How about a green fund to kick-start economy?

Professor of Ma¯ori Studies and Anthropology, University of Auckland

In these apocalyptic times, it’s tempting to focus on short-term responses and immediate causes. Yet as the great naturalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O Wilson wrote, the challenges facing Aotearoa and the planet are far starker than Covid-19:

‘‘For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity’s grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker.

‘‘Our population is too large for safety and comfort. Fresh water is growing short, the atmosphere and the seas are increasingly polluted as a result of what has transpired on land. The climate is changing in ways unfavorable to life, except for microbes, jellyfish, and fungi. For many species it is already fatal.’’

Among these risks are shrinking habitats for wild species. As industrial styles of land use diminish these habitats, and species (including humans) that were formerly separated are brought into closer proximity, scientists have long suggested that diseases (eg Sars, Ebola, Covid-19) are more likely to jump interspecies barriers.

In this way, among so many others, the health of people and the ecosystems that support them are deeply entangled. As Whanganui iwi say, ‘‘Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. Kei te mate te awa, kei te mate ahau’’ (I am the river, and the river is me. If the river is dying, so am I).

In responding to the Covid-19 crisis, our leaders must address these other existential challenges. If they don’t, all the hurt and harm caused to so many by the lockdown will be wasted. If we don’t begin to live differently, one environmental catastrophe will follow another.

Indeed, it’s already happening: more extreme weather, storms, droughts, floods and fires; melting glaciers and rising, warming, increasingly acidic oceans; polluted, choked waterways and harbours; shrinking habitats and species extinctions; along with new vectors for life-threatening diseases. Wilson’s warning was not alarmist – it’s a quiet, desperate statement of fact.

Over the past few months, the spectre of pestilence has shocked and startled one nation after another. When our own life and those of our loved ones are at immediate risk, denial and complacency fly out the window. People listen to the scientists, and radical responses become possible.

That is what’s needed for the full range of existential crises we’re facing. They may not be as immediate, but they are at least as life-threatening.

Our Government has announced a massive programme of infrastructural investment to kickstart the economy once the most urgent danger has passed. Some such projects might make the existential risks we’re facing worse; others might mitigate or address them. If these investments are to be wise, the criteria for assessing them must include their impact on these wider environmental threats.

I’d like to make a particular suggestion. As part of the response to Covid-19, a large fund, of at least $20 million, is set up to restore waterways, indigenous forests and other habitats.

This would have many benefits. First, it would bring hope, a bright light on the horizon of the future, especially for the younger generation. Second, it would address the dangers of ecological collapse in these islands. Third, it would provide jobs for many people who are out of work at present, especially in the regions; and work in which the risks of cross-infection can be readily handled. Fourth, such projects are ‘‘shovel ready’’, with DOC’s Community Conservation Partnership Fund vastly oversubscribed, and applications from groups across New Zealand already in place.

As we mourn the loss of two remarkable leaders in this space, Jeanette Fitzsimons and Sir Rob Fenwick, this project could become their living memorial (the Fenwick Fitzsimons Fund?), celebrating the dedicated, visionary lives they led.

Above all, Aotearoa could become a world leader, not just in tackling this virus, but in designing a response that turns tragedy into triumph, and allows us all to stand tall in our beautiful land.