Making rivers governable: Ecological monitoring ... - Wiley Online Library

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New Zealand Geographer (2014) 70, 7–21

doi: 10.1111/nzg.12036

Research Article

Making rivers governable: Ecological monitoring, power and scale Marc Tadaki,1 Gary Brierley1 and Ian C. Fuller2 School of Environment, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand and 2Physical Geography Group & Innovative River Solutions, Institute of Agriculture & Environment, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand

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Abstract: The recently proposed centralisation of freshwater monitoring networks reveals how rivers themselves are being disciplined by the nature of the national monitoring apparatus. Freshwater monitoring is being reimagined and re-practiced through new rationalities relating to international economic branding and particular national methodological capabilities built around reductionist monitoring frameworks. While a reductionist scaling may serve certain important (and powerful) disciplinary and discursive interests, we argue that the biophysical basis for reductionist scaling is flawed and that a national monitoring framework should work to enable place-based understandings of river systems, which might be related to the national scale in more biophysically meaningful, institutionally innovative and democratic ways. Key words: ecological monitoring, freshwater science, physical geography, power/ knowledge, scale.

Introduction In 2009, the Manawatu River came under the national (and international) spotlight when newspapers declared its water quality as ‘among the worst in the West’ (Morgan & Burns 2009). A simple study measuring the diurnal cycle of dissolved oxygen (DO; an indicator for biological productivity) in the Manawatu River found that at night the level of DO plummeted to unexpectedly poor levels (Clapcott & Young 2009). It was noted that this was missed by regular local and national monitoring that only measured DO at one point during the day (Young n.d.). Water quality bottom-lines, which were created based on once-daily measurement data, were being regularly breached because the diurnal variability

of ecosystem processes had not been taken into account (Young 2009). The incident focused the national discourse and contributed significantly to a public questioning of New Zealand’s ‘100% Pure’ tourism branding slogan (Cumming 2010; Joy 2011). This story reveals the emergence (and performance) of two kinds of subjects in the national freshwater discourse. The first is the notion of a national economic subject, which cares about promoting New Zealand’s ‘100% Pure’ image to domestic and international markets with credibility, and the second is the prospect of a ‘global river’, wherein New Zealand’s rivers are imagined as reducible and comparable with rivers elsewhere. In complement to – or perhaps because of – these public discourses, recent developments in

Note about authors: Marc Tadaki completed his Masters in Geography at the University of Auckland, and is presently a PhD Student in the Department of Geography and the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia; Gary Brierley is Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Auckland; Ian C. Fuller is Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography at Massey University. E-mail: [email protected] © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

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national freshwater monitoring science and policy have emerged to cater for both of these new subjects. With its proposal for an Environmental Reporting Act and amendments to the Resource Management Act (RMA), the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) seeks to (i) allocate the task of compiling a credible national picture of environmental indicators (including freshwater) to the Government Statistician and Secretary for the Environment, with a ‘critical’ role for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE), and (ii) to force Regional Authorities (RAs) to collect new standardised datasets for this national picture (MfE 2011; Adams 2013).The Ministry has contracted scientific work to make recommendations on how to expand New Zealand’s existing National River Water Quality Network (which includes 77 sites on 35 rivers) through to the national scale (Adams 2013; Unwin & Larned 2013). There are material stakes involved here. Not only are concerns about the degradation of waterways being circulated and contested in national conversations, but also the ways in which we understand rivers nationally are being reconstituted for new aims and ends. Rivers are being redefined as objects of knowledge, investment and action. In this paper, we evaluate these prospective reforms from a physical geographical perspective. What does this rescaling mean in terms of understanding rivers as complex, contingent and place-based biophysical entities? What do we gain from scaling, and what pathways are foregone? What is the point of ecological monitoring – biophysically and institutionally – and are these reforms the best ways forward? Our concern here lies with the incorporation (and maintenance) of place-based biophysical forms and processes within monitoring and management applications of river systems (Phillips 2007; Brierley et al. 2010), ensuring that such values do not become ‘lost’ in the managerial interests of standardisation, quantification and simplification (see Porter 1994). In Section 2 of this paper we describe the legislative and policy history for the present reforms to provide a sense of their underpinning rationalities (and past pathways not followed). In Section 3, we outline the only national scientific monitoring framework in © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

New Zealand, and we describe its key features and supposed merits. In Section 4, we draw on theoretical and empirical insights from physical geography to develop a critique of abstract scaling and argue in favour of holistic and place-based approaches to understanding rivers. In Section 5 we argue that monitoring can and should be framed around developing biophysically meaningful (contextualised) understandings of rivers, and that while this may be at odds with having standardised national monitoring, there are ways of scaling rivers for national audiences that respect diversity and work with it rather than seek to homogenise monitoring. We conclude in Section 6 by arguing that our monitoring institutions should reflect our values and that thinking about rivers as places rather than as abstract indicators presents a visionary and galvanising prospect to connect communities and rivers across many scales of interest.

