Tag: waikato

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.

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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
economics

Scarce resources: economics and sustainability

Dan Marsh

The study of how people chose to use their scarce resources in attempting to satisfy their unlimited wants. This explains both economics and sustainability.

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University of Waikato’s environmental economist Dr Dan Marsh on the potential benefits for a sustainable future from the application of economists’ focus on allocation of scarce resources in the face of unlimited human wants.

Talking points

Economics is not the bad guy in sustainability. Economics is really about people, why they do what they do, and how we can help people, societies to be better off.

A lot of people think that economics is all about money, that we’re more-or-less the same as accountants, but that’s really not the case – what economists study is how to improve human welfare.

Economics is a really great training in a way of thinking – a way of approaching the problems humans face, which is a great foundation for almost any career – how to think, how to analyse, how to take decisions.

The study of how people chose to use their scarce resources in attempting to satisfy their unlimited wants. This explains both economics and sustainability.

The economic study of scarce resources…we only have one world, we only have a finite world, a finite amount of land, biodiversity, all kinds of things, and we’re worried we’re using too much of it. Yet people always want more. No matter how much we have, we seem to want more.

Economics is saying we’ve got this scarce resource, we’ve got humans who want more and more – how can we allocate what we have in order for the greater good, the best outcomes in terms of human welfare? That is what economics is all about.

A lot of people think that economists just want growth and the expense of other things they don’t really care about – I don’t really think that is true. But economics is a very broad profession. I could say I don’t think it – and that would be true – but someone else could find an economist who does think that.

Economics is not like accounting, not a set of things that all economists should use, say and do. There is no defined body of knowledge in economics – in political terms, people who study economics go from the far left to the far right and everything in between.

Growth is not fundamental to being an economist.

Economics should be able to help people (government, policy makers) work out how to give the people what they want. Most people want to improve their incomes…if we want higher incomes then we need growth – this is simply responding to what people want – the way democracy is supposed to work. But, some people have focussed on a narrow kind of growth, and taken insufficient account of the effects of inequality, and the environment. I would agree that this has happened.

Externalities are central to economics. For me it is about setting the framework so the kind of growth we have is the kind of growth people want. And the kind of growth people want, is sustainable growth.

(Is sustainable growth a sensible term?) I believe it is. I’m somewhat of an optimist in this regard. Optimist in terms of what might be possible with technology, also an optimist in terms of how people and human societies can develop.

An important way of thinking about this is the capital approach. Capital can be divided into three main kinds: Natural capital (environment), social and human capital (people, knowledge, health, well-being) and economic (things that we make). When people say ‘growth is not sustainable’, they are assuming that in order to grow we have to have more natural capital.

The kind of growth I would like, would ensure that we don’t use more natural capital, perhaps cutting back on it, as we look after improved technology, education to grow human capital.

We can see this in natural resource per computing power. By 2020 if everyone has a ‘super computer’ in their pocket, imagine the growth in human welfare from that, a massive change and potential for improvement in human welfare that is using a remarkably small amount of resources.

I like to focus on management, and what governments should be (rather than focus just on individuals and business) for we have to have the right frameworks to give individuals and businesses the right incentives that will make it easier and reward doing the right thing.

We’re a long way from being able to bring into play all the externalities. But there are quite a few areas that we’re beginning to get the basic rules right – incentives for sustainable behaviour.

We we buy something, on average, assuming the market is working, then we are paying the market cost – because otherwise business will go out of business. But we will only be paying full cost when we pay for externalities and only when everyone along the supply chain has been forced to pay for it.

Taking account of all externalities is difficult. I’m a practical person, just taking nito account the main ones is difficult enough – it is probably an unrealistic goal.

But markets undoubtedly fail, and when government intervene in markets they sometimes make things worse. We might meddle so much in our effort to make markets take into account all externalities we might get it wrong and make it worse.

I’m not sure who said that ‘climate change is the mother of all externalities’, but it’s right.

Climate change is the biggest and most worrying externality in the world.

Economists tend to favour emissions trading or carbon tax as they would encourage people who can reduce emissions at the lowest cost to do so – and that’s a very desirable thing.

Sometimes people take the approach that “polluting is a bad thing, find the polluter, tell them what to do”. Economists take the view that we need to get the rules right, get the incentives right to find ways to encourage reduction of pollution at the cheapest cost and we’ll get more reduction – it will cost less, and we’ll have more money for other things.

