POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT
Foreign
Correspondent
2021
New
Zealand: Troubled Waters
28
mins 41 secs
©2021
ABC
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Phone:
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Precis
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It's a toxic brew of dirty water and big business. And it's
jeopardising New Zealand's '100% pure' clean, green image. New Zealand's pristine landscapes and stunning vistas have made
it a magnet for tourists and film directors. Its dairy exports have taken the
world by storm. But behind this success story lies a shocking reality. New
Zealand has some of the most polluted rivers in the developed world. Scientists blame the 'white gold rush' - the rapid expansion of
the country's hugely successful dairy industry, worth around $15 billion a
year. In a visually stunning report, correspondent Yaara Bou Melhem
travels to the South Island of New Zealand to investigate an issue which is
dividing communities. There she finds rivers contaminated with high levels of
nitrogen, run-off from intensive dairy farming practices. "When you have excessive nutrients and sediments coming
into the system, these blooms can really take off," says freshwater
ecologist and local councillor Lan Pham. "It just fuels this disconnection
with the river." The Ardern government, which was re-elected in a landslide last
year, has promised to clean up. "I want our waterways to be swimmable again," said
Ardern in the lead up to last year's election. "We're putting in place
standards that...stop the degradation." The government has introduced limits on the level of nitrates
allowed in freshwater but these reforms have left no-one happy. Ecologists
warn they've set the level too high and that this could be damaging to life
in the rivers. Many farmers claim the levels are set too low and will destroy
the dairy industry. "We will have a dislocation of thousands upon thousands of
people," warns South Island dairy farmer John Sunckell. "Do we want to get rid of agriculture? It becomes that
blunt with the numbers." New Zealand's wealthiest Maori tribe has stepped into the
stalemate. The Ngai Tahu, whose territory spans a huge swathe of the South
Island, has filed a landmark high court claim over the freshwater systems in
its tribal lands. "There's been a failure of government, there's been a
failure of the market and the only one standing with any credibility on this
is the Maori," says the lead claimant in the case, Dr Tau. It's a huge battle over this most precious natural resource -
freshwater - and there's no end in sight. |
|
Aerials.
Rivers |
Music |
00:00 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: New Zealand, Aeoteoroa, is
blessed with fresh water. With its turquoise
rivers and lakes and snow-capped mountains. Its pristine
and dramatic landscapes are the sets of Hollywood blockbusters.
And its natural beauty, a major tourism drawcard. But behind its clean
green image is a shocking reality. Up
to 99% of rivers running through urban, farming and
non-native forested areas are polluted. |
00:30 |
Lan
with Yaara |
LAN: We’re told that rivers
are dangerous, that you could get sick from rivers, that they could harm your
kids and your pets. |
01:14 |
Ardern
rivers announcement |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The Ardern Government has
promised to clean up… ARDERN: I want our waterways
to be swimmable again, so we're putting in place standards
that actually stop the degradation. |
01:19 |
Dairy
farming GVs |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: …but is facing pushback from
one of the country’s biggest polluters - dairy. |
01:29 |
|
JOHN: Do we want
agriculture, do we want production or do we want to
get rid of agriculture? |
01:5 |
Maori
ceremony |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Now the country’s
wealthiest Maori tribe is launching an unprecedented
claim over the South Island’s fresh water. |
01:41 |
Dr
Tau |
DR TAU: There's been a failure of government,
there's been a failure of the market, and the only one standing with
credibility on this is Maori. |
01:52 |
Dart
River. Title: |
Music |
02:00 |
Super:
|
|
02:12 |
Yaara
in boat with Bill on river. Super: |
|
02:18 |
Dart
River GVs |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: I’m on a tour
that’s going to take me deep into one of New Zealand’s spectacular wilderness
areas – the Dart River in the country’s South Island.
We’re weaving through glacier-fed braided rivers, part of a world
heritage site. |
02:23 |
|
BILL: The Southern Alps in New Zealand, that's
what people think of when they think of New Zealand.
