This has to change.
At an international water conference in Abu Dhabi in 2014, the emirate's Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said: "For us, water is [now] more important than oil." It is estimated that more than a billion people don't have access to safe drinking water. And yet in New Zealand we give our water away for free.
Economics 101 states that if an economic input has no price, then it has no value therefore there is no incentive to find innovative ways to conserve, preserve and optimise water usage.
The problem is, there is no legal way to actually charge for water.
Bottled water exports is a sector that we need to initially target. These companies are drawing water directly from the ground, adding no value and then selling it for profit; often using the New Zealand brand as the selling point.
They pay nothing for the water and nothing for the use of our brand, and this is fundamentally wrong and needs to change.
The Fiji Water story is a great case study of what could be. Fiji water was established in 1995. For years they were paying a levy of one-third of a Fijian cent per litre to the Government. In 2010, however, the Fijian government increased this levy to 15c per litre.
The company threatened to move operations from Fiji to New Zealand, and in a counter move, the Fijian government threatened to give the well to another company.
Fiji Water backed down and went back to work. At the time, this increased the Fijian government's revenue from F$500,000 ($356,130) to F$22.6m on the back of Fiji Water exports of around F$150m per year.
Mineral water exports from Fiji are forecast to reach F$215.7m in 2017.
There is, of course, the vexed question of "who owns the water". My personal view is that everyone owns the water, but no one has a mandate that allows usage or rights over and above any other member of our community.
It is a communal good therefore the proceeds from the sale of water should go back to the community.
Hawke's Bay is a classic case in point. The Hawke's Bay Regional Council has approved ten consents totalling over 4.3b litres of water a year for bottling. That's 4.3b litres of our water given away for free.
In fact just last year Bill English cut the ribbon for the overseas-owned HB water exporting plant that had its water returned due to quality issues mentioned above. This plant has a resource consent to draw 450 million litres per year from the aquifer upon which a good portion of Hawke's Bay sits. They don't even pay a third of a cent for this water.
They pay nothing; and I know the cost of the bottle, cap and label is about 15c.
Imagine if the HB community received just 2c for every litre of water exported from the region. Imagine what that would do for economic and community development and well-being.
Currently, however, we receive nothing from the value they are extracting or our brand they are using. This is wrong and it needs to change.
After all, if the Fijians can do it, we should be able to as well.
- Stuart Nash is the MP for Napier.
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The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion, and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.
