Earlier in the month I blogged about the Manawatu River Leaders' Accord, which saw local authorities, iwi, environment groups, and polluters come together to sign an agreement to clean up the Manawatu River. But one group stayed away from the signing: Federated Farmers. And now, having said they would sign it, they have instead refused in favour of pushing their own "people's accord", which
avoids emotional and unscientific statements about the state of the river and focuses on the entire community - not just the key dischargers - cleaning it upIn other words, avoids recognising the full extent of the problem or placing responsibility where it belongs: with polluters.
So, faced with a pressing local environmental problem, farmers are retreating into utter denial, just as they have on climate change. They don't care, and don't want to know - because caring and knowing might affect their business, which fundamentally depends on dumping environmental costs on others. This is not an attitude the rest of us can accept. And since farmers have declined the opportunity to clean their act up voluntarily, we'll just have to force them to do it by regulation instead. The Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council's new One Plan includes some of the basics, such as nitrogen limits, but it needs to go much further, by imposing stocking limits and ultimately declaring farming to be a controlled activity requiring resource consent.