It'll be the snow, the mountains, the glaciers,
the clean water, the flowing water, the trees, the bush, the bird
life. The spiritual side of it is that these are where
our ancestors were. Some of the mountains are named after our
ancestors. |
02:47 |
Bill
recites Maori blessing |
|
03:08 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Bill Cook is giving a Maori
blessing for the next part of our journey. |
03:13 |
|
BILL: So basically it's telling
you can go away healthy, but make sure you come back to us well
as well. |
03:23 |
Bill
and Yaara in raft |
Music |
03:30 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Bill is a cultural river
guide who’s been taking people out here for 30 years. |
03:34 |
|
Music |
03:40 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM, Reporter: We’re heading to the highlight of the trip –
Rockburn Chasm in Mount Aspiring National Park. |
03:52 |
Paddling
into chasm |
Music |
03:58 |
|
Yaara: "These rock
formations are incredible!" Bill: "You can
imagine the water coming down through there hitting that rock and turning it
around like a washing machine and digging in there." |
04:10 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: For Bill, his connection to
these rivers runs deep. |
04:22 |
|
BILL:
Waterways are my life, basically. My grandfather,
my father, my great grandparents were all
water people of some sort. And so we
use them as our highways, the same
as my early ancestors, the Maori came
into here, they were their highways.
|
04:26 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Waterways are an essential
part of his identity. BILL: Well,
Maori saying would be something like… |
04:43 |
Bill |
[phrase in Maori]…
which is the river. I am the river, the river is me. And so
that's basically what we believe in. It's what I believe in personally as
well. It means a lot to me. |
04:50 |
Dart
River |
Music |
05:03 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: But in the last few
decades this precious natural resource has been degraded.
|
05:05 |
Yaara
to camera on riverbank |
The water here is among the
purest in the world, melting from snow off the peaks of the
southern alps and glaciers that have taken thousands of years to
form. From here, rivers like this one flow through farms and
cities before reaching the sea. It’s a process that could take
anywhere between two and 100 years. But as these flows go
further downstream, they’re transforming into some of the most
polluted waterways in the developed world. |
05:15 |
Driving
to Canterbury |
Music |
05:43 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM, Reporter: I’m travelling to the Canterbury region in
the South Island, which has some of the
most contaminated waterways in New Zealand. |
05:55 |
Dairy
farms |
This was traditionally sheep
farming country, but it’s seen an explosion in dairy farming. Cattle
numbers have more than doubled here in the last two
decades. It’s now one of the most intensively farmed and
irrigated regions. |
06:05 |
Inflating
hot air balloon |
One of the best ways to get
a sense of how the landscape has been transformed by dairy farming is to go
up. |
06:28 |
Yaara
and Mike in balloon |
Joining me for this bird's
eye view is Dr Mike Joy, one of New Zealand’s leading freshwater
ecologists. |
06:43 |
|
Music |
06:51 |
View
of dairy farming from balloon |
YAARA BOU MELHEM, Reporter: It may look lush and green now, but 20
to 30 years ago it was very different. MIKE: Before irrigation,
this was brown. Everywhere was brown. Yeah. It's a huge
change bringing water to this place. |
07:03 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Irrigated land has doubled
since 2002 and now takes up half of New Zealand’s freshwater use. It’s
allowed a major conversion from sheep to dairy farming. MIKE: This is the
most recently developed part of New Zealand.
And this is where the big
land grab
happened, the big gold rush, you know,
intensification of farming for conversions, |
07:16 |
Mike
interview in balloon |
and
that massive change in the amount
of water that was taken out
of the rivers and aquifers here
and put on the land are just
unprecedented, so that more irrigation
water here than the whole
rest of the country put together.