Policy context of freshwater monitoring Contemporary reshaping or river monitoring programmes in New Zealand is considered here as an epistemological crisis that can be usefully understood through the intersecting trajectories of (i) environmental monitoring policy (this section) and (ii) freshwater research at the national scale (Section 3). The 1991 RMA requires RAs to undertake environmental monitoring to achieve their statutory functions of ‘promot[ing] the sustainable management of natural and physical resources’ (Section 5 (1)). As the RMA is effects-based legislation, monitoring environmental states and trends is central to providing an empirical basis from which to argue that the rules, policies and consents issued by RAs are in fact achieving the aims of the Act (Section 35 (2), see also PCE 1998). RMA monitoring thus provides a central platform through which consenting and appeals decisions are debated and resolved. Monitoring efforts across RAs are diverse, shaped by the specific nature of the environments as well as the specific nature of developments of a given place (PCE 2010; McFarlane et al. 2011; Beca 2012). Fundamentally, the ways in which rivers are monitored are directly connected to the

Making rivers governable

values of the local community (in order to defend the Regional Plan) as well as the specific environmental processes and pressures under consideration. Through the RMA, the Minister for the Environment is granted the power to investigate environmental matters, but not (yet) to direct RAs on what to monitor. Statutory monitoring of rivers since the passage of the RMA can be considered in relation to three phases: consolidation, expansion and contraction. The first phase was characterised by a consolidation, identifying emerging issues, as RAs worked out their new roles. In 1996 the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a review of New Zealand’s environmental performance, criticising a lack of monitoring and reporting systems that could be used to benchmark changes at the national level. This led to the MfE producing the first national State of the Environment (SoE) report in 1997 (PCE 2007). The SoE report provided a useful reference point for practitioners, noting general trends such as improvements in point source discharges and emerging pressures from diffuse sources. It concluded that while the information sources were plentiful and diverse, they were difficult to compare with each other and thus work was required to integrate and standardise indicators (MfE 1997). From this, the MfE began a multi-year programme to expand thinking about indicators through efforts to integrate monitoring applications at the national level. Between 1997 and 2002, this workstream produced a series of discussion papers about ‘core’ indicators such as air quality, biodiversity and water quality (PCE 2007). Major investments in freshwater classification systems were made, and the River Environment Classification and Land Environments of New Zealand systems were developed as cheap and effective ways of applying remote sensing techniques to broadly categorise and model environmental processes2 (see PCE, 2007 for a review). In 2004, the PCE published a major report Missing Links: connecting science with environmental policy, which recommended that the Minister for the Environment formalise a process to report on changes in the state of New Zealand’s environment at frequencies of at least 5 years (PCE 2004).

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Interestingly, the report also recommended ‘[d]eveloping institutions that are amenable to adaptive management’ (PCE 2004) and a paradigm ‘that sees management agencies not as providers of solutions, but as facilitators and partners with other players to help find joint solutions’ (PCE 2004, p. 78). In reviewing the uptake of its 2004 recommendations, the PCE noted a change in tone from the 2004 Minister emphasising ‘ongoing assessment’ for learning rather than statutory periodic reporting, and the newer Minister showing strong signs of embracing five-yearly reporting (PCE 2007). PCE welcomed the change and further argued that (i) regular SoE reporting should be required by legislation, and (ii) it should be conducted by a neutral agency. It did note, however, that because RAs had different environments and rating bases that they had differential capacity to monitor at requisite levels (PCE 2007). The simultaneous existence of diverse indicators, and the ‘ongoing assessment’ as well as periodic national reporting – all within a lack of a clear legislative framework for national monitoring – ultimately led to a phase of contraction, influenced significantly by the second SoE report (MfE 2007).This report and its reception triggered a crisis of confidence in the SoE mechanism, which was strongly emphasised by the PCE. PCE (2010) criticised the SoE report on five major grounds: • The purpose of the report was not clear, and its structure was unfocused. • Some information was not useful – a now infamous graph of phosphorous illustrates the case: rivers were ranked and re-ranked annually as the best, worst and ‘average’ rivers for phosphorous content. The graph plotted trends in the best, worst and average phosphorous levels over time, but this meant different rivers were included at different times, making it impossible to ascertain whether specific rivers were getting better or worse. • Some information was not trusted, as the selective inclusion/exclusion of government projects painted a biased picture of the situation. • The report was not independent – editorial processes shaped the content. © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

