Future Focus: Signposts to Success for New Zealand's Primary Industries
4. Ecosystem Degradation and Water Quality and Availability: Natural capital at risk
What is water worth?
Issues of water quality and availability cast a long shadow over the global future. Water that is potable and water for irrigation will become increasingly scarce in many global locations. By 2015, nearly half the world’s population will live in countries that are “water-stressed”.
This scarcity will be due to multiple related causes:
• population pressure;
• growth of water demand from economic activity;
• climate change reducing rainfall and increasing evaporation;
• rates of uptake from aquifers that exceed their rate of replenishment.
Water will thus become increasingly valuable, with the likely effects of attempts to achieve dominance over sources, leading to potential for conflict. There will be health degradation and mortality in communities that cannot afford and/or gain access to potable water. And the cost of water will increase, reducing the profitability of some enterprises in particular locations.
The global water situation, together with local climate change and sustainability concerns, will have a range of impacts on New Zealand land-based industries:
• there will be disruptions of global trade flows due to new sources of conflicts;
• market demand in specific locations will be affected;
• the capabilities of competitors will be affected, adversely and beneficially;
• there will be tensions around the allocation of water in New Zealand, and new challenges such as establishing a methodology to register interests in reallocation; and
• water enhancement, particularly storage, will be an increasingly important component of climate change adaptation. 13
As one example, there will be implications of an increasingly drought-prone Australia for both the competitive position of New Zealand exporters and Australian market demand.
Biosecurity and sustainability of natural resources
The projected growth in economic activity will place further burdens on natural ecosystems, and imposed systems of biosecurity. In broad principle, this progression is evidently unsustainable, and is a crucial issue for risk management.
However, New Zealand producers appreciate that natural systems and resources must be sustainably managed to support long-run economic performance. Alongside a drive for increased productivity, there is increased awareness of and commitment to sustainability. Māori, as intergenerational land owners, are inherently concerned with conserving land values.
The risk of biosecurity incursions grows ever greater with:
• increasing globalisation;
• a rising incidence of pathogens and diseases with encroachment of human settlements on native habitats;
• global changes that favour the establishment and spread of invasive species, including climate change.
In New Zealand, biosecurity risks at the border will increase due to greater global trade and tourist numbers, new trading routes, especially with South American nations, and the growing number of alien and invasive species in neighbouring countries. There may be potential for a mix of strategies additional to pre- and post-border detection and management, using diversity in crops and products, and novel production systems, to assist in managing biosecurity risk.
In addition to biosecurity, there is increasing public and consumer concern internationally about:
• serious toxins such as carcinogens, heavy metals, and endocrine disruptors that accumulate in air, water, and soil and may be present in commercial products;14
• the management of solid waste;
• the degradation of lakes, waterways and oceans that reduces their amenity value and imposes health risks.
The result of these concerns, particularly if exacerbated by the occurrence of adverse ecological events, will be increasing pressure on governments (international, national and local) to intervene. Governments will respond in ways that will significantly increase the costs of economic activity, irrespective of whether they result in sustainability, at least in the short to medium term.
On the other hand, there may also be inherent commercial opportunities, such as in the ETS announced as the Government’s main price-based means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging forest carbon sinks.
Risks and opportunities?
The trends in public sentiment provide significant opportunities for product differentiation based on sustainability. For example, there is an opportunity to position New Zealand’s pastoral and forestry15 industries based on the integrity of production systems and products. This opportunity is not without risk, and must be underpinned by traceability and credible validation and certification systems.
Sustainability branding of pastoral industries would complement the development of food targeted to health opportunities, with integration of the value chain back to the environment, the soil, and cultivar characters. Afforestation provides not only carbon sinks but also other environmental benefits such as erosion reduction and water quality improvements.16
There is arguably a degree of risk – commercially as for biodiversity outcomes – in the reliance of the forestry industry on one species (see also Section 1), and the potential to diversify, especially into higher-value alternative species that can replace some of the growing imports of timber and furniture.
There may also be further opportunities to mitigate environmental concerns and optimise land management through mixed land use such as forestry combined with cropping and/or pastoral uses. The use of wood and forestry wastes as biochar for soil carbon sequestration is discussed in Section 6.
13 While New Zealand uses a relatively low proportion of available freshwater resource, low population density and mountainous terrain may make its capture, storage and diversion costly.
14 There may also be public concern about the possible health impacts of biosecurity interventions, necessitating a robust risk-benefit case being made.
15 Structural wood products have sustainability advantages over steel and concrete as building materials.
16 MAF convened the Primary Sector Partnerships Group under the Sustainable Water Programme of Action (SWPoA), to develop a sector-led response to address water management issues, especially water quality.
Contact for Enquiries
Strategy and Performance Group
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526, Wellington
Tel: +64 4 894 0593
Fax: +64 4 894 0738
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