And it happened really , really quickly. |
07:40 |
View
of dairy farming from balloon |
The size of farms has got
way bigger. The amount of fertiliser going on is hugely increased. YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: And it’s the heavy
use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to grow pasture that
is also a major concern for Dr Joy. With nitrates
leaching into the poor soils of the Canterbury Plains and polluting
waterways. |
07:58 |
Mike
interview in balloon |
What sort of effect has that
had on the freshwater systems here? |
08:23 |
|
MIKE: Light
stony soils, lots of cows on it, a
lot of fertiliser and palm kernel going
on to feed them. Lots of urine going out and down through those soils. Into
the rivers, the aquifers and rivers really all acting as one here,
moving out towards the coast and you’re getting the nitrate levels just
rising and rising and rising really quickly. Great for farming,
but not so great for fresh water. |
08:25 |
Cows
coming in for milking |
YAARA BOU MELHEM, Reporter: Back on the ground at this dairy, 600 cows
are coming in for their daily milking. |
08:59 |
John
in milking shed |
John Sunckell is a
third-generation farmer. Like many in the Canterbury region, he converted
from traditional mixed farming to dairy. |
09:09 |
|
JOHN: It provides a future for my family and the
generations that have come before. |
09:22 |
John
interview |
I have five full-time staff
on farm. It puts bread on their table and it bolsters and builds
communities. |
09:28 |
|
Music |
09:37 |
John
and Yaara walk, cows in pasture |
John: "So it's rotational grazing…" YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: John is showing me around
his 500 acre property. In the economic
downturn of the late 1980s, dairy became a lifeline. |
09:47 |
|
When did you turn to more
intensive dairy farming here? JOHN: So that was, yeah, early '90s, really. Late
'80s, early '90s. YAARA: To kind of follow
that white gold rush? JOHN: Just to follow... Yeah, I don't know. I
mean, I didn't see it as a gold rush. You just looked at what you saw in
front of you. Sheep prices were no good, wool prices were going down.
We saw an agricultural decline right across the world. |
10:01 |
|
Economically, we just looked
at dairying, and dairying seemed to be the future. |
10:27 |
Dairy
farm GVs |
Music |
10:31 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: John’s farm lies within the
Selwyn-Waihora catchment. |
10:38 |
Aerial.
Selwyn River |
And it’s the Selwyn River
that has become the poster child for all that’s gone wrong with New
Zealand’s waterways. |
10:43 |
Yaara
walks with Lan along river |
LAN: The Selwyn can be thought of as a bit of a
ground zero for mismanagement of water. YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter:
Local Councillor and Freshwater ecologist Lan
Pham is taking me along the river where there’s regular
algal blooms, mostly caused by excess nutrients from
fertilisers. |
10:52 |
|
LAN: There's a toxic
cyanobacteria warning for this site.
And actually, two other sites on
the Selwyn as well. Actually, this
was just a patch of
it . YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Right, so it’s the black
stuff on the rocks. |
11:12 |
Algae
in water |
LAN: Yeah, so it appears as these
kind of quite thick, almost velvety, mats. |
11:25 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: You can’t swim here. This
algae is toxic and can harm people and animals who come into contact with it.
|
11:31 |
Lan
shows algae |
LAN: And it just takes one teaspoon for a dog to
ingest that for it to actually die. |
11:40 |
|
When you have excessive
nutrients and sediments coming into the system, these blooms can really take
off. And that's really sort of the perfect storm of what we've got here. And
so it really provides essentially a wonderland for forming blooms and they
have taken off here this summer as they often do in recent history. YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Which is
really unfortunate in summer, because
that's when families want to
come to rivers. |
11:47 |
|
LAN: Oh, it's hugely disappointing. It
just fuels this continual disconnection with the river. |
12:11 |
Lan
social media videos |
Lan: "Clean water and
swimmable rivers isn’t simply nice to have. Fully functioning fresh water
ecosystems are essential to ensure that our communities can thrive, both
today and in the future." |
12:21 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The 34 year
old has leveraged social media to campaign hard against the
degradation of New Zealand’s rivers. Her
conservation agenda has hit
a nerve. |
12:34 |
|
Lan: "Pollution can take decades to come to
the surface where it impacts our lives."
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: In 2016 she received the
most votes in the Canterbury regional elections and is now in her second
term. |
12:47 |
Lan
and Yaara at river |
LAN: When we're told that rivers are dangerous,
that you could get sick from rivers, that they could harm your kids and pets,
it just enforces that disconnection with nature. And the idea that we're
somehow separate, and that to actually address issues like this and fight for
our public resources, or try protect our public resources, that that's
somehow unreasonable, because this is the baseline now. YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Because a polluted
river has become the norm? LAN: Exactly. |
13:01 |
Aerial.
Selwyn River |
Music |
13:35 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The Selwyn River is not an
isolated case. According to a recent government report 95 to 99 percent of
rivers running through urban, farming and non-native forest areas have
unacceptable levels of pollution.
