Progress report for
Living Water Programme
Achievement at a glance
The Living Water partnership between the Department of Conservation and Fonterra (New Zealand’s largest dairy cooperative) worked with farmers, scientists, councils, mana whenua (local indigenous people connected with the land) and communities to design and test scalable solutions to accelerate sustainable dairying (reducing nutrient pollution), restore freshwater habitats and build ecosystem resilience.This ten-year partnership ended in 2023. Achievements and an evaluation of the partnership are available on the website https://www.livingwater.net.nz/our-progress-to-matou-kokenga-whakamua/
Beneficiaries
Freshwater quality, habitats and species Farmers, farm consultants, catchment managers, land managers, local and central government agencies, Fonterra, The people of New Zealand
Actions
• Development and implementation of farm environment plans that identify nutrient sources from farm activities and design treatment solutions for 98% of farms in Living Water catchments, covering 35,000 hectares• Trials of farm scale and catchment scale mitigations for nutrients and sediment (e.g. floating wetlands, sediment traps, detention bunds, phosphorus and nitrogen filters)
• Purchase and setting aside of 19.6 hectares of farmland to increase coastal shorebird habitat in an internationally significant RAMSAR protected flyway (Pūkorokoro-Miranda)
• over 400,000 native plants were planted in Living Water catchment