 Hello to everybody. I'm not too sure where to start or where to go and what's been said before, but in terms of when we asked to talk about water, I thought well, water actually moderates everything in life, it facilitates and allows it to happen and probably the whole of the university, what we know of, is all moderated by water and I've got 20 minutes to talk about it. So I thought, where am I going to go? So I thought well, what I could do is, I think a little bit of understanding of the nature of water is a really strange and interesting molecule, what do you want to call it? And it's very, it has a lot of unique properties and because of those unique properties it does what it does and you can understand why it's unique and why it does this thing. I think we might have a little better relationship and understanding of the nature of water and therefore how we should relate to it and what's going on. And it's really interesting, we have this word called water and everybody thinks everybody uses the same word, water. In English we only see one word for water, that's ridiculous really. Water comes from the place that's in and the nature of that place that's always different and it's a little bit of that I want to talk about, why it's different. So there's going to be a little bit of a couple of technical slides, don't get too worried. It's a little bit of basic chemistry or physics though but I think it's really important to understand this in terms of the nature of water and that's what I want to go through. And interesting just as an aside too, in terms of the, whakorua we're having just now and that sort of thing is that and Māori of course there's a number of different ways they talk about water. They have words that mean types of water, they have a lot of their rivers, it explains the nature of that particular water. So the why and then something rather about the type of water that's whakorua whatever it is might be and then whether it's whaiwara or whanatia or whatever it is, the water always has some sort of qualification in terms of the nature of that water and so we don't do that very well I don't think in English so anyway. Let's get going. I just want to start with an overview first in terms of nature of water. We're basically a primate organism on this planet and we're on the land and we're on the surface of the land and we're actually really need to relate to and need the raining waters in the surface of the land. Even though our modern technology might have dug a few holes in it and it's not a good thing but it's the surface water we're actually on about now. We all know that where water is is life, that's the guy hypothesis, Lovelock's guy hypothesis and we're on a watery planet but if you look at the water on the planet it's mostly it's the seawater and actually what's in your body is actually in the source of the body of seawater as well but we won't count that. And so the fresh water is a very small proportion of that and of the fresh water a lot of it's an ice in Antarctica well not so much in the Arctic any longer but there used to be some there and then of that liquid fresh water most of it's in the ground this was where it needs to be in the land and sort of flowing the nutrients through in the ground and that sort of thing but most of it's in the ground. Of the liquid surface fresh water most of it's in lakes and that and very few in rivers so what is it 0.005% of water is flowing in rivers but that's what's really vital to our lives as creatures on this planet so it might be a lot of water in the world but there's some water we really need to be taken care of and relate to. Now Aotearoa New Zealand is actually an interesting position in the globe that's half the world you're looking at there and there's mostly water and mostly Pacific Ocean and we are this country down in the South Pacific sort of isolated from everybody else and surrounded by water so we're really the whole character of New Zealand and the way it responds is based around water both through the air and around the seas and that so we're a very watery country so I like this one, this is a mate of mine who did a painting that was actually for war murals actually and Foxton if you know where that is in New Zealand and he painted this one and it was based on a NASA thing with a globe and it got the Godwood and E7 was the first Godwood which was tagged to go right from New Zealand to the USA and Alaska and back again and it just emphasises to me the connectedness of the world we live in and I think it's just a good example to remember that and the thing that connects us mostly is water whether it's in the air or on the sea or in our bodies or in the ground it's basically what it's connecting us I do want to talk about this a little bit it seems to me that what started life in New Zealand was a synergy between what we call carbon and it's only a name and water and I just want to go over that a little bit in terms of how life revolves around and this is a little bit of physics or chemistry so this is a periodic table for all those people who can remember any chemistry at school but it's drawn in the way it should be drawn and it starts off with hydrogen in the middle and it's the basic element and it spirals out and where clouds of energy form around the essential nucleus and it's all to do with what's going on with these and I think I've got one more in there in terms of hydrogen, hydrogen is a bit schizophrenic really it doesn't really know where it's quite after a math or whether it's a giver or a taker because it's got this one cloud of energy where you can make yourself satisfied and whole and that's the thing like helium which sort of wanders