Move now to secure future water supply

"We need decisive action now to protect our role as a reliable food exporting nation. This means putting at least as much effort into adapting to inevitable climate change as we put into reducing carbon emissions," Bright says.

His comments are backed up by the Climate Economic and Fiscal Assessment 2023 Treasury Report on the impacts of climate change. The report highlights, amongst other things, the vulnerability of the agricultural sector and opportunities facing the horticultural sector. The wide-ranging report says New Zealand's economy is resilient and well placed to weather climate change, but Dr Bright believes we need decisive action now so we can take advantage of climate change.

Bright, who is Director of Research and Development at Aqualinc Research, says that New Zealand stands to gain hugely from increased demand for horticultural food exports, but our existing rural water supplies just aren't up to the challenge.

"New Zealand has lots of water, it's just not available in the right places at the right time. We can do as much as we like to try and improve irrigation efficiency, but on its own that won't be enough to match supply with demand in the face of climate change. To maximise future export revenue, we need a level of water supply reliability that can only be achieved with well-planned water storage," according to Bright.

"There's no time to lose. We need to start now, with well informed decisions about the water storage we'll need as our climate change. Then we need to build that water storage - and that could take 20 years from concept design to water supply.

"The race is on, with climate change modelling suggesting significant shifts in water flow and demand over the next 20 years. We can't afford to delay."

Bright acknowledges that large scale water storage is controversial, with locations, consents, finance and design barriers standing in the way of progress.

"There are already several water storage projects that have failed because too much time and money was spent too soon on detailed dam engineering. More attention to planning might have shown that less storage volume was needed than was first thought."

Bright's company Aqualinc has a long history of innovation and excellence in its applied water and soil research for clients, as well as its resource consultancy work with farmers, irrigation schemes, central and local government.

"We use our water and soil research combined with our knowledge of farming practices to help government agencies develop good water and land management policies. Then we help the water users gain or retain access to water and use it efficiently and profitably.

"Our research focuses on problem solving, and clearly the biggest problem right now is the escalating speed of climate change. I can't stress enough how important it is for New Zealand to focus more on water storage. We need decisive action now or we will be locked in to pasture-based land uses which can cope with water supply variations and miss the opportunity to expand higher value land uses," Bright says.

Aqualinc's current research focus is on groundwater allocation in Canterbury.

"The focus until now has been on what we can see - which is surface water - and that is traditionally where science and research funing has been invested.

"Much less is known about groundwater, but we are gradually finding out how important it is that we manage it properly. As groundwater availability reduces, demand for surface water increases, and that will lead to the need for more water storage as water supply reliability becomes a bigger issue," Bright says.

"We need to know more about how groundwater will behave as our climate changes, so we can manage it better in future," he says.

"The race is on, and we need to act now to secure our future," Bright says.