Often the most expensive reduction is 10-20 times more expensive than cheaper options encouraged by trading. The Rotorua lakes, the cost per unit of nitrates leached into to the lakes, this averages hundreds of dollars per kilogram, but farmers can reduce the same for a few dollars. Why would we start with $100/kg rather than a few dollars?

For the good of the environment, we will get more improvement.

The same applies to the cap and trade around Lake Taupo, a scientifically established bottom line, then discharge allowance within that – yes they pay for the right to pollute. Does this “paying for the right to pollute” matter? Assuming that we have correctly calculated the cap – that this is the sustainable level, does it matter that someone has bought that right?

I understand that people don’t like the idea of someone buying the right to pollute, but the fact is that this mechanism allows us to get pollution reduction at the lowest cost. That person who buys the right to pollute, who sells it to them? The person who can reduce their pollution at the lowest cost.

Non market valuations – natural, spiritual, aesthetics – these things not usually measured in the markets, but environmental economists have developed methods of valuing these things. In some cases a non-market valuation can assist in difficult decisions.

Even people who say the environment shouldn’t be valued end up doing it implicitly (case study of Manukau sewerage treatment).

Quite often for some social questions, it’s not appropriate for economists to be telling people what to do.

The way I see it, it is for society to decide on how it wants to run society – what are its core values, to decide on what is ethical or not ethical – and for economists to use their skills to work within these constraints to try to help society meet what it wants to do.

People have tried to value a species (for example Costanza’s total value of ecosystems, 97, 14), but it is open to dispute. Environmental Economists would focus on changes and changes you might be considering.

Trying to value change in species and biodiversity using non-market techniques is interesting but tricky and highly contested.

Bateman‘s work in the UK to produce a national ecosystem assessment decided not to value ecosystems, so instead used a constraint approach.

We should be cautious about claims about dollar values on species and biodiversity change.

Economics can help us think about benefits and costs that happen at different points in time. The Stern Report on the economics of climate change for example.

The key driver is how much we value costs into the future.

Discounting is a reasonable approach for the next 10-20 years, but I don’t think it is reasonable for inter-generational decisions. Unless we use a discount rate of zero, it will mean we put no weight on future generations – most of us would agree, that’s not ethical.

We do struggle with longer time periods, but we’re all making decisions about how we weigh costs and benefits…all the time, to pretend we can’t do it is now very helpful, the economist’s approach is to see how people are doing it (investment decisions in schools etc).

If the discount rate you use is too high it will mean you start putting a low rate on costs (and indeed benefits) into the future and we should be cautious of that, particularly for intergenerational issues where I think that result might conflict with what we muight conclude from ethics.

(What’s the alternative?) Economists might try to contribute but we shouldn’t pretend that we’ve got the only answer, we should acknowledge that that’s about ethics and what people feel is right.

(Activist?) Yes, in the sense that I’ve always been. I always says what I think or say I disagree, I’m not too worried about putting my head above the parapet. I am actively involved in trying to use environmental economics to improve New Zealand’s environment. I’ve always argued in favour of the environment, typically trying to help decision makers better understand the value of the environment to the benefit of the environment.

(Challenges?) Too much to do.

(Miracle?) The National Government brings in changes to make NZ’s Emissions Trading Scheme really work, so people who are emitting carbon really would face a realistic cost of carbon. I believe if we could do that, over time we really would get a reduction in NZ’s carbns emissions, and we could do it in the lowest cost way. The main problem is the international linkage – the trouble is the European ETS caved in under pressure and caused the price to crash and our transferrability means our price has crashed. So we need to reduce our transferrability in order to get our incentives correct. It’s really sad the way things are at the moment, it’s not working because the price is too low.

(Advice?) Study economics.

Categories
ecology education restoration ecology urban

Interdisciplinary ecological restoration

Bruce Clarkson

The problems of degradation are not just the sole domain of biophysical scientists.

Bruce Clarkson [ 50:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Professor Bruce Clarkson is Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Waikato, and is the Interim Director of the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. He is recognised as one of New Zealand’s foremost authorities on ecological restoration. We talk about his background, what we learnt from island and mainland sanctuaries, and the opportunities and challenges of restoring ecosystems in urban environments.

Talking points

Most people don’t experience nature in a way we did in previous generations

How might you restore indigenous nature in an environment where people can access them more easily?

New Zealand has extremely high levels of endemism…if we don’t look after these native plants and animals, no one else is going to do it…this is our responsibility.

This is our biological heritage, this is what makes NZ special and different, it’s our responsibility as stewards of the land to maintain our natural heritage.

