♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ yaara bou melhem: new zealand, aotearoa, is blessed with fresh water, with its turquoise rivers and lakes and snow-capped mountains. its pristine and dramatic landscapes are the sets

of hollywood blockbusters, and its natural beauty a major tourism draw card. but behind its clean green image is a shocking reality. up to 99% of rivers running through urban, farming, and non-native forested areas are polluted. lan pham: we're told that, oh, you know, rivers are dangerous, that you could get sick from rivers, they could harm your kids and your pets. yaara: the ardern government has promised to clean up. jacinda ardern: i want our waterways to be swimmable again, so we're putting in place standards that actually stop the degradation. yaara: but is facing pushback from one of the country's biggest polluters: dairy. john sunckell: do we want agriculture, do we want production, or do we want to get rid of agriculture? yaara: now the country's wealthiest maori tribe is

launching an unprecedented claim over the south island's fresh water. dr. te maire tau: there's been a failure of government, there's been a failure of the market, and the only one standing with credibility on this is maori. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ yaara: i'm on a tour that's going to take me deep into one of new zealand's spectacular wilderness areas: the dart river in the country's south island. we're weaving through glacier-fed braided rivers, part of a world heritage site.

bill cook: the southern alps in new zealand, that's what people think of when they think of new zealand. it'll be the snow, the mountains, the glaciers, the clean water, the flowing water, the trees, the bush, the bird life. the spiritual side of it is that these are where our ancestors were. some of the mountains are named after our ancestors. [speaking maori language] yaara: bill cook is giving a maori blessing for the next part of our journey. [speaking maori language] bill: so, basically, it's telling you you can go away healthily, but make sure you come back to us well, as well. yaara: all right, here we go. yaara: bill is a cultural river guide who's been taking people out here for 30 years. bill: it's all about using the flow.

♪♪♪ yaara: we're heading to the highlight of the trip: rockburn chasm in mount aspiring national park. yaara: these rock formations are incredible! bill: you can imagine the water coming down through there, hitting that rock, and then turning it around like a washing machine and digging in there. yaara: for bill, his connection to these rivers runs deep. bill: waterways are my life, basically. my grandfather, my father, my great-grandparents, were all water people of some sort. and so we use them as our highways, the same as my early ancestors, the maori, came into here; they were their highways. yaara: waterways are an essential part of his identity.

bill: the maori saying would be something like [speaking maori language] which is, "the river-- i am the river, the river is me." and so that's basically what we believe in. it's what i believe in personally as well. it means a lot to me. yaara: but in the last few decades this precious natural resource has been degraded. the water here is among the purest in the world, melting from snow off the peaks of the southern alps and glaciers that have taken thousands of years to form. from here, rivers like this one flow through farms and cities before reaching the sea. it's a process that could take anywhere between 2 and 100 years. but as these flows go further downstream, they're transforming into some of the most polluted waterways in the developed world.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ yaara: i'm traveling to the canterbury region in the south island, which has some of the most contaminated waterways in new zealand. this was traditionally sheep farming country, but it's seen an explosion in dairy farming. cattle numbers have more than doubled here in the last two decades. it's now one of the most intensively farmed and irrigated regions. one of the best ways to get a sense of how the landscape has been transformed by dairy farming is to go up. joining me for this bird's eye view is dr. mike joy, one of new

zealand's leading freshwater ecologists. yaara: you ready, mike? mike joy: ready. ♪♪♪ yaara: it may look lush and green now, but 20 to 30 years ago it was very different. mike: before irrigation, this was brown. everywhere was brown. yeah, it's a huge change bringing water to this place. yaara: irrigated land has doubled since 2002 and now takes up half of new zealand's freshwater use. it's allowed a major conversion from sheep to dairy farming. mike: this is the most recently developed part of new zealand. and this is where the big land grab happened, like the big gold rush, you know, intensification of farming for conversions, and that massive change in the amount of water that was taken

out of the rivers and aquifers here and put on the land, you know, are just unprecedented, so that more irrigation water here than the whole rest of the country put together. and it happened really, really quickly. the size of farms has got way bigger. the amount of fertilizer going on has hugely increased. yaara: and it's the heavy use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to grow pasture that is also a major concern for dr. joy, with nitrates leaching into the poor soils of the canterbury plains and polluting waterways. yaara: what sort of effect has that had on the freshwater systems here? mike: light stony soils, lots of cows on it, a lot of fertilizer and palm kernel going on to feed them. lots of urine going out and down through those soils, into the rivers; the aquifers and rivers really all acting as one here, moving out towards the coast and you're getting the nitrate

