Herded into line

Chief scientist Jacqueline Rowarth’s fiery tenure at the Environmental Protection Authority ended in a whimper. Was she muzzled?

Chief scientist Jacqueline Rowarth’s fiery tenure at the Environmental Protection Authority ended in a whimper. Was she muzzled?

Steady rain falls on the dairy farm outside Tirau, the “corrugated capital of the world”, where controversial soil scientist Jacqueline Rowarth is waiting for a plumber to arrive. Later in the day she will also deal with a power cut that threatens the evening milking and climb into her four-wheel-drive to tow the truck of her partner, veterinarian Ian Scott, out of the mud, along with the heavily pregnant cow on the trailer hitched to it.

Rowarth is 62 and active, a vegetarian since she was 18. She takes these mini emergencies in her stride. In her various scientific and academic roles at Agresearch, Lincoln University, Massey University and as a professor of agribusiness at Waikato University, she has spent a lot of time on farms. But she didn’t expect to be spending this much time on the Waikato farm just yet.

In March, Rowarth stepped down as chief scientist of the Environmental Protection Authority, the Government agency formed in 2011 to regulate activities that affect our environment, after just 16 months in the job. She wasn’t fired, she resigned. But it was clear by late 2017 that Rowarth’s position was becoming increasingly untenable. Her outspoken views on the state of our rivers, the environmental impact of irrigation and use of the weed killer glyphosate had drawn widespread criticism from environmentalists and fellow scientists.

Documents obtained by Radio New Zealand would later reveal that her boss, EPA chief executive Allan Freeth, was also fielding approaches from senior Government figures – Environment Ministry chief executive Vicky Robertson, Environment Minister David Parker, Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage and the Prime Minister’s chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman – all related to Rowarth’s views on these sensitive environmental issues. Some of them thought she was damaging the EPA’s credibility.

Rowarth is no shrinking violet. She likes a good argument and has done since her high-school days participating in English Speaking Union debates.

“I want to know what the facts are,” she says in the English accent that hasn’t faded since she emigrated from the United Kingdom with her family in 1976. “I always said to the students, ‘Challenge me. Is this what you really think?’ It’s very important to have robust debate.”

But no one had seen a senior science adviser in a Government position wade into such controversy before. The EPA had a slow-motion crisis on its hands.

“Allan was in a very difficult position, because there was all this negative stuff. I said on several occasions, ‘If this is going to be a problem, we should talk about it now’,” says Rowarth.

The tipping point came in November, when Rowarth was quoted in the Otago Daily Times after visiting an irrigation development during a field day at Matakanui Station in Central Otago.

“EPA chief scientist says irrigation good for environment,” blared the headline.

“I didn’t say it was good for the environment, I said it has environmental benefits,” Rowarth says.

UNFORTUNATE TIMING

But the nuance of her argument was lost on the ODT and Rowarth’s timing was particularly bad. The new Labour-New Zealand First coalition Government was gearing up to cut funding of major irrigation schemes in Canterbury and Marlborough as part of its confidence and supply agreement with the Green Party. Big irrigation schemes were seen as being at odds with Labour’s plan to clean up waterways and slow the intensification of dairy farming.

Rowarth says she was simply pointing out that irrigation improved the sustainability

“I didn’t say [irrigation] was good for the environment, I said it has environmental benefits.”