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• There were gaps in information – datasets were still not comparable, and the report did not resolve this. PCE (2010) noted that MfE does not collect data; rather, it merely collates existing data. PCE proposed that: • The Minister legislate regular reporting by assigning specific responsibilities to agencies. • SoE indicators be reviewed, underlying statistics improved and primary data made publicly available. • SoE reporting should be conducted by an independent agency with the relevant technical capacity. The Ministry responded by issuing a discussion paper (MfE 2011) that proposed: (i) to designate responsibility to the PCE to produce fiveyearly SoE reports, meaning the responsibility would no longer reside informally with MfE; and (ii) to amend the RMA ‘to improve the consistency of state of the environment monitoring statistics at the local level’ (MfE 2011), although the processes for establishing what ‘consistency’ is or should be is not indicated. This would essentially force RAs to undertake additional monitoring for the new PCE role. In a formal submission on the MfE document, PCE agreed with both proposals and further asserted that ‘the choice of data and indicators must be at the discretion of the Commissioner’ (PCE 2011). RAs have acknowledged the merits of having consistent national datasets, but they have also been critical of the proposals. Local Government New Zealand (2011) submitted that local authorities have diverse capabilities and that local specificity requires local approaches (and flexibility) to solutions and monitoring. They affirm that local costs that provide national benefit should be recognised and reimbursed through central government resourcing. More recently, Auckland Council scientist Neale (2012) argued that monitoring for RMA effects and plan implementation is fundamentally different to monitoring for national purposes, and thus for every dollar spent (staff time, laboratory costs and logistics) on national monitoring, a dollar less is spent on meeting regional needs. Neale’s argument © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

reflects a deeper concern about asking RAs to do more for less, in a context where the central government has been stripping back local government functions and resourcing (Wetton 2013). While the PCE affirms that ‘The Commissioner should not, and does not want to, impose costs on councils’ (PCE 2011), no funding mechanism was proposed in the PCE’s recommendations or the MfE proposal. In August 2013, central government confirmed its intentions to introduce an Environment Reporting Bill to parliament that would do three things (Adams 2013): (i) allocate responsibility for SoE reporting to the chief bureaucrats (not Ministers) in MfE and Statistics New Zealand, in an effort to ensure independence; (ii) mandate the rolling release of five environmental domain reports (on air, climate, freshwater, marine and land), one every 6 months, followed by a three-yearly synthesis across all five domains; and (iii) give the PCE a legislative mandate to provide expert commentary on the quality of the underlying data and robustness of the analysis, as well as the substance of the report and any concerns it may raise. Thus, while the PCE had argued for an official legal mandate to oversee indicator selection for SoE reporting, this has been given to MfE and Statistics New Zealand bureaucrats.3 The recent release of the Environment Domain Plan (Statistics New Zealand et al. 2013) offers a set of priorities and potential pathways and shape of things to come, highlighting modelling applications in particular. Curiously, no specific mention is made about how indicators will be derived and imposed upon RAs, nor how these new costs will be paid. The issue of costs raises the issue of tradeoffs – what are we gaining as we reallocate resources to monitor our rivers in a particular ‘national’ way, and what are we giving up? To begin to answer this question, we now consider the scientific framework for national scale monitoring, prior to questioning its hegemonic status.

A scientific framework for national monitoring The National River Water Quality Network (NRWQN) The NRWQN is the most systematic attempt to monitor and compare New Zealand’s rivers at


the national scale. Formed in 1988, the Network comprises 77 measuring sites over 35 rivers, which represent 40% and 50% of the drainage area of the North and South Islands, respectively (Davies-Colley et al. 2011). Importantly, these ‘reference sites’ were located to precede major human impacts, and as such, attempts to use the data to project to the whole river and to other rivers should be treated with care. The Network has collected monthly data for 12 variables consistently over this period, with only one addition (Escherichia coli was added in 2005) and one variable dropped (colour dissolved organic matter) (see Table 1). The Network was informed by monitoring programmes in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe (see Davies-Colley et al. 2011) and was designed to provide a national portrait of New Zealand’s water quality. The designers settled on a monthly sampling frame so that seasonality effects could be controlled and monthly sampling could provide linear trend detection within 5–10 years with high statistical power (Davies-Colley et al. 2011). Larger rivers were chosen as they were more likely to be perceived as being of national

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or regional importance, and sampling locations were selected pragmatically to coincide with hydrometric stations providing flow measurements. The Network constitutes a nationally consistent dataset and has had a range of academically interesting and practically useful applications. A general formula for its applications might be simply stated: variables are related to each other in the Network, relationships are established, and then they are projected somewhere else. For example, external datasets (such as dissolved organic content) can be calibrated on Network data (e.g. related to flow), and then models (or functions) established can be used to relate those variables in different settings or with hypothetical data. In this sense, ‘the NRWQN provides a consistent, long-term monitoring effort that “anchors” (connects and helps interpret) temporary measurement campaigns and special studies’ (Davies-Colley et al. 2011).4 All of this depends, however, on the monitored variables being related to each other in universal ways that are not contingent on the river, site or measurement timing in question.

