You have probably seen the adverts promoting 100% Pure New Zealand. Nice glossy adverts with somewhere like Milford Sound on a clear day with Mitre Peak reflecting nicely in the water. They look great and are certainly effective at drawing people in. But how accurate are they?
The answer, sure to not please the advertisers, is not entirely. The glossy websites and brochures are all very well, but they hide some significant matters.
Tourism in New Zealand is our second biggest industry. People come from all over the world even 20 years later to see where Lord of the Rings was filmed, to experience our amazing national parks and the unique wildlife we have in them. They come for unspoilt landscapes that have not been overly affected by the bulldozer and the excavator – to see a kiwi in the wild, fly over the Franz Josef Glacier.
Tourism is a Catch-22 industry – on one hand it is the enabler of thousands of jobs across an array of industries, including mine. It couples with the image of New Zealand being one of the more environmentally responsible nations around the world, which can grow the local economy and at the same time enable people of all socio-economic backgrounds to enjoy our outstanding ecology. On the other hand, it is the source of significant environmental planning challenges. Local government infrastructure problems as regions with small rate payer bases struggle to fund the infrastructure needed to cope with busloads of tourists complicate matters further.
But looking after the environment is about so much more than just tourism and keeping people employed. Papatuanuku (mother earth) is the only planet capable of supporting human life in our solar systems – the delusion that there is a Planet B that can take humans if we mess up Earth is just that: a delusion. With 7.9 billion people on the planet, the need to be more careful about resource allocation, land use zoning and developing more efficient housing and infrastructure has never been stronger.
New Zealand is not immune to these problems. We have one of the largest ecological footprints in the world per capita in terms of resources consumed per human. Only a few nations such as the United States have bigger footprints. Our largest industry, agriculture, is also one that has the most potential for improvement. In Europe, research is progressing on ways to turn effluent from farms into multiple products: gas for electricity, n . And here in New Zealand, various trials are underway to see how much of the effluent problem can be addressed through dung beetles, which are occurring on South Island farms. Whilst these are great initiatives, they will not work if they are not backed by Government policy settings putting checks and balances in place to stop lobby groups from attempting to hijack the system.
Not everyone in New Zealand appreciates the environment, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the politics espoused by the A.C.T. Party and more recently New Zealand First – the latter taking a notable detour from its founding principles No. 11 of which promotes sustainable environmental management. The A.C.T. Party politics are a continuation of the party’s long term dislike for regulatory frameworks of any kind that might be seen as stifling economic growth and personal liberty. The New Zealand First detour from a mild, generally middle ground position, came about in large part from the rise of Shane Jones, an unapologetic and forceful proponent of mining and industry. Both have been enthusiastically hailed by conspiracy theorists who imagine there to be a plot to kill the economy through environmentalism.
Fresh water quality, whilst being No. 1 for New Zealand is not the only environmental matter needing urgent attention. Waste is one that has been bothering me for some time, both in terms of local council shortsightedness and central Government inaction – we have one of the worst records in the O.E.C.D. for recycling electronic waste (the cellphones, cameras, laptops, television screens, their accessories and the componentry like the wiring, the diodes and so forth. Lawrence Zwimpfer (2017), said that New Zealand and Australia were e-waste laggards, which was then – and still is – an accurate statement given that at the last estimate, only 1% of our 90,000 tons of e-waste per annum gets properly processed.
We have developed a reputation as being a “wild west” frontier nation when it comes to protecting our oceans. Whilst it stems in part from lax labour laws and a rash of accidents in the 2010’s, it is not helped by being one of the seven nations that still permit deep ocean trawling in international waters. In the 2010’s New Zealand was one of the leaders in setting standards for trawling. Now we are rapidly becoming one of the laggards, thanks to New Zealand First proactively waging war on sustainable fishing.
Climate change is the most frequently spoken topic of debate, with the current Government only reluctantly progressing work on climate change emission targets. Like e-waste, in terms of what New Zealand can do, we are significant laggards failing to notice that whilst we might not be able to influence large global players like China, Russia, Brazil, India, the U.S. and E.U. nations, we can significantly improve our local air and water quality and improve how the natural ecosystem in this country functions. We can cut down on the deaths from respiratory ailments brought about by poor air quality; we can cut down on the effluent from our livestock; we can cut down the amount of slash that goes into river catchments from forestry operations. By improving infrastructure such as landfills and seeing plants and trees as an investment and not an impediment, New Zealand can cut down on the harmful discharge of carbon based gases into our ecosystem.
But do our politicians have the gumption to stand up to well organized lobbyists? Not this particular Government.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 