The overwhelming majority of New Zealand’s exports – not least agricultural and horticultural – require water, and in large quantities. Indeed, in many respects water is New Zealand’s largest export. Yet the management of our fresh water has not been ideal. We have over-allocated and badly polluted some of our water resources. Such problems point...

This paper sets out a complex adaptive systems view of water governance. Overview Fresh water is a life - enabling resource as well as the source of spiritual, social and economic wellbeing and development. It is continuously renewed by the Earth’s natural recycling systems using heat from the sun to evaporate and purify, and then...

Collaborative governance is talked about as something New Zealand needs to have more of, to deal with the sorts of issues governement faces today, like solving use and conservation of fresh water. There is even some promising practice of collaborative governance such as through the Land and Water Forum. Yet beyond this well-known example, the...

This paper examines the progress of the Land and Water Forum, which was a stakeholder-led collaborative governance process established to recommend potential reform of New Zealand’s fresh water management. Introduction: Looking at collaborative processes in retrospect is always easier than it was at the time they were first happening. They tend to look more designed...