Governance of wetlands under RMA: past experience and future prospects

1. Governance of wetlands under RMA: past experience and future prospects Guy Salmon National Wetland Restoration Symposium 21 March 2012

2. Governance matters • It’s about leadership, objective-setting, monitoring, resourcing – and increasingly about network-building • Disappointing in the past – needs our focus for improvement • Land & Water Forum – some optimism

3. Wetlands – hard to govern • RMA clashes with rural cultural assumptions • Technical challenges for policymakers • Linkage to wider, intractable land use issues • Restoration is complex and costly.

4. 20 years of regional councils • OK on point sources • Poor on diffuse pollution & wetland protection • Over-allocated rights to use • Set green objectives – did little to achieve them • Permitted activities & voluntarism • Fonterra had to lead on fencing

5. Clean Streams Accord • For years, most regional councils could not identify their regionally significant wetlands • By 2011, only Taranaki met the 2007 target of fencing 90% of them; only three regions have so far reached the 2005 target of 50% fenced • Small wetlands are still treated as private property

6. What went wrong with the regional council model? • No relationship between resourcing and need - technical fragmentation • First-past-post electoral systems left Maori and most greens in the cold; rural interests captured many councils • Low profile, low engagement councils - lacking legitimacy and authority to act • No national direction provided for 20 years

7. Land and Water Forum - 1 • LWF – 70 organisations building consensus policy • Proposed collaborative plan-writing process – but still culminates in council or court decisions • “New” model of regional councils - central govt appointees added (co-governance), sharing of resources, more national direction & funding • National objectives were key – but NPS left decision on over-allocation to councils; generalities on “significant values of wetlands” • Clean-up fund – turned out to be small.

8. Land and Water Forum -2 • Aims to overcome deficiencies of NPS by writing national objectives – some numerical – can use these to judge over-allocation • But hard to write national objectives for wetlands – will try by September • No timetables for achieving objectives • Govt has no money (except for 1 of 4 well-beings) • Overall: regional decision-making & resources will continue to be crucial for wetlands – but inadequate.

9. Now: Unitary Councils? • More community engagement? Fewer plans? • But smaller than regionals, and more dominated by economic development interests • Less interested in conservation & wetlands • No central government appointees – no co-governance • Technical fragmentation even worse than before • Cost reduction the main driver of this reform – so unlikely to help environment, wetlands.

10. Better solutions? • Adopt “new” model of regional councils, or • Use EPA with regional offices to write plans, using collaborative processes, but sign off at national level (cf Australian States), and • Governorship should seek to resolve ownership.

11. The Assertion That Nobody Owns Water • Absolves us of guilt for expropriation • Enables farmers to treat water as basically theirs to use, part of ‘the right to farm’ • Means we cannot charge for the right to use it, even though it is worth over $5 billion • Above all, is bad for water and wetlands.

12. An Alternative Proposal • Monopoly ownership won’t happen • Maori views are changing • Mainstream iwi focus is co-governance • Adopt “new” regional council model • Public owns water, and charges for water use • Apply revenues to restoring water ecosystems including wetlands.