That’s nearly 60% of the country’s rivers. |
13:39 |
Jacinda
Ardern rally |
ARDERN: "I want out
rivers to be swimmable again." |
14:00 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The poor quality of New
Zealand's fresh water was a key issue in last year’s election. With Prime
Minister Jacinda Ardern again promising to clean up the country’s dirty
water. |
14:05 |
|
ARDERN: "We’re putting
in place standards that actually stop the degradation, will see material
improvements over five year, and within a lifetime we'll see our kids
swimming in that water again." |
14:18 |
Aerials.
Polluted rivers |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: To reduce pollution the
government has introduced fresh water reforms. The most contentious issue is
what the nitrate level in waterways should be. The government set it at 2.4
milligrams per litre, but that’s provoking furious debate. |
14:29 |
Mike
takes water sample |
MIKE: We can take it back to our analyser and we
can get an instant result on the nitrate levels. |
14:51 |
Mike,
Lan and Yaara walk by river |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Back at the Selwyn River, Dr
Mike Joy and Lan Pham are testing the river’s nitrate level. |
14:58 |
Mike
analyses water sample |
MIKE: The sample's
been analysed, and we'll just see what it comes up as.
Wow! 9.66 six milligrams that is, that is crazy. The
current national policy statement, the limit is 2.4
milligrams. So it’s four times that. |
15:12 |
Lan |
LAN: As alarming as this number is, this is
totally typical of virtually all the groundwater and surface water systems
that you'll get in this whole area. |
15:33 |
River |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Dr Joy was part of a group
of independent scientists set up by the government to advise it on the
reforms. He says the nitrate limit needs to be much
lower. |
15:43 |
Mike |
MIKE: It should be one milligram. The European
Union standard is one milligram, it's the maximum that's allowed in fresh
waters, that's the trigger for eutrophication. |
15:59 |
Algae
on river |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter:
Eutrophic waterways are often choked with
algae and can change oxygen levels, endangering
life. MIKE: The farmers put
nitrogen fertiliser on the paddocks to grow grass. What the nitrogen does on
the river is it grows algae. Algae photosynthesize during the night,
they respire, and the oxygen levels drop |
16:08 |
Mike |
right down and virtually
everything dies. And then during the afternoon it comes back up and it gets
dangerously high. So those fluctuations are what are really harmful for
the life in the river. |
16:29 |
Algae |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The government says its 2.4 milligram
limit will protect 95% of species against toxicity, but Dr Mike Joy says
toxicity isn’t the only issue. Freshwater life may have already been harmed
from eutrophication. |
16:42 |
Mike
with Lan and Yaara |
MIKE: The fish can't die
twice. They can't die of toxicity if they're already died, because there's
not enough oxygen. |
17:02 |
Milk
transport/Fonterra |
Music |
17:10 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The government's nitrate
limit is receiving pushback from one of the country’s most powerful
industries. Worth nearly 15 billion dollars a year, dairy is now the
country’s biggest export earner. The
dairy co-op Fonterra is New Zealand’s largest company, making around a third
of the world’s dairy exports. It wants a higher nitrate limit, a call being
echoed by many of its farmers, |
17:18 |
John's
dairy farm |
including John
Sunckell. He’s one of 10,000 Kiwi
farmers producing milk for Fonterra. |
17:48 |
|
JOHN: We apply all our own nitrogen on the farm. |
18:02 |
John
walks with Yaara |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Over the past few years
he’s been working hard to reduce his use of fertiliser, but says it will be
impossible to meet the government’s nitrate limit. |
18:06 |
|
How feasible is
it for you to reach the 2.4
milligram per litre bottom line?
|
18:18 |
|
JOHN: There's nothing that we are doing today, or
have an ability to do as far as management and system changes that will allow
us to achieve that outcome. |
18:23 |
Irrigation
on farm |
Music |
18:32 |
Canterbury
field day |
|
18:39 |
John
at field day |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: John is also a councillor
for the Canterbury region. Today he’s canvassing the views of other local
dairy farmers at this field day. |
18:43 |
John
addresses field day participants |
John: "Do you think you can continue this
work and maintain that improvement and achieve what the government's looking
at, at the moment? It's probably a bit of a loaded question." |
18:53 |
|
MAN: "The targets that are out there are
not achievable. We can go lower. Yes we can. We're trying that, but the
levels that are proposed are prior to farming in Canterbury. That's the
reality." |
19:01 |
|
JOHN: If
we cannot meet those numbers, then
we cannot meet those numbers, and
we have to give up farming.
|
19:19 |
Aerial.