around and looks after itself and doesn't care about anything really because he's quite satisfied just doing his own thing but hydrogen doesn't know whether he wants to be helium or wants to be connected with somebody else and so it's maybe a giver and maybe a taker and that's where the whole question of water is going to come in because it's all about the give and take there oxygen is just the name we give it again it's that first cloud of energy where it's got two things that I'd like I'd like something to fill me up you know and the thing about carbon is it's right in the middle so it's got lots of give and take it's got the most connections it can back all these chains and rings and connect on all sorts of other elements on it so carbon is just the name we give to that basic element that can make lots and lots of connections and that's why it's the basis of life it's a bit of interest if you go to the next one up and the next circle up it's silicon also has that facility and that's why the physical world is based around silicon so let's just step forward this is the monocled water very documented monocled water so we have oxygen in there sort of wanting to have a little dance with hydrogen and this is a dance it's a dance for energy exchange that constantly given to each other and they say well I give to you and you give to me and you do it fast enough we both think we've got it you know and so we'll both be satisfied so you've got to do a real fast dance and then you're right and you're a dance and I'll share my energy with you and if we can give it back with and forwards and that forms this H2O it's hydrogen and oxide and it's this thing we call water but as I say hydrogen's a bit sort of wondering well hell's teeth I gave you my cloud of energy but I'm really, I'm nowhere near said of giving my to so how about I just sort of come in behind somebody and say you share with me just a little bit we won't make it a full deal you know not the full bond we're just around the corner and we'll form a little bit of a sharing back with and forwards you know and then I might be a bit more satisfied you know I can keep a little bit on the side we might quite good you know so that's sort of what hydrogen does and because of that it's what it's called a weak bond everything about water what happens with water is to do this weak bond and so we've got this these molecules of hydrogen oxide and they are basically forming weak bonds and that enables to do all these things we call the anomalies of water things like being a universal solvent what does a solvent mean it means something disappears isn't it you put something in water and just go where to go how come it just disappeared on you you know and it's because these weak bonds can form clusters or rings or whatever you like to call it shapes around the molecules it's so able to shape a molecule and it can basically with these weak bonds form these rings or shapes around it and that's what dissolving means it means it's gone completely surrounded by water molecules which knows its shape right and so basically that's what dissolving means and so what has incredible ability to take up and encircle because of all these weak bonds and all they make all these shapes and that's really important the board is going to transport nutrients through the facilitator and all these things that take place in the world the other thing about water is that you might know that ice is actually less dense than water and that's a really strange thing that the solid is less dense than the liquid and it's the only element seeming like that and that's again because these weak bonds and the way that they form when it starts to cool down and becomes a solid and won't go into the detail of that in the aspect of glaciers and ice in terms of nutrient flow and then it's a heat moderator I mean the greenhouse gas that's most important is water water is what moderates the climate is what takes the heat from the tropics to the poles all the time it's all about water water is the big greenhouse gas and so what's happening to water has a huge effect on our climate and it's because again these weak bonds that say like no, no, no temperature will make evaporation into gas and that allows it to be a huge transporter of heat and to circulate it and around the globe but those are just some of the main anomalies of water that's really important for what I want to talk about but I better keep going if I'm looking at the wrong term so everyone knows about the water cycle and that's just a diagram to show the importance of the water cycle really I put up this one this is something I drew for a conference in Whakatane and it's really based on a person I've noted one or two people here who know about Victor Schalberger should all after this session if you don't know him, Google Victor Schalberger he's got an extraordinary ideas and a different way of looking at water and nature and how it all works together and one of the things I really like about him he says is both explosive and implosive processes and it's a dance that goes on between expansion and contraction and that sort of thing and that water is at the heart of the stance of growth and then maturity and when one of those sort of aspects get out of phase or too much then that's when we have problems so if you have too much expansion that's a problem if you have too much contraction that's a problem but there's a stance of life and death that goes on mediated by water and you don't have to look to make that point which thank you Victor Schalberger so in terms of regeneration of water then if we come to we all know the problems that the water is suffering from in terms of what