Napier, MSCNewsWire, Tuesday 12 July 2016 - Provincial skirmishing over bottled water aquifer supplies continues to obscure a much, much bigger drama which is China’s entitlement to New Zealand’s flowing fresh water under the New Zealand China Free Trade Agreement.

This extremely sensitive issue has been downplayed on the grounds that it is not part of any agreement.

This is contradicted though under other such agreements, notably NAFTA to which Canada and the United States are parties.

Canada is the largest single owner of fresh water resources in the world. Clashes continue over whether surface and ground water in its natural state (for example, in lakes and rivers) is subject to NAFTA obligations. Some argue that this is the case and that the United States has rights to Canada’s abundance of water.

There is a formal agreement on water between New Zealand and China.

During a visit to Wellington of Vice Premier Hui Liangyu in September 2011, Dr Paul Reynolds (pictured at the signing) then Secretary for the Environment signed a Cooperation Arrangement between the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Water Resources, China.

China has 20 percent of the world’s population with no more than 10 percent of the world’s water resources.

New Zealand’s fresh water resources per head of population is on a par with Canada’s.

At least 98 percent of New Zealand’s river water, fresh water, flows out to the sea unconsumed.

Such has been the fear and trembling instilled by non-productive sector idealogues that successive governments have sidestepped any scheme for fresh water bulk exports by ship from Fiordland or the Clutha River. Both these sites have been extensively investigated.

Fresh water supply is widely viewed as China’s most imminent threat. All existing resources have been tapped. De-salinization is one answer. But China’s coastline is only as long as New Zealand’s for a population hundreds of times larger.

The rumblings centred on the North American Free Trade Agreement in relation to water entitlements indicate that the New Zealand/ China agreement will not be immune from this same insoluble issue for much longer.

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