What you are really trying to do is manage the whole system, but a focus on birds will have positive spinoffs for the rest of the ecosystem

So what you are trying to achieve in the longer term is a recovery of the whole system, not just the bird populations.

It has to be a mix and match of approaches and a portfolio of places.

We’re working for the very long term so we have to build resilience into the system.

If we don’t do it, we will be responsible for the extinctions because we brought in the agents of change.

If we protect species, we protect their house.

We can treat our native birds as the umbrella species for the whole system that we’re trying to maintain, protect and restore.

Cities have some advantages over wildlands in terms of protecting native plants and animals…just think of the example of grazing animals.. you don’t have to confront the problems of goats and grazing cattle.

Looking after your own backyard and being a steward of something you cherish.

Start at a scale you can manage, have a plan and progressively recover what you are trying to achieve.

You can make big mistakes, the classic mistake people make in gully restoration is that they bite off more than they can handle.

I tend to be an optimist. Yes, there’s a lot of negative out there, and there’s a lot of degradation of the environment still going on. It would be an interesting research question, what would be the threshold point at which recovery tipped the balance back to the point where there was more improvement going on than degradation? I think in some points in our region we are very close to that threshold. Overall it is still a fact that New Zealand is still losing things. Forests are being cleared, wetlands are being drained, nowhere near the rates they were previously when we were in the land development phase, but some of that is still going on. There are large parts of the Department of Conservation estate where there little active management is occurring, and those areas are also going backwards. But the point is that there are significant areas where we are making a difference. So I see it in a more optimistic way. Know also, that we do have the technologies to do more and more of this restoration, it’s really a question of how much time, effort and funding is New Zealand as a nation prepared to put into it to get us to the threshold of recovery at regional and national scale.

We’re trying to bridge the interdisciplinary gaps.

The point is how we deal with interdisciplinary problems.

The problems of degradation are not just the sole domain of biophysical scientists. To get the results that you want you need expertise in a wide range of areas. This is another advantage of working in urban areas, there are a lot of professions, all with interests in how we might restore urban environments.

We want engineers who not only know about engineering, but know about the environment as well.

I think the solutions to most (environmental) problems are actually about how we build bridges between the different disciplines…to come together and work collaboratively.

Increasingly, graduates from university are expected not just to know about their discipline, they are expected to work in multidisciplinary teams, on projects where people are trying to achieve solutions to particular problems.

It’s not just about a technical fix, it’s about understanding how you can do things in different ways, often the ways things use to be.

Restoration ecology is difficult, reconstructing an ecosystem takes time, but if you go into it knowing that and how the system works, you can make a long term plan for restoration, a plan for a process that might be inter-generational.

A 500 year plan, with milestones along the way

Once you’ve started a project, once you see process, people take pride in the process. It’s quite inspirational what a change you can make on the landscape in such a short time.

(Activist?) People who work in universities in many respects are people who love ideas, and love the debate around ideas – and if that is what an activist is, then essentially that’s what you are. You’re looking at systems, you’re understanding the system, and you’re trying to pass on your knowledge of how best to manage that system in an effective way. If that is what an activist is, then that’s what you are.

(Motivation?) Students, seeing the progress my students make, and where they end up. Being able to contribute to knowledge and process. The process of protecting and restoring plant communities and the animals that go with them – for some reason as a child that gelled with me, and I’m still passionate about achieving the same thing. Making a difference.

(Challenges?) Staying fit and healthy and keeping going.

(Miracle?) A silver bullet for pest control. Some new way that is socially acceptable for controlling mammalian predators that prey on our native birds. That would very rapidly and radically alter our landscape.

(Advice?) Look around your own neighbourhood, find out who are the people doing this sort of work and go along and give them a hand because they need all the help they can get.

Categories
business

Is business the sustainable solution?

Eva Collins

The majority of existing businesses can still be characterised as having a compliance-based relationship with sustainability, but there are hopeful and interesting things happening.

Eva Collins [ 6:29 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dr Eva Collins is Associate Professor in Strategy & Human Resource Management at the Waikato Management School. We talk about the tensions of traditional business models (e.g. continued growth) with the concepts of sustainability (e.g. limited natural resources) and explore creative solutions – can business be a solution to sustainability instead of the problem?

Talking points

There was a disconnect between human rights and corporate lobbyists, but it is harder to maintain that disconnect once you know people – past the stereotypes it’s a person with values and beliefs.

