Jeudi 12 déc - Séance 5 "Agriculture & Environment: Stakeholder Concertation for Regional Sustainability in New Zealand" - Interventions des Dr. Small, Dr. Robson (AgResearch - NZ)

Dr. Bruce’s case study is related to water quality problems in Lake Rotorua. 
This lake is located in the center of the north Island of New Zealand dominated by invasive species and is in a poor ecological state. In addition, in the area around this lake, much of the forest was cut down in the early 1900’s than Farming was developed in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. 
But when farming started, it intensified the land use, leading to greater amounts of phosphorus being spread over the land.  This phosphorus leaches into the ground than taking about 50-100 years to reach the lake so the damage isn’t directly noticeable but it affects future generations.  Additionally, there was a time when the sewage from this area was pumped directly into the lake and the population was rapidly growing. 
Though this lake is not in very good shape environmentally, it is very important to New Zealanders.  The region is geothermal attracting a huge number of tourists because of the geysers and hot springs and most important the area has been home to the Maori (indigenous people) and has great value to them. 
 

Purpose of the study:
Explore an organic shift from an adversarial approach to a collaborative approach in the management of water quality & also to discover more about the way people thought about water quality management. 
 

Players involved:
There were several key players involved in this process.
-Maori trustee whom owned a lot of land around the lake area. 
-Federated farmers and a local farmers group whom were resistant to changes in the norms of the area, as farming was their source of income. 
-Dairy NZ & specifically related to dairy farmers 
-The Lakes Water Quality Society and other groups with environmental interests were also involved.

Researchers main questions
There were many questions that the researchers in this project were interested in finding the answers to. 
-One of the main questions was “How did the players pass from a dispute into a participative approach?” 
-what were the beliefs of the people concerning water quality. 
-what were people beliefs concerning water quality management
& during all the process, policy brokers played an important role as facilitators between the groups involved & they allowed the discussions and decision making to move forward. 

Sequence of events:
The sequence of events in this organic approach has lasted from 1978 to 2012 and passed through 5 main stages.
Sensitization------Tension -------adversarial -----Stalemate -------Collaboration
During Sensitization period, people started to realize that the lake was in bad shape.  the farmers did not think that they were polluting and didn’t want to change their ways because it would cause them to lose money. 
Which led to the tension period where “the fish and game” group launched a dirty dairying campaign in order to try to get farmers to change their behavior.  This period was one that had a great deal of lobbying by different groups.
Than Adversarial: N&P (Nitrogen and phosphorous) period and conflict showed up lots in media
After which came Stalemate period where the whole process was steady because no party was moving forward. Highlighting it’s very important in this work groups to have a common enemy  because that’s something they can both work on in order to resolve and in this specific case both sides were tired of lobbying.
Finally came Collaboration period where Nick Smith, minister of the environment, informed all parties that if a consensus is reached than they can proceed with whatever decision they have agreed upon.  Highlighting Waioramu understanding was mediated by Todd Meclay (Representative of Roturua &currently minister of Revenue)

Results of the process were:
*stakeholders were optimistic about working together
*agreed on lake sustainability date in 2032
*the brokers had effective leadership on the process

Dr. Melissa presentation: The journey to collaboration in Canterbury
Bruce talked about: How collaboration evolved organically in a community while Melissa will present a structured way in a participative method in order to reach a consensus & the process was studied in Canterbury.

Issue
In Canterbury there are lots of flat areas, rain fall & the irrigation issue is highly important & the study that has taken place will be presented through a historical context, followed by the drivers for change (regional, national, local) and ended with a discussion.

Historical conflict presentation
In Canterbury water is highly valued for cultural & recreation uses & is viewed as a treasure for Mauri However it includes lots of industries such as one series of dam that provides 18% of power generation since 98% in the south comes from hydro or wind, also its essential for irrigation since there’s a financial incentive to irrigate.
In addition, there’s an adversarial conflict in water resources management since water consent is given out for individual people little by little so it’s difficult to understand the whole system as one since first in first served even if your system is less efficient than the one just after yours. So the management of water is doubtful.
And going further, water management was uniquely science led. For example they go to ecologists and asks him what is the right answer than they forward the answer to a group of consultants whom comes back with their decision and later moves it to people. So simply we can qualify it as scientific arrogance.

Drivers for change:
The drivers for change were at three levels which are, global, national & regional
At the Global level, citizens wanted more input of how their resources are managed especially regarding water and governments delaying complex problems and their usual way of seeing it isn’t sufficient anymore to the citizens especially with only a science answer.
As per the National and regional level,  RMA decision making was triangular (national, regional, district) & since there weren’t a  water quality standard in New Zealand a reunion was made and led to the issuance of a national policy statement entitled “fresh water management 2011” which was a highly important legislation for the country. Highlighting, Report of the land and water forum had a huge impact on collaboration in order to resolve conflicts around the water and played an important  role in putting citizens in the center of decision making (around 2010, 2011)
Recognizing what comes out of a collaboration process is different in quality than the organic process as admitted by stakeholders.

Last, the national water management was highly important for collaborative process cos it provided the minimum acceptable conditions to start the discussions upon.

Discussion: what’s happening currently

New Zealand has a policy of exporting water and encouraging tourism but on the opposite there are the concepts of clean and green for water and tourism. How come?
In 2009, there was a partial suspension of the parliament because people whom were elected were fired due to their inefficiency & national law laws changed through the introduction of 7 people whom weren’t elected but were chosen due to their competence and their ability to change the path. They started in 2010 and were given an additional period to 2016 following their high performance since these 3 persons had ambitious projects in an excellent time frame.

In addition, Canterbury water management strategy has been developed for 7 or 8 years and essentially recognizes that there are multiple usage for water and in order to be successful they have to recognize all the usages.

What were the advantages of the pilot study?
Pilot study was made because actors didn’t know how to proceed further, so the study allowed to understand people view, technical points and to build a framework for implementation. So it was an excellent pilot study because lots of mistakes were made so it was an opportunity to learn from and it was a perfect start for collaborative process. Plus in Canterbury, Everybody wanted to move to a good management practice… but nobody knew what is a good management practice so they launched a matrix entitled good management practice than the project will be applied on industries for 6 months to insure that all industries will make a good change after which the observation will be changed into a model.

What are the key for the success of this plan?
First it recognizes the need of regulatory and non regulatory decisions than it establish a community relevance science, meaning we start with people concerns than we modulate them using science & finally presence of a dedicated multi disciplinary team  to inform the stakeholders will avoid adversary confrontations & will bring people to a participatory attitude.

Finally, both methods had their positive outcome but what's sure the collaborative, structured approach highly reduced the amount of communication and negotiation time between the different stakeholders... Isn't that a key component in today's context?

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Artcle écrit par Maya El Khoury et Sarah Sample (Etudiante MEDIATION UVSQ)