Election 2020 - Party Policies - Environment - Water and Oceans
25th Jul 20, 5:55am
by
Water and Oceans
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- Stop councils from obtaining consents to spill raw sewage into streams and rivers, and apply to councils the same set of rules that businesses and farmers must follow.
- Read more here.
- Develop a comprehensive strategy for the marine environment, fully integrated with biodiversity strategies, to ensure integrated management of activities in the marine environment, including fishing, marine farming, marine transport, and extraction of mineral resources from the marine area and land use activities that have effects on our coasts and oceans, focusing especially on agricultural run-off, storm-water management, and plastic pollution.
- Enable tangata whenua to exercise their kaitiakitanga over the marine environment, including accessing their customary and commercial fishing resources.
- Create a network of comprehensive, adequate and representative marine protected areas.
- Advocate for the maximum possible protection of marine mammals by opposing all commercial and so-called 'scientific' whaling and prohibiting the further holding of marine mammals in captivity.
- Amend the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement, to address wholecatchment issues such as sewage disposal, run-off and sedimentation from urban development, forestry and agriculture.
- Enable ongoing, independent research on the state of our fisheries stocks.
- Establish National Environmental Standards for aquaculture, based on sound scientific evidence about the environmental impacts of different types of aquaculture practices.
- Ensure the regulatory environmental management framework for the sea beyond the 12-mile limit fully implements New Zealand's international responsibilities to preserve and protect the marine environment.
- Protect the marine environment from mining activities.
- Read more here and here.
- Creating 11,000 Jobs for Nature in regional New Zealand, including boosting weed and pest control programmes, which will protect farmers against costly pests like wilding pines and wallabies, and clean up our waterways.
- Read more here.
- Establish a fund within the National Infrastructure Bank with $600 million to develop a long term plan for water storage.
- Develop a National Policy Statement on Water Storage to provide certainty around the strategic use of water, streamline consenting and set minimum environmental standards for newly irrigated land.
- Guarantee common ownership of water for all New Zealanders.
- Treat water as a prime strategic resource, recognising the importance of water storage for resilience, urban water supply, enhanced environmental outcomes, and better land use options in rural communities.
- Read more here.
- Address pollution of streams, rivers, and beaches
- Work towards ensuring that the right to take and use water is available only to New Zealand people (citizens and permanent residents) and New Zealand owned companies
- Read more here.
- Ensure freshwater conservation is hard-wired into planning legislation nationwide.
- Implement measurement and monitoring standards, so we can accurately see how fast the water crisis is escalating.
- Ensure nationwide oversight by an independent Freshwater/Te Mana O Te Wai Commission tasked with providing nationwide oversight of freshwater management. This was recommended to government in 2010 and 2019 and carries the support of the Waitangi Tribunal, Freshwater Leaders Group, Kahui Wai Maori, Fish & Game, Environmental Defence Society and Climate Change Commission...alas the government is still thinking about it.
- Develop and enforce environmental standards that provide for human, cultural and ecosystem health. This will include a limit of 1mg/l for nitrogen as recommended by the majority of scientists.
- Require all regional councils to monitor freshwater in the same way at the same times, and make this information publicly available, so citizens can hold decision makers accountable for water quality.
- Legislate that all water takes must occur alongside a reciprocal improvement to that water body.
- Limit pollution to only that which does not breach defined water quality measures.
- Upgrade water treatment systems and infrastructure to best practice.
- Ensure the right farm type in the right place, and operate within the environment's capacity.
- Support catchment groups to work together to come up with catchment goals. Provide them access to science, professional facilitators and mapping professionals.
- Provide excellent and freely available resources to guide land use, use satellite imagery and drones for mapping land and vegetation at high resolution, and make these resources available nationwide. With this information we can direct land use to appropriate areas, identify areas for restoration, and identify areas for stock exclusion.
- Read more here.
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1 Comments
Everyone agrees water should be clean but how did this mess arise. Who gave permits to change land use from forests to dairy farms. Both govt and planners are just as much to blame as farmers. in waikato the planners gave away more water than could be provided to intensify farming. How are farmers to blame for incompetent planners? Some of us have tread lightly on the land and are now penalised by ridiculous farm plans made by industry for industry and implemented by planners who happen to make money from making plans.
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