A shot of cash can help save our natural capital

solving the largest environmental issue by scale that New Zealand faces outside of climate change.

Every year within our coastal waters alone, over a million kilometres of heavy trawl equipment criss-crosses the sea floor, impacting fragile reef-forming organisms, and stirring up sediment plumes.

The government’s own reporting shows the scale of damage to our seabed ecosystems from 1990 to 2014 is comparable to that of the Brazilian Amazon. The damage over millions of hectares varies in intensity, frequency, and patchiness, just like deforestation, and the actual area can only be estimated from voyage data.

Our scientists have also shown that biodiverse marine habitats that capture carbon, cycle nutrients, stabilise sediments, and provide shelter and feeding areas for marine life, are being hammered.

These ecosystems are the marine equivalent of old-growth forests, the wondrous longlived sponge gardens, horse-mussel beds, and coral-like reefs, which provide complex biodiverse habitats. So what, you might ask? Why shouldn’t I be able to eat affordable terakihi, snapper and monkfish?

This is eerily reminiscent of the desire for rimu floors in the days of clear-felling native forests, where old-growth habitat was cut down over thousands of hectares.

Marine biologist Sylvia Earle describes it like this: ‘‘Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life. It’s akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein.’’

New Zealand has an international-scale environmental issue, which we have not been ready to acknowledge. The PGF offers a timely and appropriate capital mechanism to help the fishing industry transition away from bottom-trawling.

So rather than using the influence of political donations to stall the inevitable evolution towards ecological sustainability, an industry proposal in partnership with local communities to ensure enduring fishing jobs would be more futurefocused.

This collaborative approach is essential if New Zealand is to meet its international biodiversity obligations, most recently reaffirmed in Egypt by the minister of conservation.

In launching the NZ Biodiversity Strategy in 2000, then prime minister Helen Clark said: ‘‘Biodiversity is everyone’s business.’’

The PGF offers a unique opportunity to invest in local community wellbeing, and to move to a future that the next David Attenborough might highlight as an exemplar in the coming age of habitat restoration.