Community Waterways Partnership

The Community Waterways Partnership supports the development of community-based initiatives to improve the ecological health, indigenous biodiversity, cultural, and amenity value of our urban waterways. 

This Charter is a shared statement of intent among community groups, researchers, businesses, and local, regional and central government. We work in partnership under a Charter to achieve outcomes that cannot be attained independently. We do this by sharing expertise, networks and resources to promote and achieve solutions needed to improve the ecological health, indigenous biodiversity and amenity value of our urban waterways. We uphold Te Mana o Te Wai to actively protect and enhance the mauri of urban waterways in Ōtautahi.

This Charter is a statement of intent to work in partnership. It imposes no binding authority, decision or obligation on partners. Each signatory partner remains autonomous, and none is bound by the Charter in undertaking its everyday activities. The partnership is not a new formal structure or organisation.

Background

Routine water quality monitoring of Christchurch’s urban waterways reveals regular exceedances for contaminants above guideline levels. Water quality varies considerably across and within catchments. Monitoring identifies areas that need to be improved, and it will take time and everyone working together to make a positive difference. 

Christchurch has many passionate community groups who are already working to, and desire to further protect and improve their local waterways. Activities involving local communities and schools, with support through the partnership, will bring about behaviour changes, at individual, household and community level, to stop contaminants entering stormwater and waterways, and degrading water quality.

Municipal stormwater treatment infrastructure alone will not address this water quality problem, it also needs communities to actively prevent pollution in the first place. To achieve community action requires communities to be aware of the issues and the actions that they can undertake.

• Reducing barriers to positive action
• Increasing coordination, sharing and communication
• Increasing ability to source funding and resources
• Increasing consistency of key messages to share with the wider community
• Having a collective voice to be more influential 
• Having a coordinated response across catchments, sectors and stakeholders
• Increasing support for community groups and organisations
• Increasing efficiencies by facilitating the sharing of resources
• Providing potential for collective advocacy
• Advocating as one voice for appropriate action from local, regional and central government and businesses
• Identifying gaps and initiating projects to address these
• Increasing the ability to resource a behaviour change, education and awareness-raising programme
• Improving capacity and capability
• Sharing risk

We will work together to:

1. Establish a strong collaborative partnership between community groups, businesses, researchers, and local, regional and central government
2. Achieve consensus on messaging interwoven with appropriate cultural narrative, and market these with an innovative package of shared and consistent material suitable for a variety of audiences 
3. Develop a network of trained people to deliver the key messages professionally and consistently
4. Design and implement stormwater, habitat and water conservation educational resources to supplement existing resources for use in schools and community events
5. Advocate for incentives that enable community implementation of positive stormwater, habitat and water conservation actions and solutions 
6. Establish and facilitate a network of water care champions and kaitiaki
7. Advocate for national legislative change to better address stormwater contaminants
8. Develop research to evaluate outcomes and improvements in our knowledge of best practice community interventions
9. Establish, facilitate or support projects to deliver these outcomes
10. Advocate for resources to sustain the partnership and deliver these outcomes

By signing the charter organisations agree to work together, sharing expertise and resources, to improve the ecological health, biodiversity and recreational value of Christchurch and Banks Peninsula's urban waterways. Below is a list of organisations that have signed the charter, alongside Christchurch City Council.

If your organisation is interested in becoming a partner to the Community Waterways Partnership please contact us via email at info@ccc.govt.nz