Water is the new gold!

The Tourism Export Council (TEC), which earlier in the year led the freshwater discussion on behalf of the tourism industry by supporting the Choose Clean Water campaign, maintains that we as an industry and country have to value fresh clean water as the highest priority – for our communities, the economy and health and well-being of our freshwater lakes, rivers and streams!

A significant motivation for visitors choosing destination New Zealand is our clean, green image and we want to ensure this reputation lasts for generations to come. The tourism industry is concerned that if more is not done to immediately protect the environment and our waterways, our clean, green marketing proposition could be quite different in 50-100 years. We believe water quality to be the single greatest challenge to maintaining New Zealand’s environmental promise.

New Zealand is richly blessed with fresh water. We have 145 million litres per person – six times as much as Australia, 16 times as much as the US and 70 times as much as China or the UK. However, we need to value it appropriately with all the right environmental protection mechanisms in place.

While the Land and Water Forum reports and the Next Steps for Freshwater Consultation document show good progress in identifying our freshwater challenges of the past; until the question of water ownership and pricing are properly resolved it will be difficult to achieve efficient management of our freshwater resources. New Zealand needs to move to some form of water pricing to achieve the best use of this valuable and finite resource and protect the health and wealth of our nation.

On behalf of TEC, I said to Environment Minister Nick Smith: ‘A national water policy statement that only aspires to wadeable is a marketing disaster for New Zealand’. We need to demonstrate that the aspiration of all New Zealanders, led by the Government, is at the minimum swimmable and where we can, it should be drinkable.

And not just because the tourism industry trades on the 100% Pure New Zealand brand, but all our export products such as agriculture, horticulture and viticulture also trade on our clean green image. Fonterra presents their own products to the world with its imagery of livestock set amidst rolling green pastures, snow clad mountains and sparkling waterways. While we cannot be 100 percent safe or make every waterway swimmable all the time, we need to hand-on-heart know we are doing all that we can.

Clean freshwater is the new global gold, so we should protect it for ourselves and treat it like the precious commodity it is.