people in future.

Finally, looking ahead, my challenges to you are these:
·Continue to find ways to make good use of good tools – remember all those acronyms? The REC, LENZ and the LCDB
·Link your science with social science – what sort of freshwater conditions are we prepared to accept at a community level and as a country? Do we strive for reviving pristine waters, maintaining status quo and preventing further degradation?
·Integrate community aspirations into the science of managing water bodies and habitats
·Focus on developing decision support tools to help everybody through the process of assigning values to our environment and managing it accordingly
·Identify the baseline monitoring information that is critical to managing our environment – we cannot afford to monitor and report everything.

The Government’s approach to environmental management in New Zealand is one based on partnership – and scientists play a key part – underpinned by strong government leadership. It is an approach that is working. It’s working for people and it’s working for the environment. And now we have the Bayer/Royal Society partnership, which enables me to declare the Bayerboost Environmental Scholarship Scheme officially open.

Thank you.