we've been doing with Anthropocene and whatever we want to call it so the water cycle is absolutely basic to the regeneration of water it's how water basically frees itself again goes up and then comes back down and then reabsorb information because the thing about those weak bonds in that clustering is that they are information packages and so water has this ability to have information and to transfer information so one of the things that is about the former water is the vortex and the spin of vortex around you get a torus and that's a basic form of this expansion and contraction and forming vortices is one of the ways that water works and one of the ways that regenerates itself is through vortex formation and when the flow has a lot of vorticea in it then the thing is doing itself really well and it will do its job for life so to speak so vortex formation and the vortex is a double helix didn't know the internal one, the contraction one so it's no wonder about DNA it's got a double helix I mean it's everything it's a vortex form of water so forming vortices the other thing that's really important is like a step function there's a lot of things in life that go through steps and it's that sort of flow, chaos, flow, chaos is really important and streams naturally do that step function and that's where they revitalise water and it's one of the reasons why if you want to get really good water as a primate you go and drink the brook water where it's got a nice step function bubbling brook function to it so we need more of that and then the other thing is in terms of the groundwater what's happening to our groundwater is in that and what's going to happen on the surface is a really important part of what happens in the groundwater and that's been too much time on that the surface cover whether it's trees or whether it's good soil or not makes a huge difference to what's happened in the ground and again thank you to Victor Schalberg as to how the whole thing works and it's a lot of it's to do with temperature which nobody else seems to come to so in my little bit time I got left I wanted to sort of concentrate more on focus on food as an example so this is from my same friend Duncan Hill the other painting he does is actually for my book and we've climbed out of the ecosystem really and we've gone into this hierarchical pyramidal sort of thing and that's the nature of all our cultures whether it's agriculture, food and whatever we have this hierarchical structure, dominance, control structure on it so you all know about this I mean this is like irrigated circles or monocultures it's some craze just where you could ever do agriculture and it's the impact on water that people overlook a lot of people are concerned about their food all right well your food is basically mostly water to self so you're mostly water and when you take that food in the message you get from that food is all moderated by water and it's the nature of the water that you drink and the water that's in your food and the water that's in your body that's going to make you either healthy or unhealthy and so what this does to water is a thing that I'd like to get across it's the same whether we're talking about plantations and these are terrible palm oil stuff and that and it's just the monoculture of it is the issue anyway we don't go on that slide so this one is just a diagram don't look at the detail of the diagram but what it's all about is the synergies that go on between the different parts of an ecosystem an ecosystem is a very diverse complex arrangement that has all sorts of feedback loops and ways of maintenance, resilience and productivity and it's, I don't know if you notice those words earlier on the important thing to me and anything about food or water is the combination of both productivity and resilience and that's to do with those expanding and contraction whether in an explosive way or an explosive way but it is all about these relationships and what's really important are the relationships and so it's the relationships of the ecosystem and the way they're all moderated through water that I think is the message I want to get across there's this really interesting synergy that goes on between plants and soil life and ever since life has been on the land which of course it wasn't initially was in the sea but since then this has been incredible relationship synergy between the microbes and the soil and the plants how they feed each other and how they get the nutrients through each other through the sap and through the water and then the animals how the animals complexify that system and make it more curative and make it more diverse and make it more productive and more resilient and whether it's the insects or the bigger animals or whatever and all the way through this is making it much more complex and therefore more biomass and therefore more productive but also more resilient so that system are important and they will need to work together so this is our place first picture there is 87 and the second picture is 20 years later sorry one of the main things in terms of regenerating the landscape is regenerating these processes of interaction and water flow and that and so we use the different methods whether it's planting trees or whether it's the way your grays stock to regenerate soil it's all to do with increasing the complexity increasing the exchanges that go across. Fertility is just the rate of exchange higher the rate of exchange the more fertile it is the more productive it is and so basically when we came there it was a pretty run down piece of land it was sort of run off in New Zealand language the cattle went in the winter and so we've had to try