Table 1 Variables measured by the NRWQN (adapted from Davies-Colley et al. 2011). Italicised variables are MfE’s national environmental indicators for freshwater Variable (units) Flow (m3/s) Dissolved oxygen (g/m3) Temperature (oC) pH Conductivity (mS/M) Dissolved nitrogen and phosphorous (g/m3) Total nitrogen and total phosphorous (g/m3) Turbidity Coloured dissolved organic matter (m−1) Visual clarity (m) Escherichia coli concentration (cfu/100 ml) Periphyton (descriptive categories) Macro-invertebrate fauna (various)

Relevance Magnitude of discharge, calculate water quantity and ability to transport/disperse chemicals/sediment Necessary for aquatic life, indicator of pollution Mean, distribution and range important for aquatic life Indicator of pollution, acidification, important for aquatic life Simple proxy for total inorganic content Promote nuisance plant growths, can be toxic and degrade aquatic life Nutrient status – eutrophication Index of visual clarity Relates water colour, availability of light and organic character of water Protected in the RMA, indicator for habitat destruction/erosion, public perception of water quality, and important for aquatic life Human health concern and shellfish contamination (started measuring in 2005) Visual monitoring to national guidelines, important for public perceptions (7 sites only) Indicator of river health (at 66 sites only)

© 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

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Recent investments by MfE suggest that the Network is being placed at the centre of the national monitoring discussions to drive thinking. In 2011 MfE commissioned three workstreams on (i) how to design a statistically robust sampling network, (ii) what variables should compose a new national monitoring framework, and (ii) what indicators might be used to report on freshwater to diverse audiences (Schmidt 2012; Unwin & Larned 2013). With the recent allocation of SoE reporting responsibilities to MfE and Statistics New Zealand (Adams 2013), it is not clear how the indicators will be selected. It is plausible that the MfE workstream will feed into its indicator development and selection, and the new Environment Domain Plan provides support for this (Statistics New Zealand et al. 2013).

Monitoring and river complexity: a physical geography perspective The proposition that the NRWQN (or its sequel) can tell a statistically understandable story of New Zealand’s rivers is not something we disagree with. However, we do disagree about (i) whether a biophysically meaningful understanding of health and histories of New Zealand’s rivers can be arrived at through the approach (this section), and (ii) whether the pathway of expanding the Network is the most desirable way of building a national portrait of New Zealand’s rivers (Section 5). Simplification is essential because of the enormous complexity of the natural world. But this process will always be partial and valueladen, and there is no one right path to ‘simplify’ something. The PCE (2010) noted this explicitly: Amalgamation and averaging of data from different regions and localities must be done with great care. Something considered an environmental problem in most of the country may be fine in some places. For example, brown water is generally a sign of fresh water degradation but in some places water is naturally brown because of tannins from surrounding beech forest. While we agree with the PCE in this statement, we think that this recognition points © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

towards a way of monitoring rivers that is pluralist and embracing of difference rather than seeking to homogenise rivers and abstract them from their geographical and historical context. This can be illustrated by examining the implications of abstracting rivers in space and time. Space–times of the Manawatu River Variable 1 – sediment. The magnitudes and rhythms of ecological processes are river- and site-specific, influenced by factors such as the catchment flow regime, river types, land use, ecohydrological connectivities, light regimes and other factors (Young et al. 2008). Sediment transfer exerts a significant influence upon these relationships. In any catchment, numerous tributaries convey water and sediment to the river’s main stem, and it is simply not feasible to capture all there is to know about the processes and quality of every variable. Accordingly, the measurement of key variables (e.g. suspended sediment load) at a strategically located site in the lower catchment is used to make inferences about the watershed upstream. However, a single measure of sediment output from a catchment does not provide information about the processes that generate sediment. For example, the total sediment yield from the Manawatu River (3.8 Mt/yr) is similar to the yield from the Waiho River in Westland (3.4 Mt/yr), but formative processes are completely different (a large part of the Waiho is glacierised, draining some of the highest relief in New Zealand). The network of sediment monitoring sites in the Manawatu catchment is shown in relation to the complexities of the Land Resource Inventory classification in Figure 1. The sediment monitoring measurements integrate and reduce these complexities into a single measurement, but (i) it is not clear which processes (of relevance to the RMA) produced the sediment, and (ii) the land classes are highly simplistic and constantly evolving, which makes strict comparisons with other rivers an artefact. The output of suspended sediment at a monitoring site is not the sum total of erosion or input, as pulses of sediment movement are interspersed with storage periods of indeterminate