levels just rising and rising and rising really quickly. great for farming, but not so great for fresh water. yaara: back on the ground at this dairy, 600 cows are coming in for their daily milking. john sunckell is a third-generation farmer. like many in the canterbury region, he converted from traditional mixed farming to dairy. john: it provides a future for my family and for the generations that have come before. i have five full-time staff on farm. it puts bread on their table, and it bolsters and builds communities. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

john: so we, you know, rotate, so it's rotational grazing. we run a-- yaara: john is showing me around his 500-acre property. in the economic downturn of the late 1980s, dairy became a lifeline. yaara: when did you turn to more intensive dairy farming here? john: so that was, yeah, late-- early '90s, really, late '80s, early '90s. yaara: to kind of follow that white gold rush? john: just to follow-- yeah, i don't know. i mean, i didn't see it as a gold rush. you just looked at what you saw in front of you. sheep prices were no good, wool prices were going down. we saw an agricultural decline right across the world. economically, we just looked at dairying, and dairying seemed to be the future. ♪♪♪ yaara: john's farm lies within the selwyn-waihora catchment. and it's the selwyn river that has become the poster child for

all that's gone wrong with new zealand's waterways. lan: the selwyn can be thought of as a bit of a ground zero for mismanagement of water. yaara: local councilor and freshwater ecologist lan pham is taking me along the river where there's regular algal blooms, mostly caused by excess nutrients from fertilizers. lan: there's a toxic cyanobacteria warning for this site and actually two other sites on the selwyn as well. actually, this is just a patch of it. yaara: right, it's the black stuff on the rocks. lan: yeah, so it appears as kind of these quite thick, almost velvety, mats. yaara: you can't swim here. this algae is toxic and can harm people and animals who come into contact with it. lan: and it just takes one teaspoon for a dog to ingest

that for it to actually die. when you have excessive nutrients and sediments coming into the system, these blooms can really take off. and that's really sort of the perfect storm of what we've got here. and so it really provides, like, this, essentially, a wonderland for 4 million blooms and they have taken off here this summer as they often do in recent history. yaara: yeah, which is really unfortunate in summer, 'cause that's when families wanna come to rivers. lan: oh, it's hugely disappointing. it just fuels this continual disconnection with the river. lan: clean water and swimmable rivers isn't simply nice to have. fully functioning fresh water ecosystems are fundamental to ensuring that our communities can thrive, both today and in the future. yaara: the 34-year-old has leveraged social media to campaign hard against the degradation of new zealand's rivers.

her conservation agenda has hit a nerve. lan: pollution can take decades to come to the surface where it impacts our lives. yaara: in 2016, she received the most votes in the canterbury regional elections and is now in her second term. lan: when we're told that, oh, you know, rivers are dangerous, that you could get sick from rivers, that, you know, they could harm your kids and your pets, it just enforces that disconnection with nature. and the idea that we're somehow separate, and that--and that to actually address issues like this and fight for our public resources, or try protect our public resources, that that's somehow unreasonable, because this is the baseline now. yaara: because a polluted river has become the norm? lan: exactly. yaara: the selwyn river is not an isolated case. according to a recent government report, 95% to 99% of rivers

running through urban, farming, and non-native forest areas have unacceptable levels of pollution. that's nearly 60% of the country's rivers. jacinda: i want our waterways to be swimmable again. yaara: the poor quality of new zealand's fresh water was a key issue in last year's election, with prime minister jacinda ardern again promising to clean up the country's dirty water. jacinda: we're putting in place standards that actually stop the degradation, see material improvements over five years, and within a lifetime we'll see our kids swimming in that water again. ♪♪♪ yaara: to reduce pollution the government has introduced fresh water reforms. the most contentious issue is what the nitrate level in

waterways should be. the government set it at 2.4 milligrams per liter, but that's provoking furious debate. mike: we can take it back to our analyzer, and we can get an instant result on the nitrate levels. yaara: back at the selwyn river, dr. mike joy and lan pham are testing the river's nitrate level. ♪♪♪ mike: the sample's been analyzed, and we'll just see what it comes up as. wow, 9.66 milligrams. that is--that is crazy. the current national policy statement, the limit is 2.4 milligrams. so it's four times that. lan: as alarming as this number is, this is totally typical of virtually all the groundwater and surface water systems that you'll get in this whole area.

