NZ Could Be a World Leader If It Cleaned up Its Act on Water – Expert

New Zealand should play an important or even a leading role in the global water crisis but it needs to clean up its act first says KPMG’s global head of Corporate Citizenship, Lord Michael Hastings.

“Your focus should be on cleaning up what is a disaster, making sure that New Zealand returns to being the model, the exemplary model that it always has been and it should continue to be,” Lord Hastings told TV One’s Q+A programme.

“We need to see increased agriculture around the world. There’s no question about that whatsoever. There are many more mouths to feed than good supply is able to provide at the moment. But that doesn’t remove the obligation on New Zealand’s governing authorities, on its farming institutions, on its lobbying groups and on the individual farmers themselves and on landholders to make sure they protect the water that is running off from their farms,” he said.

And in response to the contamination of Havelock North’s water supply, Lord Hastings said it came as a surprise to him “because I’d always made the assumption because of New Zealand’s enormous river quality and water sustainability and the emphasis on good environment here that those issues would not arise.”

Here is the link to the interview.

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:35pm. Streamed live atwww.tvnz.co.nz

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Q + A
Episode 26
LORD MICHAEL HASTINGS
Interviewed by CORIN DANN

GREG The water contamination issues in Havelock North have shocked many of its residents, who thought they'd suddenly been plunged into a Third World country. The boil water notice is still in place, but it will be lifted. And those residents should have clean water again. Not so for many millions of people all over the world. It's estimated that one in five deaths of children in developing countries is due to a water-related disease. KPMG's global head of corporate citizenship, Lord Michael Hastings, has been in New Zealand this week to talk about the global water crisis. He's been supporting Cycle For Water, a world bike ride that aims to raise awareness of the need for sustainable water. Corin Dann caught up with Lord Hastings and began by asking whether he was surprised to see New Zealand dealing with a water contamination problem.

MICHAEL It came as a surprise because I’d always made the assumption because of New Zealand’s enormous river quality and water sustainability and the emphasis on good environment here that those issues would not arise. But it’s not that we asked for this to fit into the same time as we were promoting Cycle for Water, but it does help to bring it into sharp relief the assumption that every country has got some kind of hard issue that it needs to look at. But New Zealand was sort of free of that. You’ve certainly blown up by the Hawke’s Bay crisis, and it did help us draw to attention of both the media and the public and the business leaders that we’ve been meeting over the last couple of days that the global water crisis is an issue that matters here as much as it matters in the halls of the rest of the capitals of the world. So we’re not grateful for it, because it’s not good and people’s lives hang on the quality of clean water, but it highlights the sharp issues, so we’re glad to focus around it.

CORIN So what are those long-term challenges for a country like New Zealand and, in fact, for the globe?

MICHAEL Well, let’s just put it into the context of, say, the next 15 years, and here’s the estimate ¬¬– that by roughly 2030 to 2050, the world’s demand for water, because of the growth of our population from 7 billion now to around 9 billion by the turn of the next century, we’re going to have an excessive of demand of about 40% over water supply. That means that people are going to be literally fighting over where does the water come from. It’s partly because we use so much of it in agriculture and, of course, in industry, and in many ways that is necessary and right, but the huge extreme demand that we have for cattle-based protein in the world requires an enormous amount of water to support and to feed the cattle themselves as well as involved in the processing of the meat quality that we want and also the infatuation that we have in the developed world with water-based products. So we’re in a short supply issue. We still have a reality that, and this is a very uncomfortable fact, that the vast majority of children who die under the age of 5 in the developing world die from diarrhoea, and that’s largely because of unsafe and unclean water, and more children die from diarrhoea than die from Aids, malaria and TB combined.

CORIN A country like New Zealand which does have large quantities of fresh water, do you envisage that perhaps we become an exporter of that water in future, that we try and meet that demand in some way?

MICHAEL Water is not easily transportable around the world. You could have water transported – multi-litre bottles of waters. You can have multiple packs of this, which, of course, are used by the aid agencies and by governments to support disasters, emergencies and particularly refugee migration crisis. But you can’t move the volumes of water that is necessary for the rest of the developing world to receive just because you’ve got it here in New Zealand. What New Zealand can do as a country that is well provided for and well protected is become an active participant in the campaign for available water in the rest of the world. Let’s be candid about it. We waste so much of what is currently available, even in developing countries let alone in the northern economies, simply because we don’t understand how vital it is. We don’t cost it properly. We don’t treat it with dignity. We don’t recognise what it means for people’s health and livelihoods and sustainability, and we don’t think about it as a vital product of the industry and particularly of the agriculture that we use so freely. So we do need this kind of high level of public awareness. This is like a costed mineral. This is a great effector; the same way that we might want to treasure diamonds or treasure gold or treasure natural minerals. Water is a mineral that matters to us.

CORIN So you’re saying New Zealand could be perhaps a leader or we could have some sort of a research hub here and try and really set an example? But we do have issues, obviously, with agriculture. Our primary export is dairy – huge user of water. There are tensions between environmentalists on the one hand and farmers on the other hand over that water use, over cows in streams, over the run-off of nitrogen. How does a country like New Zealand meet the balance there? Because we are obviously an important exporter of dairy and protein to the world.