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Figure 1 Manawatu catchment Land Resource Inventory with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research suspended sediment gauging sites indicated using white circles (F: Feilding, P: Pohangina, G: Manawatu Gorge). This highlights the complexity of land types in the catchment and the inevitable amalgamation and reduction of complex sources into a single measure, particularly in the gauge at the Manawatu Gorge. Ac: crushed argillite, Af: fine alluvium, Al: alluvium, Ar: argillite, Gr: alluvial gravels, Gw: greywacke, Li: limestone, Lo: loess, Mb: bedded mudstone, Mj: jointed mudstone, Mm: massive mudstone, Pt: peat, Sb: bedded sandstone, Sm massive sandstone, Us: Unconsolidated sediments, Wb: windblown sands, lak: lake, riv: river, tow: town. Source: NZLRI Rock, Landcare Research Ltd.

timespans (Fryirs 2013). Any given volume and rate of sediment movement could arise from multiple combinations of causes (Schumm 1991). Indeed, catchment-specific conditions fashion particular patterns of sediment storage and threshold conditions that in turn fashion sediment flux, making extrapolations difficult (Brierley et al. 2013; Fuller & Basher 2013). Rivers also exhibit spatiotemporal thresholds that can affect their internal organisation drastically, even without any external forcing (Wohl 2013). For example, bank collapse or channel avulsion will both affect variables such as sediment, nutrients and visibility, so the specific internal dynamics of the system need to be incorporated, which may make the case less comparable or ‘consistent’ with other rivers.

In the Manawatu, the location and extent of sediment deposition impacts upon processes that influence freshwater biodiversity (McEwan and Joy, 2014). On the one hand, it is helpful to know the result of integrated processes in the catchment, but on the other we can be led to mistake the origin of causation and arrive at an incorrect assessment of catchment change unless it is locally contextualised (Brierley et al. 2010). Variable 2 – DO. Equivalent concerns for process variability in space and time can be expressed for the DO content of water, which reflects the level of respiration taking place in a river (its ‘metabolism’, see Young et al. 2008). As this varies on a diurnal basis, no single value can represent variability over a 24-h cycle © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

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Figure 2 DO concentration versus time for the Manawatu-Opiki site over 27th–28th November 2007 (data from Young, pers. comm., 2013). DO rises during daytime in response to photosynthesis. Official Opiki sampling time is indicated and clearly does not capture the range of variability in DO.

(Young 2009; Fig. 2). Through a river-specific field campaign, Clapcott and Young (2009) established a clear diurnal cycle of variability in DO in the Manawatu River (Fig. 2). However, monitoring by the NRWQN samples the Opiki site at 14.30, when DO levels are towards, although not at, their maximum (their ‘healthiest’, see Fig. 2). Since sampling is undertaken during daytime, DO levels will never be at their minimum, unless a programme of dawn sampling is implemented. The NRWQN values are consequently (consistently) elevated or depressed and cannot adequately represent variability, for which continuous monitoring would be required. In light of these considerations, Horizons Regional Council now monitors selected variables continuously in the Manawatu catchment (Roygard et al. 2013). Rethinking space and time in ecological monitoring Meaningful monitoring and assessment of river condition (or ‘health) is an inherently placebased project (Fryirs et al. 2008). Structural biophysical measurements can provide a standardised way of comparing rivers across space and at the ‘national’ scale, but simply standardising measurements does not indicate that the meaning of the variables is the same across space and time (Brierley et al. 2010). Even integrative ‘process-based’ indicators such as DO © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