and do quite a lot to regenerate and well, no sorry not to allow nature to regenerate it I just want to touch on this I don't know if Cabex was going to say something about this as well but one of the diversities we've lost in the simplification of our systems is the diversity of the seeds and the plants that we actually use whether it's potatoes or beans or whatever it is and I always remember the thing I was told about in terms of the corn and the maize whether they selected the maize they always took 24 different types of maize and planted them and that was every year they planted 24 different types of maize and it would be different 24 depending on what they collected and what was appropriate to the site and what the weather had done that year or whatever it was and we've got 11 hybrids in the whole of the industrialized corn fields so I nature does love diversity for very good reason and I have to put in one of the three sisters because it's my favourite way of providing the macro nutrients the start as you might say because the corn does do that but it does it with the beans and it does it with the squash so they all love to work together they all support each other and they form a full diet they're good for our microbes and our testines as they are good for the microbes and the soil and they all work together and so we've tried things like rice and wasn't quite in the right climate but I've done wheat and I've done oats and I could do that but actually this is a much better system and it does mimic a a certain extent it's simplified obviously but it does I have to put this one on here in terms of I said about how water is a great sort of heat transferra and so it's really the water cycle the lie that's tend to harp on about when it comes to whether it's climate change whatever it is because it's a lot more than just climate change it's what's happening to our rivers, it's what's happening to our land it's what happened to our ecosystems and how they're all related together and how water relates them all together in different ways and this is just a NASA sort of generated sort of image of the globe but I think it makes the point that how it is all related together and I have put trees down there trees trees trees I'm known for that guy he says what are you going to do next I'm going to plant another tree just plant another tree but they are the best related between the soil and the air and the best sort of ways of getting in the water and to move and if you want to carbon sink well they are the greatest way of doing it and not to say that soils and grasslands I mean ecologies are different in different places have different ecologies and therefore you have to take a different approach there is no one approach in fact there's massively different approaches and what I would like to talk about is what is the way of doing something there's always a way of doing something among many many ways of doing something and we all need to learn our own way of doing something on our own place and I think that's about it except that again this is a a painting that I did for my book The Old Duncan and I've superimposed out the tourist image because I think we are in a time of transformation nature has many ways of doing things and it has two sort of ways of those sort of step transitions I'll talk about this progressive changes and transformational changes and nature uses both of them all the time they're always present in all sorts of ways and one tends to go to the other and back again and you can do things through progressive ways either good things or bad things generative and degenerative and you can also do things in transformative ways and it just seems to me that we're in a particular phase where it has to be transformational that it will be, regardless of any choices we make, it will be it's just what type of transformation it's going to be that's what our choice is about it's not about whether it be a transformation and so I suppose I have to say that the heart of that the heart is about blood flow, it's about our water flow the heart of that it has to be about water and water in the world blood in ourselves and how they relate together it might be interesting to know that we have we've got more nerve connections to our heart than we have to do our brains our heart needs to know what's going on in every cell in our body it's got the connections it connects us and it's our emotional centre because it's the connector emotions about relationships, it's about connection and our brain is just a process that sits up there and focuses and does all sorts of calculations but that's really not so much of a big deal but it's doing a lot of calculations because it's got masses of water most of our water is in our brains and it's moderating all those transactions that actually make us allow us to think so it's all about to me, it's about transformation and that's why I think we need to really look at all the water flows the ways that it happens in the ecosystem so I don't know if you can read that thing at the bottom there but it's just that we make our own limits really we make our own restrictions on ourselves and so that's up to us to change it when we need to change it and not to say that it always needs to be changed we need to recognise and acknowledge what's come before us but we also are not limited by it if it needs to change then we need to do something about it so the only block is in our minds and maybe in our hearts as well and we need to be both open-minded and full-hearted and also good nutrition in our guts so we've got the will power to take action and we all need to work together and I've got Seru Minut Seru Shinsley Thank you