Canterbury Plains |
There is no future for
production agriculture of any sort on the Canterbury Plains if that is where
we end up. |
19:26 |
John
interview at field day |
We will have a total
dislocation of thousands upon thousands of people and no support for the main
streets of our small communities. The whole fabric of our communities just
disintegrates. It's simple. |
19:37 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: What about others sorts of
farming ? Because what the scientists have been
saying is that it's the nitrate leaching into soils that is coming from cow
urea that is one of the major issues here. |
19:48 |
|
JOHN: Yes, dairying is a significant part of
it, but anywhere where we have intensive agriculture and or irrigation.
That’s the challenge. There is a societal question – do we want agriculture,
do we want production, or do we want to get rid of agriculture? It becomes
that blunt with those numbers. |
20:00 |
Dairy
farm |
MIKE: That's the reality for much of the world,
is that the type of industrial farming |
20:17 |
|
that we do at the moment is
harming the environment. That's why we have the environmental crisis that we
have at the moment, not just of climate change, but a biodiversity crisis,
and a soil loss crisis, and a fresh water crisis, globally. So yes, it may be
hard for these guys who have grown up with this type of farming to accept
that this type of farming can't happen anymore. |
20:23 |
Aerial
over dairy pasture |
Music |
20:42 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Under pressure from all
sides, the Government has agreed to revisit its nitrate limit later this
year. |
20:49 |
Aerial
over Bluff |
Meanwhile, another battle is
breaking out, one that could reset who has authority over the country’s
freshwater. |
20:58 |
Waitangi
Day Maori welcome |
It’s Waitangi Day -- New
Zealand’s national holiday. |
21:21 |
|
In Bluff, on the southern
tip of the South Island, Ngai Tahu are welcoming people to their Marae. |
21:34 |
|
Not far from here, about two
hundred years ago, the ancestors of
these people gathered to sign the country’s founding
document with the government - the Treaty of
Waitangi. Ngai Tahu is New Zealand’s wealthiest tribe, its
territory spans most of the South Island.
|
21:58 |
|
Frustrated by the
degradation of waterways, the tribe has launched an unprecedented legal
claim over freshwater in its territory. |
22:22 |
|
DR TAU: We claim a kinship with
the environment, and it takes a lot of time for people to understand
that. |
22:35 |
Dr
Tau at Waitangi Day welcome |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Dr Te Maire Tau is the lead
claimant in the case. He says Ngai Tahu are seeking recognition of
rangatiratanga or chieftainship over freshwater. DR TAU: We've made it clear
that rangatiratanga |
22:41 |
Dr
Tau interview |
is more than ownership.
This isn't specifically for ownership, this claim to
water, it's a claim for rangatiratanga So in a
sense, what Maori are claiming and what this tribe is claiming, is authority
and autonomy over water. |
22:54 |
Dr
Tau at Waitangi Day welcome |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: A Ngai Tahu historian
and community leader, Dr Tau says their authority over
water is not just enshrined in the treaty but comes from a more
spiritual source. |
23:09 |
Dr
Tau interview |
DR TAU: The stories we have
are the canoes and our ancestors, our gods. Our ancestors came here on
canoes, as well. So they turned into the mountains and the
lakes. So you won't get a waterway around here that we
don't claim descent from. For Maori, water is an
ancestor, what's our obligations to it? |
23:24 |
Te
Rau Aroha Marae sign |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The poor state of the
country’s freshwater is dominating the day’s discussions. |
23:41 |
Gabrielle
addresses audience |
GABRIELLE: "New
Zealand has an image of itself that it is wonderful and green. But underneath
the thin facade are filthy waterways…" YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Gabrielle Huria, the head of
the tribe’s freshwater unit says
the High Court claim is capturing the
public’s imagination. |
23:48 |
|
GABRIELLE: And I knew that we had hit on a zeitgeist
when I received letters and they would tell us stories of they used to take
their son fishing in such and such a river. Now their son can't do it with
his muckel because you can't fish in it anymore. |
24:07 |
Ashley
River |
Music |
24:22 |
Yaara
and Dr Tau at Ashley River |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Back in Canterbury,
Dr Te Maire Tau is taking me to the Ashley River, a place where
his family has been fishing for generations. DR TAU: "Our people use to go in January,
February, March, whitebaiting. |
24:25 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: He says despite the
pollution they continue to practice their traditions. |
24:37 |
|
DR TAU:
Ngai Tahu is defined by the environment. It's defined
by mahinga kai. There's basic things you need to be
doing as a tribal member. Whitebaiting's one, eeling's
another, muttonbirding's another. Getting seafood, those types of things are
a basic part of who we are. Really, you're talking about
a community and the destruction of a community. It's just not about fishing.
