Water

E kore te wai, e kore te tangata.

If there's no water, human beings can't exist. The life we depend on can't exist. Water is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. Clean water is surely worth more than diamonds and rubies or all the gold in the world. As they say, it is a taonga.

In my mentioning of water, what issues come to mind for you?

The big one is surely managing water resources for the long term, in our regions in New Zealand and everywhere in the world. In some places the management has to cross national boundaries, and the potential for dispute is even greater than it has been over oil.

To irrigate or not to irrigate? Is irrigation a public health risk? Is this something that can be managed with science? Are we able, as local and regional communities, to agree on the fair use and distribution of water?

What can we afford to do? What can we afford not to do? That is, what will be the price of inaction?

Water is essential to individual life, across the range. With climate variability, and it seems that is only increasing, irrigation is a significant benefit and becomes essential in some situations to keep the garden alive, so to speak. Water is also a resource for producing energy, something it can do alongside feeding plants and animals of all kinds. New Zealand does well by international standards in this.

But clean water is a crucial issue too: the rivers we swam in as youngsters, the creeks that once fed all the families in the valley, the lake that didn't used to smell.

I take heart from the combined efforts of iwi hapu and local government which are slowly but surely having positive effects on the Waikato River and on the Rotorua Lakes. Things can be done. Co-operation. Talk it through together and find common ground; respect and affirm different views and realise it's a complex and interconnected task to move from unhealthy to healthy, from dead water to living water.

Funny how the language starts to sound spiritual. It is spiritual. The Spirit of God, the life-giver, is always involved when previously distrusting people with divergent views start acting together with the common purpose of well-being.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn