Malvern Hills Protection Society

Last updated April 21, 2019

The Malvern Hills Protection Society (MHPS) is a grassroots environmental group seeking to prevent the construction of a new dam in the Canterbury region of New Zealand.

A grassroots movement is one which uses the people in a given district, region, or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at the local, regional, national, or international level. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures. Grassroots movements, using self-organization, encourage community members to contribute by taking responsibility and action for their community. Grassroots movements utilize a variety of strategies from fundraising and registering voters, to simply encouraging political conversation. Goals of specific movements vary and change, but the movements are consistent in their focus on increasing mass participation in politics. These political movements may begin as small and at the local level, but grassroots politics as Cornel West contends are necessary in shaping progressive politics as they bring public attention to regional political concerns.

A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aquaculture, and navigability. Hydropower is often used in conjunction with dams to generate electricity. A dam can also be used to collect water or for storage of water which can be evenly distributed between locations. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. The earliest known dam is the Jawa Dam in Jordan, dating to 3,000 BC.

Canterbury is a region of New Zealand, located in the central-eastern South Island. The region covers an area of 44,508 square kilometres (17,185 sq mi), and is home to a population of 624,000.

It was formed as an incorporated society by the Dam Action Group and their aim is to "promote the conservation, protection and enhancement of the historical, cultural, ecological, environmental and community values of the Malvern Hills District". The Dam Action Group was formed to prevent the construction of an earth dam which would flood part of the Waianiwaniwa River catchment area. Mojo Mathers is among the Society's founding members.^[1]

The Waianiwaniwa River is a river in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand.

Mojo Celeste Mathers is a New Zealand politician and a former member of the New Zealand House of Representatives. She became known through her involvement with the Malvern Hills Protection Society and helped prevent the Central Plains Water Trust's proposal to build a large irrigation dam in Coalgate. She has been a senior policy advisor to the Green Party since 2006 and has stood for the party in the last three general elections. Her candidacy for the 2011 election created significant media interest due to her high placing on the Green Party's list. Mathers was elected to the 50th term of Parliament, becoming the country's first deaf Member of Parliament.

The dam is a proposal by the Central Plains Water Trust, which was established by the Christchurch City and Selwyn District Councils, as a means of providing irrigation for parts of the Canterbury Plains

Central Plains Water, or, more fully, the Central Plains Water Enhancement Scheme, is a large-scale proposal for water diversion, damming, reticulation and irrigation for the Central Plains of Canterbury, New Zealand. Construction started on the scheme in 2014.

Irrigation is the application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals. Irrigation helps to grow agricultural crops, maintain landscapes, and revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of less than average rainfall. Irrigation also has other uses in crop production, including frost protection, suppressing weed growth in grain fields and preventing soil consolidation. In contrast, agriculture that relies only on direct rainfall is referred to as rain-fed or dry land farming.

The Canterbury Plains is an area in New Zealand centred in the Mid Canterbury, to the south of the city of Christchurch in the Canterbury region. Their northern extremes are at the foot of the Hundalee Hills in the Hurunui District, and in the south they merge into the plains of North Otago beyond the Waitaki River.

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References

↑ "Mojo Mathers", Green Party

External links

Malvern Hills Protection Society - official website.
Central Plains Water

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[1] "Mojo Mathers", Green Party