yaara: dr. joy was part of a group of independent scientists set up by the government to advise it on the reforms. he says the nitrate limit needs to be much lower. mike: it should be 1 milligram. the european union standard is 1 milligram, is the maximum that's allowed in fresh waters, that's the trigger for eutrophication. yaara: eutrophic waterways are often choked with algae and can change oxygen levels, endangering life. mike: the farmers put nitrogen fertilizer on the paddocks to grow grass. what the nitrogen does on the river is it grows algae. algae photosynthesize during the night, they respire, and the oxygen levels drop right down and virtually everything dies. and then during the afternoon it comes back up, and it gets dangerously high. so those fluctuations are what are really harmful for the life in the river.

yaara: the government says its 2.4 milligram limit will protect 95% of species against toxicity, but dr. mike joy says toxicity isn't the only issue. freshwater life may have already been harmed from eutrophication. mike: the fish can't die twice, right? they can't die of toxicity if they're already dead because there's not enough oxygen. ♪♪♪ yaara: the government's nitrate limit is receiving pushback from one of the country's most powerful industries. worth nearly $15 billion a year, dairy is now the country's biggest export earner. the dairy co-op fonterra is new zealand's largest company, making around a third of the world's dairy exports. it wants a higher nitrate limit, a call being echoed by many

of its farmers, including john sunckell. he's one of 10,000 kiwi farmers producing milk for fonterra. john: we apply all our own nitrogen on the farm. yaara: over the past few years, he's been working hard to reduce his use of fertilizer but says it will be impossible to meet the government's nitrate limit. yaara: how feasible is it for you to reach the 2.4 milligram per liter bottom line? john: there's nothing that we are doing today, or have an ability to do as far as management and system changes that will allow us to achieve that outcome. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

yaara: john is also a councilor for the canterbury region. today he's canvassing the views of other local dairy farmers at this field day. john: do you think you can continue this work and maintain that improvement and achieve what the government's looking at at the moment? it's probably a bit of a loaded question. male: the targets that are out there are not achievable. we can go lower. yes, we can, and we're trying that, but the levels that are proposed are prior to farming in canterbury. that's the reality. john: if we cannot meet those numbers, then we cannot meet those numbers, and we have to give up farming. there is no future for production agriculture of any sort on the canterbury plains if that is where we end up. we will have a total dislocation of thousands upon thousands of people and no support for the main streets of our small communities.

the whole fabric of our communities just disintegrates. it's simple. yaara: what about other sorts of farming? because what the scientists have been saying is that it's the nitrate leaching into soils that is coming from cow urea that is one of the major issues here. john: yes, dairy has a significant part of it, but anywhere where we have intensive agriculture and/or irrigation, that's the challenge. it's a--there's a societal question: do we want agriculture, do we want production, or do we want to get rid of agriculture? it becomes that blunt with those numbers. mike: that's the reality for much of the world, is that the type of industrial farming that we do at the moment is harming the environment. that's why we have the environmental crises that we have at the moment, not just of climate change, but a biodiversity crisis, and a soil loss crisis, and a freshwater crisis globally. so yes, it may be hard for these guys who have grown up with this type of farming to accept that this type of farming can't happen anymore.

yaara: under pressure from all sides, the government has agreed to revisit its nitrate limit later this year. meanwhile, another battle is breaking out, one that could reset who has authority over the country's freshwater. [chanting in maori] [chanting in maori] yaara: it's waitangi day, new zealand's national holiday. [chanting in maori] yaara: in bluff, on the southern tip of the south island, ngai tahu are welcoming people to their marae. [chanting in maori]

[chanting in maori] yaara: not far from here, about 200 years ago, the ancestors of these people gathered to sign the country's founding document with the government: the treaty of waitangi. [chanting in maori] yaara: ngai tahu is new zealand's wealthiest tribe; its territory spans most of the south island. [chanting in maori] yaara: frustrated by the degradation of waterways, the tribe has launched an unprecedented legal claim over freshwater in its territory. te maire: we claim a kinship with the environment, and it takes a lot of time for people to understand that. yaara: dr. te maire tau is the lead claimant in the case.