are highly specific to the catchment in question and may be more or less appropriate for different rivers in different contexts (Young et al. 2008). How is one to compare the short coastal streams of Auckland to the meandering Manawatu, or to the braided Waimakariri? Standardised water quality measurements provide one way to do this, but are their stressors, histories and dynamics similar enough to warrant an abstract comparison? Is an increase or decrease of a variable over time sufficient to provide a meaningful national portrait of our rivers, given the dynamic and evolving nature of river forms and processes over multiple scales and geographies of environmental change? The biophysical argument for standardised national scale reporting leaves much to be desired. Perhaps to be more accurate, there does not seem to be one. Table 2 lists the key rationales and arguments put forward by PCE and MfE for a national monitoring framework in their official reports and statements. Our analysis draws out the presumed link between the Standardisation and Understanding arguments. Both PCE and MfE emphasise the diversity in council measurement practices, and both agree that this diversity is due to councils being efficiently organised around RMA implementation and protecting local and national values (see also McFarlane et al. 2011; Beca 2012). However, both PCE and MfE frame this diversity as a problem inhibiting biophysical understanding, and both see standardisation as the appropriate solution. Standardised national monitoring reduces rivers for a national observer, and while trends can be discerned, it does not necessarily mean that they are meaningful. Do the different qualities of environmental change across rivers matter at the national scale? Standardisation has limited capacity to generate meaningful understandings of rivers. Indeed, these mechanisms for comparison are epistemologically, financially – and as we will argue next, morally – costly.

Reframing the monitoring problem What’s the point of ecological monitoring? What kinds of representations of rivers do

Standardisation

Understanding

Political economy

Argument

Table 2

New Zealand needs a National Environmental Reporting Act. It is extraordinary that the country in the OECD that brands itself as ‘clean and green’ is the only one that has not made an ongoing commitment to assessing the state of its environment. (p. 39) There is a pressing need to rationalise, streamline, and standardise environmental statistics . . . [to] allow for the causes of environmental change to be identified, addressed, and the effectiveness of interventions assessed. (p. 39) Good environmental policy needs a good evidence base of environmental statistics (p. 6) The 2007 report . . . drew significant criticism. Such inadequacies are not solely the fault of those who wrote the report, but illustrate a fundamental failure of our system (or lack thereof) of environmental statistics. (p. 5) The lack of standardisation of methods among data collectors is a major barrier to effective and efficient national environmental reporting and management. (p. 21)

PCE (2010)

When aggregated, regional monitoring sites do not always provide a nationally representative picture of the state of the environment. For example, recreational water quality monitoring sites are not selected consistently across regions. Regional councils have an obligation to provide information on high-use swimming sites and to keep the public safe. This means that some regional councils may monitor a high number of sites with poor water quality, while others monitor a high number of pristine sites . . . The lack of consistency in site selection, the number of sites monitored per region, and annual changes in sites make any annual comparison difficult at a national level. (p. 14) Some regional councils monitor problem areas, others do so on the basis of recreational usage and others on a representative basis. This inconsistency enables some to minimise the problems and others to exaggerate them . . . (p. 1)

Clear authoritative reports on what lakes and rivers are polluted, how badly and which ones are getting better or worse was an important recommendation of the . . . Land and Water Forum. (p. 1)

The problem is that we are in a poor position to provide hard evidence that our clean, green brand is justified. New Zealand is one of only a few OECD countries without a legislative basis for national state of the environment reporting. (p. 1)

MfE (2011)

The lack of consistency in site selection, the number of sites monitored per region, and annual changes in sites make any annual comparison difficult at a national level. The methods we use to collect data need to be credible and the data must be obtained from a range of trustworthy sources, such as local councils, central government and crown research institutes, using consistent methodology. . . . changes to the Resource Management Act [are] required to enable the Government to make regulations requiring local authorities and councils to monitor the environment according to specified priorities and methodologies

New Zealand is one of only a few countries without a legislative basis for national environmental reporting. This [proposed] environmental reporting system will let us track how we are performing compared to our trading partners and will facilitate international benchmarking and comparability. We need credible environmental information that paints an accurate picture so that the debate can be about the environmental issues themselves, not about whether the reporting is accurate, comparable or representative.

Adams (2013)

Summary of arguments for national monitoring framework from PCE, MfE and a recent speech from the Environment Minister

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Complexity

Independence

Argument

Many different organisations will continue to play roles in the collection and analysis of environmental statistics. The preparation of a trusted state of the environment report, however, requires independent reporting and technical capacity, as well as the accountability that would be provided by an Environmental Reporting Act. (p. 40) Measuring and assessing the state of our environment is no easy task. Unlike counting money or people using well-developed economic and social statistics, the sky is the limit for natural and physical world statistics. There is no end of parameters that could be measured. Moreover, our perspective on what should be measured changes as our understanding of the environment grows. The challenge for any country to achieve quality reporting on the state of its environment should not be underestimated. (p. 5)

PCE (2010)