What you really learn when you're young is who your family members are and
your relationships, and who the elders are and how you engage with people. |
24:44 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM, Reporter:
That's been completely disrupted because of the degradation of the rivers
here. |
25:16 |
|
DR TAU: What I think we've
really got are the extinction of our waterways in the South Island. I think
it's more than disrupted, degraded, and all those types of words. There's a
real threat that the Ashley River will not be a river. It will be a
creek. |
25:19 |
Aerials.
Rivers |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The government say it’s put
the Maori concept of Te Mano o Te Wai – or the health of the waterways – at
the heart of its freshwater reforms. But Dr Tau says rivers can’t be cleaned
up unless the nitrate limit is reduced.
|
25:33 |
|
DR TAU: How they make decisions on some of these
points, I'm really quite surprised on. And then I'm not, because there are
political decision that just don't take into account the science of what
they've been given, or the advice they've been given |
25:52 |
Aerial.
Sunset over dairy farm |
Music |
26:04 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM, Reporter: Our requests to interview the Prime
Minister and Environment Minister about the freshwater reforms and the High
Court case have been denied. Uncertainty around how the claim will affect
dairy farms in the Canterbury region is already concerning John Sunckell. |
26:08 |
John
interview |
JOHN: Is rangatiratanga about ownership? Is it
about control? Is it about joint management and governance? Where does it
ultimately sit and where's the end game? So I guess I'm nervous
in the interim as to where it might land. |
26:29 |
Birds
at river |
|
26:45 |
|
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: Lan Pham however, is buoyed
by the Ngai Tahu claim. She hopes it
will be the start of a move toward environmental justice for future
generations. |
26:55 |
Lan
walks with family |
LAN: It is about our kids and grandkids. We know
that it's just this totally unjust situation where we're leaving them these
huge, astronomical issues, not only with freshwater, but climate to address.
|
27:07 |
Lan
interview |
We need to solve this now, and
we need to treat it really seriously. |
27:23 |
Rivers |
YAARA BOU MELHEM,
Reporter: The Ngai Tahu claim over
these waterways will be heard next year. And tribes from the North Island are
taking notice, with one already joining the legal battle. Dr Tau says it’s
time to let Maori take the lead on New Zealand’s waterways. |
27:27 |
Dr
Tau interview |
DR TAU: There’s been a failure of government,
there's been a failure of the market, and the only one standing with
credibility on this is Maori. |
27:50 |
Aerials
over river |
And we say we have
authority, you haven't, you have defaulted your obligations, and that water
falls under our rangitiritanga. |
28:57 |
Credits
[see below] |
Music |
28:11 |
Outpoint
|
|
28:41 |
CREDITS:
Reporter
Yaara Bou Melhem
Producers
Anne Worthington
Camera
Tom Bannigan ACS
Editor
Stuart Miller
Additional
camera
Toby Wilson
Location
Services
GFS Risk
Assistant
Editor
Tom Carr
Graphics
Andres Gomez Isaza
Archival
Research
Michelle Boukheris
Senior
Production Manager
Michelle Roberts
Production
Co-ordinator
Victoria Allen
Digital
Producer
Matt Henry
Supervising
Producer
Lisa McGregor
Executive
Producer
Matthew Carney