Categories
climate change green party youngleader

Jack Brazil

Jack Brazil is the Green Party candidate for Dunedin. We talk with him about focusing on a “people-powered movement to build a better world”.

It’s about building a movement, sometimes with civil disobience, but always restorative and non-violent.

We have to exercise dissent – to show that there is a better way.

Jack first studied french and psychology before turning to law where a focus on justice meant for him a focus on social and environmental justice driven by a sense of care and compassion, but also a sense of impending crisis of ecological and social collapse.

We are arguing for better – we can show that “better” with a festival approach. To celebrate and take people with us.

“The tide is changing…” he says, “…the activism is back in politics”.

We can’t be too scared to be transformational, too scared to be radical.

Categories
law planning policy

Fragmented landscape: fragmented law

Pip Wallace

Just as we know our landscapes are fragmented, so too is our law. A double-up of our problems.


Dr Pip Wallace is convenor of the environmental planning programmes at Waikato University. We ask her why she has described environmental law as a fragmented landscape.

Talking points

Often there is not careful recognition of the environment’s rights.

A lot of the work I’ve done recently looks at how the law works to distribute harm and benefit to non-human aspects of the environment.

The law is focussed on the regulation of people and their actions in relation to how we use and allocate environmental resources

The definition of the environment at law is huge – it involves people and communities as well.

There are core frameworks, some of which have core principles – resource use and how far you can go, but in my mind they are a bit weak in terms of protecting the environment.

(How does law cope with the complexity of the environment?) Recent work that I’ve been doing suggests we’re not dealing with it very well in a range of areas. I’ve come to the conclusion that we have problems with the level of standard that we apply in terms of protecting the environment, we have real problems with being consistent across environments and across species. We also have considerable difficulty in implementing what we say we intend to do.

Just as we know our landscapes are fragmented, so too is our law. A double-up of our problems.

This is especially problematic for fauna moving across a fragmented landscape.

Law relies on scientific definitions, but has great difficulty with topics such as resilience that have a clear scientific definition but has been transposed into socio-cultural areas as well, the word becomes used in different ways. Same for ecological integrity…sustainable management.

Wildlife Protection Act, absolute protection from direct harm…but premise diluted by how the law is constructed and applied.

There’s a very muddy area related to incidental take – a poor intersection between the Resource Management Act and the premise of absolute protection in the Wildlife Act. The law suggests they should be protected, but the implementation is not good in New Zealand.

The Resource Management Act…sets out a framework in relation to all resources.

The Resource Management Act was ground breaking…it followed a philosophy of integration. Prior to that a lot of our law was in pieces. It came into being along with the understanding about the interconnection of our resources, and that you can’t direct deal with these things in isolation. The law was designed to reflect the interconnection of resources and nature – dealing with all aspects at once, together. This was clever – a good thing to do.

It was also governed by the purpose of sustainable management – which introduced the idea of environmental limits. Again, very progressive and good.

There are attempts to weaken the Act now, I find that frankly hard to understand. Why you would ever need to weaken the environmental protection provided by the RMA when in my view it is insufficient.

Around 5% of resource consents are notified, below 1% are declined.

Instead what we are seeing is intensifying and increasing loss of biodiversity, increasing numbers of threatened species and an increasingly degraded environment.

To strengthen the RMA, we should be more robust about enabling coexistence.

How we deal with avoidance of effects is not very brave.

Spatial effects such as corridors are not well managed by law.

Wildlife property of the crown, it is seriously struggling to manage its property.

Mobility in the past was a survival strategy has become a liability in the anthropocene. (Kakapo versus petrel).

Changes can be made.

Life can be hard – we should always try.

We are not applying precautionary principles with sufficient active intent.

I believe that if we plan and conserve the environment then we’ll have a better chance than we do currently.

I think it is the belief that we can have access to everything that is driving the problem. We need to look at our patterns of consumption and the way we use resources and consider what it is we wish to leave for our future generations. I’m sure we will be viewed as a very profligate generation, I’m sure that people will look back and heap shame upon us for our inability to control our consumptive choices. We are all responsible for that. We shouldn’t say “it’s a wicked problem, there’s nothing we can do about it”, I think we need to affect change sooner and be more thoughtful about the choices we do leave our children and grandchildren.

We are driving production because we are buying it.

Should future generations have access to pristine resources?

People who are environmental planning…genuinely interested and engaged in a sustainable ethic and wanting to make a difference. But room for a range of perspectives.

Planning an uncertainty and scientific uncertainty is one of the greatest challenges of any planning or policy

(Activist?) No.

(Motivation?) Deep love for this country and kids

(Challenges?) Persevere with improving systems to work better to do what they are supposed to do.

(Miracle?) Enough food and clean water for every creature. But if I could have one more miracle, on a more local scale, it would see taiko the black petrel, back breeding successfully on mainland New Zealand sites

(Advice?) It is incumbent upon us to be positive about our world.

Categories
environmental entrepreneur

Driving structural change

 

Nick Gerritsen


I’m only interested in things that drive structural change – that’s what motivates me.

Nick Gerristen describes himself as a “catalyst and social entrepreneur”.  He is a lawyer with a significant portfolio in green-technology:

Talking points

We’ve lost sight of the inputs and outputs that make community operate.

It was a surprise to me that people could be in business not wanting to do good.

You make decisions, they may prove to be wrong but they provide a framework for learning.

There is no magic out there, you just do the best you can do.

There are smart markets and dumb markets.

Anything we can do to substitute fuel has a multiplier effect as we can keep capital on-shore, in addition to climate effects.

We are a mining company but we are operating above the ground – making coal without having to dig holes.

NZ is selective about the good news stories we’re prepared to back.

Great opportunity for NZ is  to repopulate small places – this is NZ’s future rather than super cities.

Craft will get a boost as retail collapses.

Accept some things will trend to ubiquity.  And first rule in business is not to be in that space. Everything not in that space will have special value.

Embrace constraint.  Appreciate benefits and limitations.

I’m worried but also an optimist.

A simple step that I take may have the potential to trigger a super recovery scenario.

Community develops strength and capability to look after itself – that’s what resilience is.

200 years later, we’re learning that industrial revolution is a model that isn’t working.

Sustainability comes from embracing constraint, looking at inputs and outputs and enabling people to make real decisions for communities that they are part of.

Am I an activist?

If it is being silly enough to have an idea and to be able to dedicate a part of your life to it, and be responsible for it, and back yourself on it, then yes.  All I’m trying to do is do the best that I can with the resources of time and energy that I have.  It’s exciting, stressful and enlightening all at once.

Society is putting a lot of pressure on the next generation without clear identification of the doorways and opportunities for them to work through.

It’s not about money, it’s about creating a dimension of change.

On how to get more entrepreneurs:

We need more artists – people prepared to try and  test ideas with different materials and create some sort of  harmony that someone like and  might buy, that’s a direct metaphor for developing  technology, and new businesses.

Go out and try stuff.  If you don’t know what you’re doing – absolutely embrace it.  I’m an expert at not knowing what I’m doing.   If you are interested and excited about something then you will learn it.