While ostensibly about improving Aotearoa New Zealand’s water infrastructure, the government’s proposed Three Waters reforms have instead become a lightning rod for political division and distrust.

Critics cite concerns about local democracy, de facto privatisation and co-governance with Māori as reasons to oppose the Water Services Entities Bill currently before Parliament.

With the mayors of Auckland and Christchurch now proposing an alternative plan, the reforms may be far from a done deal.

• READ MORE: The UK’s water industry is broken – here’s how to fix it
• 11,000 litres of water to make one litre of milk? New questions about the freshwater impact of NZ dairy farming
• If we want to improve NZ’s freshwater quality, first we need to improve the quality of our democracy

But behind the debate lies an undeniable truth: clean water is a necessity of life. In fact, 20 years ago this month the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights first affirmed that water is a human right.

The anniversary is a timely reminder of what Aotearoa’s proposed water reforms are essentially about.

Covering drinking water, wastewater and stormwater (hence the “three waters” label), the reforms would have a wider remit than the human right to water. They fold in environmental and cultural considerations alongside public health concerns.

But the human right to water, as well as lessons learned from implementing that right, have important implications for the Three Waters debate, not least around water quality and affordability.

An alternate three waters plan has been proposed by the mayors of Auckland and Christchurch, with control and ownership remaining with local councils, and the type and degree of iwi involvement decided locally.https://t.co/prVSbJuuSL

— RNZ (@radionz) October 31, 2022

A fragile right
By acknowledging it to be a human right in 2002, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights argued water is indispensable for leading a dignified life and essential for other human rights.

Since then, the human right to water has been repeatedly declared, including by the UN General Assembly and the European Union. This right is included in the constitutions and laws of numerous countries.

Despite this, 1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water, and six out of ten people live with inadequate sanitation. More than 2 billion people live in areas of water scarcity, likely to become an even bigger issue due to climate change.

The human right to water covers five essential factors:

• access to enough water for drinking, personal sanitation, washing clothes, preparing food, personal and household hygiene
• water that is clean and won’t cause harm
• the look and smell of water should be acceptable
• water sources should be within easy reach and accessible without danger
• the cost should be low enough to ensure everyone can buy enough water to meet their needs.

Access and affordability
Internationally, there is evidence that the adoption of a human right to water has made a difference. In South Africa, where access to sufficient water is a constitutional right, the courts have repeatedly referred to the human right to water when determining government obligations around water services.

In 2014, the first European Citizens’ Initiative pushed the European Union to exclude water supply and water resources management from the rules governing the European internal market. This means EU citizens have a stronger voice in water governance decisions.

In 2016, Slovenia became the first EU country to make access to drinkable water a fundamental right in its constitution.

New Zealand’s Three Waters reforms are not unrelated to these basic issues of safety, accessibility and affordability. They aim to address significant problems with the country’s existing water services model, including ageing infrastructure, historical under-investment, the need for climate change resilience, and rising consumer demand.

These all require a serious programme of water service transformation — one the government believes is beyond what local councils (which currently administer most water assets) will be able to deliver.

The projected cost is estimated at between NZ$120 billion and $185 billion (on top of currently planned investment), rolled out over the next 30 years.

Three Waters debates need to be based on fact – Ardernhttps://t.co/mNtkdKTjpw pic.twitter.com/NxvlJgtpeR

— 1News (@1NewsNZ) July 20, 2022

Ambition and equity
One way or another, the work has to be done. Last year elevated lead levels were found in the water in east Otago. Ageing infrastructure and increasing demand are likely to increase the risk of similar incidents unless expensive upgrades are undertaken.

Without reform, the government argues, the huge cost of those upgrades will be unevenly spread across households, with a substantially higher burden on rural consumers.

To be affordable and equitable for everyone, therefore, the Three Waters plan involves creating four publicly owned, multi-regional entities. These will benefit from greater scale, expertise, operational efficiencies and financial flexibility compared to local councils.

But because councils could still contract out water services for 35 years, concerns have been raised about the potential for creeping privatisation.

Indeed, similar concerns, including failed attempts to privatise water services in other countries, were a significant catalyst for asserting the human right to water more than two decades ago.