. . . because there is no legislative requirement specifying the scope, timing and nature of environmental reporting, there is potentially a lack of public confidence that reporting will occur and a view that the nature of any environmental reporting is open to change from government-to-government. –

–

Adams (2013)

It is critical that environmental reporting is a robust, factual assessment – not a public relations or advocacy exercise. (p. 1)

MfE (2011)

Table 2 (continued)

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we want as a society, for what purposes and at what costs? What kinds of mindsets are we reproducing and embedding through our institutions of environmental monitoring and governance, and with what effects? Freshwater ecological monitoring in New Zealand should be about developing understandings of environmental change so that communities – local, national and international – can gain a meaningful sense of how our rivers are changing and what stakes are involved. The national monitoring apparatus of the NRWQN provides one template that MfE is considering for expansion to all RAs in New Zealand (Neale 2012; Schmidt 2012), and the new Environmental Domain Plan presents another (Statistics New Zealand et al. 2013).This carries prospects for (i) creating financial and institutional costs for already stressed RAs, (ii) creating symbolic and largely meaningless comparisons of diverse rivers for an international audience, and (iii) creating a national ‘subject’ that cares about rivers through reductionist indicators rather than holistic and meaningful on-the-ground change. But even if we accept that rivers are complex and should be understood in-place (i.e. their unique catchment attributes), ought we not try to build a national picture of our rivers? Investing in the development of place-based understandings of rivers is not incompatible with the desire to tell national ‘stories’ about our rivers. PCE (2011) and MfE (2011) have proposed a zero-sum-game in which the RAs’ monitoring must give way to a statistically ‘robust’ (but biophysically dubious) standardised national monitoring framework. However, there is another pathway that has not received any investment or attention by either PCE or MfE to date. Prospectively, an alternative placebased mindset for approaching river health and monitoring in New Zealand could be fashioned, framed around two main components. First, the aim of monitoring should be configured around understanding rivers in their unique context (place). Regard needs to be given to understanding the diversity and changing nature (evolutionary trajectory) of river systems, recognising that what are important measures today may differ from those that were pertinent in the past, or may be useful in the future. Such considerations should relate to

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targeted process-based measures that can guide management interventions, appraising diagnostic indicators of river condition that are pertinent to the system under consideration (Fryirs et al. 2008; Beechie et al. 2010). Building upon this, a national strategy could facilitate the development of the appropriate skill sets and knowledge base through which RAs can tell their own stories about their rivers, framed in relation to the national scene (i.e. highlighting similarities and differences with stories from catchments elsewhere). The literature on adaptive management emphasises the value of local experimentation and proposes harnessing this diversity to support learning and adapt institutions over time to better reflect changing environmental conditions, knowledge and societal values (Folke et al. 2005; see also PCE 2004). Similarly, adaptive monitoring literatures explore how baseline and experimental monitoring projects can produce generalisable insights from unique cases (Lindenmayer and Likens 2010). The aim of monitoring is to coproduce iterative (rather than static or universal) understandings about the environment and social processes, to enable social learning and change (Cundill & Fabricius 2009). Within the context of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (New Zealand Government 2011), RAs need to understand their communities’ values and protect and enhance these through planning mechanisms. Accordingly, monitoring should be geared towards holistically understanding the specific river system in question and how this may change through different scenarios (Brierley et al. 2010). Monitoring should articulate and support multiple and diverse local connections between communities and rivers (Hillman et al. 2008), and national strategy should enable RAs to monitor rivers in ways that are locally relevant.The roles of freshwater science in these projects are not simply mechanical representations of data, but meaningful interpretations that inform deliberations about river futures (Brierley & Fryirs 2008). While the PCE has expressed a desire for strategic (locally targeted) monitoring rationales, it has not acknowledged that locally meaningful measurements are not the same as nationally standardised measurements. Indeed, statistical abstractions may impose local costs © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

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for dubious benefits. Developing meaningful biophysical understandings of specific rivers should be embraced and supported rather than criticised or penalised. Second, acknowledging the non-equivalency of standardised and meaningful measurements does not mean that we cannot meaningfully give accounts of river health at the national scale. For example, Neale (2012) suggests that we can learn from monitoring initiatives in the United States and the United Kingdom, and we can make more productive alignment with our Geological and Nuclear Sciences national groundwater programme (cf. Joy & Death 2004). Similarly, instructive guidance may be gained from Australian initiatives that allow their states to use their own indicators for river health, while central government agencies work with the states to assemble the work into a meaningful and comparable national portrait.5 This demonstrates that it is possible to develop a national picture of rivers with local data and through working with local authorities rather than imposing statutory obligations and costs upon them. New Zealand’s MfE has simply asserted that voluntary efforts have not worked, but it has not yet indicated whether any attempts have been made to learn about other models that do not impose as yet undetermined costs upon local authorities.6 The options have been artificially narrowed, and we contend that they need to be reopened. It should not be inferred from this critique of prospective practices in freshwater monitoring and governance in New Zealand that current practices and approaches to monitoring necessarily provide sufficient and coherent guidance with which to inform river management applications. Indeed, there is much to be critical of regarding the ‘status quo’. Our intervention has endeavoured to make a scientific and valuesbased argument for where investment should go from here rather than what some hypothetical perfect monitoring system might look like. Ours is a pragmatic argument for the current moment, involving choices about investment trajectories and institution-building.