MICHAEL And you should continue to be so, and you should want to strengthen that sector. One of the things, in fact, we were discussing at a meeting this morning is about how to encourage a younger generation into taking agriculture and farming ever more seriously. So we want to see the growth of the New Zealand agricultural sector, but what that also means is you’ve got a duty and obligation to be a quality of water provider and a model to the rest of the world. New Zealand is a rich country. It is perfectly possible to provide the necessary safeguards and the protections which would’ve stopped something of the crisis that Hawke’s Bay has been. We could put the investment into field protection, into water purification, cleansing, into capturing of rainwater and harvesting. All of those things, yes, of course, they involve a cost- upfront investment, but frankly, New Zealand’s in a good place to support that. And it should be a primary model example to the rest of the world of what is not necessarily gifting its water away, although some of it could be – small measure in particularly in response to disasters, emergencies – but more so setting the template of good practice.

CORIN But how does that marry with a desire to see increased farming, intensification of farming that is only going to put pressure on those water supplies?

MICHAEL Well, the pressure on farming is because of the demand that is required both here in New Zealand and also for export. That is a good industry. It needs to be supported. We need to see increased agriculture around the world. There’s no question about that whatsoever. There are many more mouths to feed than good supply is able to provide at the moment. But that doesn’t remove the obligation on New Zealand’s governing authorities, on its farming institutions, on its lobbying groups and on the individual farmers themselves and on landholders to make sure they protect the water that is running off from their farms and they also ensure that the rivers around them are safe for public drinking.

CORIN So is perhaps our focus wrong here?

MICHAEL Yes, your focus should be on cleaning up what is a disaster, making sure that New Zealand returns to being the model, the exemplary model that it always has been and it should continue to be. But you’ve got a former New Zealand prime minister in Helen Clark who’s heading up the United Nations Development Programme. That development programme is focused on providing for the most vulnerable communities in the world, including the most vulnerable communities in our cities. The right approach for New Zealand, in my opinion, is to model what quality water supply and provision should be. And that’s why we brought a cyclist from Paris here. It’s taken him 13 months to get here. We’re flagging the issues because the issues matter to absolutely everybody. We don’t want to see world wars fought over water. That would be unacceptable and unfair. But we’re also seeing already the tensions between nations over water supply. And we’ve still got to believe that whereas we sit in our privilege here, there are still children and young adults desperate for that single glass of clean water for the eradication of simple disease which we can deal with and the fair distribution of water in our world. It is possible, but it’s going to require New Zealand to lead.

CORIN You’ve clearly been looking at this issue in a lot of depth. Do you worry that there will be wars in the future over water?

MICHAEL Well, let’s be candid about it. Water is going to be, or already is in many ways, in short supply. Nations who have it will want to protect it. Other nations who need to get it may well end up tapping off river resources. That is a reality. We only have to look around the world to see where those tensions might emerge. It’s not for me to predict whether wars will or will not happen, but it is to say that in the same way that countries have traditionally fought over land and have fought over minerals, they may well come to fight over water, because water is the most basic but the most necessary commodity every one of us needs. We can’t go a day without it. We can barely go a couple of hours without it.

CORIN Is there one thing that stands out to you that we could do relatively quickly to try and demonstrate that leadership on water, in your view?

MICHAEL People can change their habits. So what could New Zealanders do? Let’s think seriously about whether bottled water is a necessity for us on a day-by-day basis. Let’s think seriously about how long we leave the tap on when we’re cleaning our teeth or we’re running for a shower. Let’s think seriously about how many times we need to use excessive baths. Let’s think seriously about the amount of water that is just liberally not captured that could be used for other sources. And let’s think about how New Zealand contributes to the global development needs of the developing world, in particular with water supply.

CORIN So you think no… cut back on bottle water?

MICHAEL I didn’t say that. What I did say is think seriously about it. It’s up to consumers to have the intelligence to make those choices. I think here in New Zealand let’s raise the issue of water, because at long last, tragically and sadly, there are examples of where water has been contaminated. It’s not by anybody’s deep desire to do so. It has happened as a consequence of forms of neglect, not necessarily preparing what run-offs from fields would do. Water has become a vivid news issue, therefore let the customer, the consumer say, ‘I too must take account of what I use of water.’ There’s an opportunity to give New Zealand’s great water to other parts of the world. Let’s seek to contribute that if we can.

CORIN Does that include some sort of a price signal? So you’re saying put some sort of a levy on bottled water so that it might discourage people from choosing that option?

MICHAEL Yes, some would suggest. And these figures vary, but I’ll just give you one that was given to me. For a single standard cup of coffee or put it in a mug from a coffee provider, for a single cup of coffee like this, it requires somewhere between 6 litres and 20 litres of water to get to that cup of coffee. If you’re just paying for that bit of water, that’s one thing. When you’re realising you need to pay for the 6 litres to 20 litres of water that’s gone in to give you a quarter litre of coffee, that changes the equation. Pricing signal is a very important way of bringing the public’s attention to how valuable this commodity is.

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