While international acknowledgment of water as a human right doesn’t automatically create binding obligations on New Zealand’s government, it can still inform the Three Waters debate.

Over the past 20 years, many of the benefits of this right have accrued from its ability to focus attention on securing high-quality and sustainable water services for everyone. That remains an essential ambition for New Zealand in 2022 and beyond.

Dr Nathan Cooper is associate professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Critics have hammered the Climate Change Commission’s agriculture goals in New Zealand, saying it has missed the mark on methane targets.

In a final 419-page report handed to Parliament yesterday, the commission urged the government to get tough on the way New Zealanders live, move and work, through implementing 33 recommendations.

To help keep global warming below 1.5C it said there should be no more new or used petrol or diesel cars imported, made or assembled in New Zealand by 2035.

• READ MORE: Climate Change Commission releases final report, says nearly all cars imported by 2035 must be electric
• Ināia tonu nei:a low emissions future for Aotearoa – Full report

The commission asked for substantially more government investment in cheap, accessible public transport, cycle paths and walkways, and no more coal boilers “as soon as possible”, with at least 95 percent renewable electricity used by 2030.

Greenpeace head of campaigns Amanda Larsson said it was all a bit disappointing because the report missed a major weak spot.

“Despite thousands of submissions in favour of climate action, despite huge public mandate out there for climate action, the commission has failed to really take responsibility for the industry that is causing the most climate pollution in New Zealand – and that is the dairy industry,” she said.

“There’s been no real change in its recommendations and the dairy industry still gets basically a free pass to pollute.”

Mechanism to reward farmers
The commission wants the government to decide next year on a pricing mechanism for rewarding farmers who reduce emissions.

It suggests technologies including methane inhibitors – vaccines which can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide burped by cows into the atmosphere – could reduce the country’s biogenic methane emissions by more than 50 percent.

It also sets an overall biogenic methane reduction target of 10 percent by 2030 – which Dairy NZ called “incredibly challenging” and a “big ask” for farmers, saying New Zealand milk already had the lowest carbon footprint in the world.

“We do remain concerned agriculture may be asked to do the heavy lifting if we don’t see urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions. We are all in this together and we must have a fair and balanced plan that requires our communities to contribute equally,” its chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said.

However, Larsson said there could have been strict limits on stock numbers, among other measures.

“We need to cut synthetic fertiliser and we need to cut imported feed and we need to support farmers to transition to regenerative and organic ways of farming.”

Hard-line approach in other sectors
Oxfam New Zealand campaign lead Alex Johnston said the commission was already taking more of a hard-line approach for other sectors.

“The pathways for reducing emissions in agriculture are simply not consistent with keeping to 1.5 degrees,” he said.

“Even if we go as hard as we can on transport and other sectors, if we don’t directly regulate emissions from agriculture and step up our actions in that area, then we’re not going to be able to do our fair share to contribute to this global problem.”

Forest & Bird spokesperson Geoff Keey agreed that agriculture was still getting “a bit of an easy ride” and the measures should be stricter, but he believed there was another blind spot in the report.

He wanted kelp and shellfish beds re-established on coastlines, and measures to stop wetlands drying out, to ensure more carbon did not go into the atmosphere.

“One of the big things that comes out of the report is once we start looking beyond 2030 and 2040, we’re going to need to protect our carbon stores in forests, in the sea and in wetlands. Right now the rules are not strong enough to allow that to happen,” he said.

Someone who felt more optimistic about the report was Niwa chief scientist Dr Sam Dean, who called it “a breath of fresh air”.

Traction on policies
He said there was finally traction on a more “comprehensive” range of climate policies.

“Up ’till now we’ve based our response on the emissions trading scheme, which is incentivised plantation and forestry. Moving away from that to a broader range of policies that are going to actually reduce emissions, especially carbon dioxide, is especially important. It’s something we’ve not managed to do, to date. And it’s something we’re going to have to do really quickly,” he said.

Dean said the difficult part was not writing the report – it was up to the government to rise to the challenge.

