‘Same people, same playbook’
Māori environmental advocate Tina Ngata says plastic pollution has come about as a result of an abuse of privilege.
Most people are horrified when they learn about microplastics. But for indigenous people who revere Earth as their mother and provider, it’s worse. “Māori are disgusted when we find out,” says Tina Ngata, a science consultant and indigenous environmental advocate. She has followed the research since 2013, when she learnt that toroa/albatross were eating plastic. “These birds are our relations and have special meaning to us – they accompanied us at sea, they’re part of our navigational stories and our science. I was distressed to learn that this relation of ours was being killed by us – by the products we produce, consume and throw away.”
Ngata threw herself into zero-waste living and realised that plastic pollution is a repeat of other colonial systems that disregard the needs of the environment and people at the bottom of the power structure, who are often indigenous and have had their land rights stolen. “There has been an abuse of privilege, and profit comes before the environment and people’s rights.” She points to well-funded corporate lobbying that maintains extractive and polluting industrial practices, and to how the fossil-fuel industry set back climate action by suppressing and distorting information. “Same people, same playbook,” she says. “We can’t allow them to do the same with plastic-pollution solutions.”
Ngata works with Pantos and Northcott to help ensure the scientific questions and solutions for microplastics take indigenous and community views into account. “I worry about the application of solutions to this problem if they’re developed without communities at their centre.” She worries, too, about mātauranga being hijacked to help solve the problem. “Of course we have mātauranga solutions. But before we get to those, are people entitled to access them when not taking into account how Māori are impacted? Māori must be involved in the questions and the science around the problem. Otherwise it’s further unjust extraction from Papatūānuku and from our culture.
“It gets forgotten, but the requirement to include indigenous peoples in science, research and decision-making is mandated at the highest levels of international law, such as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other United Nations directives.”
Ngata is also aware that Pacific peoples and Māori consume a lot of seafood. “Therefore, whatever the toxic transfer is – and we’re unclear exactly what that looks like – it will be happening at a higher rate for these groups.”
Like others interviewed by the Listener, Ngata says we must end the hyper-consumption that has become normal. “During the Covid lockdown, we saw Papatūānuku start healing herself because we took our foot off her throat. With plastic, we can clean up and find alternative materials, but we all need to turn off the tap.”
Numerous Pacific islands have tried to regulate single-use plastic bags, plastic foam, drink bottles and other single-use plastic products. But waste such as soft-drink bottles still wash up on beaches – as does New Zealandbranded fishing equipment. plastic blocks digestive systems, produces false satiety and can cause starvation. Lab studies show that the intestines of fish fed microplastics are inflamed and have oxidative stress. But Northcott cautions that animal lab studies often feed plastics at higher levels than found in the sea and the plastics are often polystyrene balls, simply because that’s what is available to purchase. “Polystyrene is nasty stuff,” he says.
There has been almost no testing for microplastics in New Zealand fin fish, or in most food and drink, here or internationally, because it’s technically difficult. “Food is a difficult matrix,” says Northcott, “especially if it’s an animal. The acids and enzymes used to extract microplastics can destroy them.”
Government agency New Zealand Food Safety is leading the development of a robust method to check for microplastics in the food and beverages we eat and export, including fish flesh. But international studies show fin fish contain microplastics. Mostly only their stomach contents are tested, which is a simpler task, but there are reports of plastic in fillets.
A study of Pacific fish, including some caught near Auckland, found plastic in the gut of a quarter of them. Plastic-eaters were
A study of Pacific fish, including some caught near Auckland, found plastic in the gut of a quarter of them.