Conclusion This paper has synthesised and evaluated recent and ongoing developments in New © 2014 New Zealand Geographical Society

Zealand’s freshwater monitoring architecture. Freshwater monitoring has become a site through which political struggles and power/ knowledge dynamics are unfolding, as investments into new monitoring frameworks variously close down and open up possibilities for communities to know – and act upon – their rivers in particular ways. We have sought to draw out the underlying logic of the freshwater reforms, and the kinds of environments that such a logic assumes, and then enacts. Fundamentally, our critique stems from a concern about the reductionist, abstract mindset of quantification-for-comparison rather than a mindset that is concerned with resourcing and enabling meaningful biophysical understandings of (specific and local) river systems (see Porter 1994). This emerging New Zealand freshwater knowledge production regime sets out to make rivers governable by reducing them to statistical abstractions that can be represented – and acted upon – at the national scale (Statistics New Zealand et al. 2013). Increasingly, freshwater is being practised as an entity that possesses scalable properties of value for certain audiences (e.g. MfE and OECD), highlighting the political power of particular (international and economic) subjects relative to others (e.g. local communities and local governments). Rivers are being scaled for national and international interests, and this scaling creates winners and losers, and it embeds institutional frameworks for understanding and dealing with environmental change (sensu Robbins 2012). However, investing in locally meaningful monitoring and a statistically standardised national portrait are not the same thing, and it is important to consider what kinds of institutional frameworks (and their associated rigidities) we are developing, and why. Principles of adaptive governance stress local experimentation and autonomy (measuring and acting on what matters locally, for local subjects), and then seeing how certain knowledge-action systems work and can be improved in place (Folke et al. 2005; Cundill & Fabricius 2009). We contend that the present type of environmental scaling in New Zealand not only represents a kind of national ‘tax’ on resource-stressed local authorities, these developments will also likely draw resources away


from locally relevant monitoring strategies. In such framings, the ends and means are no longer linked at the local level, nor to grounded understandings of actual rivers. In light of the present analysis, it would be useful to compare experiences and perspectives upon scalar relations, monitoring frameworks and river management applications in a range of differing environmental and institutional settings (Beck et al. 2010). Ecological monitoring should seek to meaningfully represent the health and state of the environment to its local and national communities. The stakes are high. We are investing in institutions through which we seek to ‘know’ our rivers at a national level, and as such we need to ensure that these institutions embody a solid scientific foundation, as well as a strategic and empowering mindset with which to pursue a normative vision for our nation’s waterways.

Acknowledgements We thank the Freshwater Geographies group at the University of Auckland for providing a supportive and engaged environment in which to explore and develop the ideas and arguments in this paper. We thank Ronlyn Duncan, Mike Joy and Jonathan Phillips for their insightful, critical and constructive review comments.

Endnotes 1 http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1991/ 0069/latest/DLM230265.html 2 A range of these applications are published at http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/ser/ index.html#public 3 This may be related to the PCE being publicly critical of central government’s resource management reforms, i.e. http://www.pce.parliament .nz/assets/Uploads/PCE-MfE-RMA-Discussion Documentfinal.pdf 4 A 2010 report from MfE assessed water quality trends in 112 New Zealand lakes between 2005 and 2009. Over the study period, 12 per cent of lakes assessed had improved, while 28 per cent had worsened. It then extrapolated those findings across 4000 lakes smaller than a hectare, and found that 43 per cent were likely to have very good or excellent water quality – meaning very low nutrient levels – while 32 per cent were likely to have poor or very poor (nutrient-enriched) water quality.

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http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/ser/lake -water-quality-in-nz-2010/lake-water-quality-in-nz -2010.pdf 5 http://www.water.gov.au/RiverandWetLand Health/Assessmentofriverandwetlandhealth/ Nationalframework/index.aspx?Menu=Level1_5 _2_1 6 We are aware of at least one RA, which has undertaken staff restructuring in preparation for these developments.

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