He said his plea for the government was to embrace all the recommendations with urgency and he challenged all New Zealanders to show their support and willingness to make changes.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

People in earthquake-affected areas of Papua New Guinea’s Highlands have asked international agencies to bypass the national government when providing relief.

The PNG Government has admitted that its response to the earthquake has been slow, hampered by damage to roads and access to funding.

In Koroba in Hela Province, local leader Stanley Hogga Piawi told the ABC’s PNG correspondent Eric Tlozek that more than two weeks after the 7.5 magnitude quake, people were still waiting for help.

LISTEN: Angry Highlanders call on relief agencies to sidestep PNG government

Continuous rain is hampering relief efforts in the earthquake-devastated regions of the Highlands, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

The wet may continue for a few more days as helicopters, the mainstay of the relief efforts, are now limited in the operation.

The National Weather Service (NWS) office has warned of a “high risk” of landslides, flooding and a slight chance of a tropical cyclone. The wet season has finally extended into the Southern and Highlands regions, the NWS said yesterday.

As Papua New Guinea experiences the wet season and unusual natural disasters, the NWS forecasting and warning centre assistant director Jimmy Gomoga is now urging people to listen to the radio stations for weather warnings updates.

Aircraft use restricted
The Australian and New Zealand defence forces said yesterday they had limited the use of their lighter aircraft due to bad weather.

The NWS said the wet season normally set in about December until late May when the dry season begins.

“According to the latest analysis from the weather office, we are in a weak La Nina phase and will mean higher rainfalls across the mainland PNG and mostly over the Southern region with high risk of flooding in the Momase, Highlands and Southern regions, high risk of landslides in the Highlands and deforested areas and 30 to 40 per cent chance of a tropical cyclone forming or passing within PNG,” Gomoga said.

He said the wet season triggered tropical cyclones so people living along coastal waters, particularly along the Solomon Sea and Coral Sea, must listen to weather warnings on the radio and take precautions.

“This weather we are experiencing will continue for the next 24 hours and may continue as the country is still in the wet season,” Gomoga said.

“The peak period has already passed and the month of April and May are the transitional periods and eventually into dry season which kicks into in the month of June.”

In the meantime, the weather office is closely monitoring the ocean currents in possibility of a tropical cyclone.

Water shortage ‘looming disaster’
While relief supplies continue to be delivered to earthquake-affected communities, a lack of water is proving to be a looming disaster, reports EMTV News.

In a briefing, Oil Search Limited managing director Peter Botten said the lack of access to clean water sources for many communities had increased the risk of sickness.

The company is now working with its partners, including state agencies, in an effort to deliver clean water to communities, to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases.

Among its relief efforts, Oil Search has deployed a dedicated medical team to reach affected communities – these teams have already noted an increase in water-borne diseases, with several medical evacuations already carried out.

Australian doctors to help
Australian Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has announced Australian doctors would come to Papua New Guinea to help medical teams in earthquake-affected areas, as fear of water-borne diseases emerge, reports The National and as also reported earlier by Asia Pacific Report.

“We know that over the next few days or weeks, most of the water-borne diseases will start affecting some of the population in the area. We have to lift our presence in medical support that we will have to extend to them,” O’Neill said.

“Dr Temu [Health Minister Sir Puka] has already cleared for the Australian doctors to come and help us…They will come and help our own medical specialists which the Health Department is putting together to dispatch to the remotest communities throughout the country.”

Sir Puka said they were mobilising a team from the Port Moresby General Hospital.
“We have formally requested the Australian government [to send doctors] because Australian doctors in emergency situations are well organised,” Sir Puka said.

“So we have asked them for assistance which will complement what we have.”

O’Neill said relief efforts were ongoing, reports The National.

Remote communities
“We are starting to reach many of the remote communities, supplying medicine, food and relief supply to the provinces affected,” he said, adding that the district development authorities in areas being allocated funding were assisting the people “which we are not able to reach”.

“Most of the members of Parliament and the district chief executive officers have been trying to mobilise the supplies and in particular medicine, and getting the injured and the sick out of the areas that have been affected,” he said.

He added that commitments, towards the government’s relief efforts so far had exceeded K100 million.

It included donations from governments – “private sector donations coming through is well over K5 million.”

• More PNG earthquake stories