he says ngai tahu are seeking recognition of rangatiratanga or chieftainship over freshwater. te maire: we've made it clear that rangatiratanga is more than ownership. this isn't specifically for ownership, this claim to water, it's a claim for rangatiratanga. so, in a sense, what maori are claiming is, and what this tribe is claiming, is authority and autonomy over water. yaara: a ngai tahu historian and community leader, dr. tau says their authority over water is not just enshrined in the treaty but comes from a more spiritual source. te maire: the stories we have are the canoes and our ancestors, our gods. our ancestors came here on canoes as well. so they turned into the mountains and the lakes. so you won't get a waterway around here that we don't claim descent from. for maori, water is an ancestor, what's our obligations to it? yaara: the poor state of the country's freshwater is

dominating the day's discussions. gabrielle huria: new zealand has an image of itself that it is wonderful and green. but underneath the thin facade are filthy waterways-- yaara: gabrielle huria, the head of the tribe's freshwater unit, says the high court claim is capturing the public's imagination. gabrielle: and i knew that we had hit on a zeitgeist when i received letters and they would tell us stories of they used to take their son fishing in such and such a river. now their son can't do it with his muckel because you can't fish in it anymore. yaara: back in canterbury, dr. te maire tau is taking me to the ashley river, a place where his family has been fishing for generations. te maire: our people used to go january, february, march, white-baiting. yaara: he says, despite the pollution, they continue to practice their traditions.

te maire: ngai tahu was defined by the environment. it's defined by a mahinga kai. you know, there's basic things you need to be doing as a tribal member. white-baiting's one, eeling's another, mutton-birding's another. getting seafood, those types of things, are a basic part of who we are. really, you're talking about a community, and the destruction of a community. it's just not about fishing. what you really learn when you're young is who your family members are and your relationships, and who the elders are and how you engage with people. yaara: that's been completely disrupted because of the degradation of the rivers here. te maire: so, what i think we've really got are the extinction of our waterways in the south island. i think it's more than disrupted, degraded, and all those types of words. there's a real threat that the ashley river will not be a river, it will be a creek. yaara: the government says it's put the maori concept of te mana o te wai, or the health of the waterways, at the heart of its freshwater reforms.

but dr. tau says rivers can't be cleaned up unless the nitrate limit is reduced. te maire: how they make decisions on some of these points, i'm really quite surprised on. and then i'm not, because they're political decisions that just don't take into account the science of what they've been given, or the advice they've been given. ♪♪♪ yaara: our requests to interview the prime minister and environment minister about the freshwater reforms and the high court case have been denied. uncertainty around how the claim will affect dairy farms in the canterbury region is already concerning john sunckell. john: is rangatiratanga about ownership? is it about control? is it about joint management and governance? where does it--where does it ultimately sit and where's the end game? so i guess i'm nervous in the interim

as to where it might land. lan: can you see the little pukeko over there, paul? paul: yeah. lan: yeah, see his red beak? yaara: lan pham, however, is buoyed by the ngai tahu claim. she hopes it will be the start of a move toward environmental justice for future generations. lan: it is about our kids and grandkids. and we know that it's just this totally unjust situation where we're leaving them these huge, you know, astronomical issues, not only with freshwater, but climate to address. we need to solve this now, and we need to treat it really seriously. yaara: the ngai tahu claim over these waterways will be heard next year. and tribes from the north island are taking notice, with one already joining the legal battle. dr. tau says it's time to let maori take the lead on new

zealand's waterways. te maire: there's been a failure of government, there's been a failure of the market, and the only one standing with credibility on this is maori. and we say we have authority, you haven't, you've defaulted your obligations, and that water falls under our rangatiritanga. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

[chanting foreign language] matt davis: bali is one of the world's most popular holiday destinations, but has it become a victim of its own success? wayan: tourism started to explode. more people's coming in from outside than the peoples living here. matt: decades of unhinged tourist development has come at a cost. gary bencheghib: the island of gods had become the island of trash. [singing foreign language] matt: now, mostly closed to the outside world,