Business (in NZ) is often considered a necessary evil

Voluntary environmental programmes…have a role, but are not a replacement for regulation.

Government regulation sets the floor, voluntary environmental programmes are the stretch.

For the leaders it’s showing others what can be done, but you also need that floor, and in New Zealand it’s a very light floor.

I’m a believer that business can do more than just be the problem.

I checked out environmental books from the library, and this librarian said “what is an academic from the management school doing checking out environmental books?” That is absolutely the perception.

We’re seeing in the megatrends..shifting values and transparency. Businesses are now accountable for what their suppliers are doing.

I’m interested in the power of commerce to change these issues.

Part of my work is the incremental side, about business doing the small things. But then there are people who start a business, who are entrepreneurial to solve a social and or environmental problem – I’m very interested in that.

I take a strong sustainability perspective – bounded by the environment.

Self interest is OK if it is a starting point to get us to where you want.

Experience with Fishbanks (simulation game) shows that self interest rules the day until past the tipping point and can’t recover

If we rely solely on self-interest we won’t get to outcomes we’re looking for…government has to have a role

We would be rational, but we can’t because we don’t have all the costs.

People notoriously say that they’ll pay, but when it comes to it, they won’t.

All Good Bananas case study

There is a tension between traditional business model and sustainability: pressure to grow; return to shareholders paramount; short term focus. Absolutely tensions, this is the interesting part for me.

Also how to bring in longer term views, indigenous perspectives, biomimicry…
Biomimicry is a good example – there’s no such thing as waste in nature. We see some companies exploring that – Interface carpets.

Looking at tensions and pressures in business models – circular economy, sharing economy – these things are not threats, rather, different ways of doing business – which is a threat if you don’t want to change.

The notion of the sustainable practitioner in business is highly contested. A values led organisation, long term focus, circular business model, adds to social fabric. Hopefully the workplace infects its individuals. But this is two way, people who have those values bring it – work can help spread those values.

It might not be what you do, but how you do it.

We don’t have enough planets to support the “sell more stuff” in a take/make/waste model, so stuff needs to be made better and last longer.

90% of what we buy is thrown away in six months – this is a huge scope for business opportunity to change from take/make/waste model

We might be getting away with it now, but we won’t be getting away with it for very long.

There is a huge scope for business to be be successful if they look at different ways of doing business, and I believe that change is going to be forced upon them.

We’ve looked at planetary boundaries from a New Zealand perspective. Water, biodiversity and climate change are the top three boundaries for New Zealand.

Businesses have not historically thought about the pricing of environmental services, and the planetary boundaries starts to put it in a language where it makes sense to business.

It changes the language, it changes the mindset.

Self interest might be the starting point but I’m OK with that if it gets us to where we need to go.

Equitable access to water is going to impact businesses and cities. This is just getting on people’s radar. Even in the Waikato, water is going to be fully allocated in the next five years.

There’s no denying that many of the problems are from business. I think though that individual consumers have a role and responsibility, I think that governments have a role and responsibility. But I do think that business has the reach and resources that government no longer has, and increasingly the motivation to do something about these issues.

In this country in particular, business is considered a necessary evil, and that positive aspects of the business are weighted heavily.

Increasingly entrepreneurs, particularly on the social side, but also environmental, saw an issue and wanted to use business to solve that issue. This has the potential to be much more impactful.

New Zealand businesses are much more engaged in social initiatives and that makes sense because they are small businesses embedded in their community – so socially proactive, environmentally compliant.

The majority of existing businesses can still be characterised as having a compliance-based relationship with sustainability, but there are hopeful and interesting things happening.

We have students do a personal sustainability audit, they find that transformational.

Future business leaders are our hope for the future.

(Activist?) Yes, I how in how I teach. I am an activist teacher because I want certain outcomes and I’ll pay attention to how I teach to get those outcomes.

We have learning objectives for them to help change the world. That’s how high a bar I set.

I don’t tell students that there’s only one way, there’s space for different voices – thinking critically is what we are supposed to be teaching them to do.

I tell students what my bias is, then I try to present both sides. I’ve had complaints that I give too much credence to the other side.

(Motivation?) Nature is the source of my inspiration.

(Challenges?) Short-term thinking. I want more change from that, quicker. You can’t discount incremental thinking, but I have less and less time for it.

(Miracle?) More of a global shift, quicker.

(Advice?) It’s worth going out there and getting engaged. Even when you get frustrated about the pace of change, it is still inspirational to get out there. Whether it’s the social or environmental side, there’s still lots to be done.