Former Soviet republics Belarus and Kazakhstan have joined Russia in banning Fonterra dairy products.

"Was the Fonterra milk scandal caused by New Zealand being 'hostage to a blinkered devotion to laissez-faire market ideology'?" asks Bryce Edwards.

Editorial: Two recent events ought to have injected some urgency into the quest for cleaner, fairer and better use of New Zealand's most valuable resource, water.

An important fertiliser aid has been culled from farmers' chemical shopping lists after it turned up in milk products destined for human consumption.

As valuable to marine life as it is prized by humans, the Hauraki Gulf is in decline. Though solutions seem as elusive as the gulf's fish stocks, a groundswell is building for collaboration.