Water, water, everywhere..

S P E C
T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M

Wazza’s
Trans-Tasman tales (cont.)

Similarly, in Aotearoa-New
Zealand, wells are drilled and monstrous irrigation machinery now
snakes across the Canterbury plains delivering mega-litres of Southern
Alps originated water from ancient aquifers, to irrigate the extra
grass needed for proliferating dairy herds, on what were previously
un-irrigated sheep pastures and grain fields. In other words, the
voracious Asian demand for milk powder must be met. The extent of
dairy development in Canterbury has resulted in the renowned trans-Tasman
dairy processor Fonterra feeling competition from Chinese owned new-comer
Synlait who have established there a ‘purpose-built infant formula
facility, the largest and most sophisticated in the Southern Hemisphere’
(Wikipedia).
While I recognise that the globalised, marketplace driven world is
in the ascendency and needs must, I remain somewhat vexed about where
the tipping point might be for disrupting all this water-water-everywhere
resource we appear to be depleting. At what point and in what context
will the realisation that there’s nary a drop to drink sink
in? Because I’m a coastal dweller in an area that is copping
quite a lot of tropical storms at present I’m not short of a
drop (at least at the moment), but those spiking weather patterns
also raise questions about climate change and its extreme impacts
on localities.
Why does any of this matter? Well in my studies over recent years
I’ve taken a lot of interest in the complex, dynamic, interrelated
affects of natural systems and about what science refers to as chaos.
What I’ve learned is that significant outcomes of affects and
events are rarely foreseeable and that predictions often deliver that
which was not predicted. Unfortunately, science remains a conflicted
endeavour and there are parties who, while tipping their hat to the
notion of chaos and complexity, are convinced that ‘discoveries’,
like quantum entanglement computer processing for example, could deliver
the edge that allows them to predict the tipping point and save the
day. But then again these parties might be of the same ilk that Daniel
Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers whistle-blower) has written of in his new
book The Doomsday Machine that significantly discount risks: ‘…intellect
of the highest order – literally, the highest order, in terms
of IQ, genius and brilliance – is not a sure protection against
extreme recklessness and unwise decision making’. Instead, I
support a position that rejects this sort of anthropocentric pre-eminence
and, rather, respects the notions of what Maori call tapu
and rahui. Tapu is the declaration of an entity
or environment as sacrosanct, in a manner that equates to the English
concept of taboo, and rahui is a form of response to tapu
that involves the imposition of severe restrictions on humans impacting
the entity or environment. The principle of rahui recognises
that natural systems – including humans – are subject
to complex and dynamic balancing effects that are easily and particularly
upset by excessive exploitation and require the rahui to
remain in place until balance is re-established. There is currently
a rahui imposed on the Waitakere Ranges regional park west
of Auckland city as a consequence of the effects of Kauri dieback
disease that is killing Aotearoa-New Zealand’s most magnificent
ancient trees.
As to my title, I think Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner is an agreeable coda to this little essay, as
it exemplifies many of the issues I’ve covered here and forewarns
of the perils that can befell us if we ignore that which favours our
survival, but it also allows that remedies are available if we attend
to the importance of respect.