Dr Helen Anderson’s speech to the Club of Rome – EU Chapter

June 2009

Welcome.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Club of Rome’s report – The Limits to
Growth, which was published some 35 years ago. This report used a state of the art
model to investigate five major trends of global concern – accelerating industrialisation,
rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of non renewable
resources, and a deteriorating environment: issues that we are increasingly debating
now.

I suspect members of the Club of Rome were hoping that Limits to Growth would
provoke serious and informed debate about the future. That debate only happened in
isolated places at the time, in fact the messages in the book evoked a fairly hostile
response from some quarters and that response coloured the popular perception of the
book, that it was unnecessarily alarmist or simply wrong.

A central thesis of Limits to Growth was that human civilisation was on an unsustainable
exponential growth trajectory, in terms of population, resource use and resource
depletion. The inevitable consequence was overshoot and collapse. This trajectory was
hard for people to grasp because it was exponential.

This idea was explained in the book by a lily growing in a pond and doubling in size
each day. If it took 30 days to spread over the pond and people would only react when
the pond was mostly covered, when would the people react? The answer is on day 29,
by which time it was argued in Limits to Growth, it was too late to do much.

So a message in the report was that the sooner society started to change the trajectories
the greater the chance of avoiding an overshoot and collapse scenario.

Many things have changed significantly since 1972 the way the internet affects our
lives, the rise of China and India, changes to global trade patterns, the financial crisis
and so on. I get a sense that despite or perhaps in response to these changes, Limits to
Growth is being seen in a new light.

So how does a society recognise exponential growth and the inherent dangers
associated with it, and if we are motivated to do something about these trends, what
sustainable development solutions might there be?

My view is that science is vital for tracking key trends in the environment and alerting
society to the potential consequences of these trends. Science is also vital in providing
solutions or ways to manage the negative growth trajectories. So in my presentation
today I will emphasise how sustainable development requires
science and society to work together, and I’m going to do that by
giving you some examples of our New Zealand experience.

Where is New Zealand and why does it matter?

But I first need to tell you something about New Zealand. It is about the size of the
British Isles. We are about three hours flight from our nearest bigger neighbour,
Australia (that’s Brussels to Ankara), and six hours (on a fast plane) from the next
nearest continent, Antarctica. We tend to measure distances from New Zealand in hours
of plane travel.

Our wild southern ocean maritime climate, rugged, tectonically active landscape and
unique biota have inspired a strong environmental ethic in many of our people. Living
in a land subject to floods, earthquakes and volcanic activity, we are aware of the need
to plan and to prepare for catastrophic events. In the capital city Wellington, where I
live, the last big (8.2) earthquake occurred in 1855 – not so very long ago. At that time
European settlers were just beginning the first buildings and the collapse of all brick
buildings in that earthquake meant that we became early converts to wooden framed,
flexible buildings.

As a people, we expect change. We have a sense that the future will be different to the
past. And we understand the need to monitor the environment to maintain a state of
preparedness.

Ours was the last major land mass on the planet to be colonised by humans, if you don’t
count Antarctica. The Maori arrived in Aoteoroa New Zealand some 700 years ago as
skilful Polynesian seafarers. Around 500 years after their arrival, Captain James Cook
claimed New Zealand for Britain and the major European migrations began only around
160 years ago. Today our population of 4.2 million people is a mix of mainly British,
Maori, and Polynesian with significant Korean, Chinese, Dutch and French origin sub
populations as well.

It is no accident that with its isolation, rugged landscapes and challenging environment,
New Zealanders are independent, resilient and practical. We are also an outward
looking people New Zealand was a major player in the formation of the United Nations
and our citizens are well travelled. We have to be many of you would balk at a plane
journey of 12 hours – for us that’s only half way here. But when you are so remote you
recognise the importance of international linkages and the need to cultivate them by
contributing as much as we take from them.

Our research sector is particularly well connected to world research – for example,
around 60% of New Zealand researchers have an active collaboration with an EU Member
State colleague. And the main reason I am in Europe at the
moment is to co chair New Zealand’s inaugural meeting with the
European Commission under the recently signed Science and
Technology Cooperation Agreement. We have brought a 13 strong
delegation to Brussels to showcase the best of New Zealand’s RS&T capabilities and to
agree, with the European Commission, to discrete, useful and achievable initiatives to
strengthen NZ EU research linkages.

We have a proud history of great scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, but some of
our modern day science heroes are those contributing to global climate change efforts,
studying our complex biodiversity, recording the machinations of the two great tectonic
plates that slice through our two islands, and understanding our oceans that form 95%
of our territory. New Zealand is a great natural laboratory for unravelling the mysteries
of our environment.

But our environment also provides for the mainstay of our economy – agriculture.
Around 60% of our exports are biologically based – mainly dairy, meat and wool; but
fishing, tourism and forestry are also significant contributors. These all draw on our
natural resources and landscapes. On the back of that resource we have also been
adept at developing some high technology firms, especially in the navigation and
communication sectors – our remoteness and sparse population have created necessity
that has become innovation.

So, we are four million people in a country the size of Great Britain, with fertile land,
plentiful rainfall, a temperate climate, an abundance of renewable energy resources and
a population with a strong affinity for the natural environment. If we can’t make a good
fist of tackling sustainability issues, then who can? So what are the issues that are
challenging us? What are we doing about them, and how is science helping to address
them and provide solutions?

So I want to come now to the first example of how we have tackled one of the Club of
Rome’s exponential trajectories – and that’s in biodiversity.

To appreciate the enormity of this challenge I need to take you back in time to paint a
picture of New Zealand’s unique biodiversity and how this has shaped us as a people.

Going back in time…after their gradual separation from the southern continent of
Gondwana some 80 million years ago, our islands’ life evolved in splendid isolation. To
say our flora and fauna is unusual is something of an understatement, as the ecologists
amongst you will know. We have very high levels of endemism and many unique species.

Until humans arrived, birds and invertebrates lived in the forests and other habitats in
numbers unimaginable today. There were no major predators, and no mammals apart
from a couple of species of native bat. In such an environment many of our birds
became flightless. New Zealand was also the epicentre of marine
birdlife in the Pacific and Southern oceans.

Because of that splendid isolation, much of the New Zealand

birdlife was vulnerable to introduced predators. Our scientists tell
us that the numbers of sea birds declined almost catastrophically within 100 years of
the Polynesian rat arriving in New Zealand with Maori. An exponential growth in
predators led to an exponential decline in bird numbers, with consequent extinctions.
New Zealand is now a hot destination for conservation biologists wanting to research
extinctions, but the good news is that we even more popular for ecologists wanting to
study how to save species from extinction. We match one of the worst records for
extinctions with one of the best records of bringing species back from the brink of
extinction.

Species recovery requires a range of complementary activities but removing predators is

usually number one. A few years ago, New Zealand climbed the ecological equivalent of
Mount Everest when we eliminated rats from the 11,000 hectare Campbell Island,
located in the sub Antarctic Ocean. The resulting impact on birdlife has been dramatic.
We have even saved an entire species – the Chatham Islands Black Robin through
ensuring the survival of one breeding female, and many New Zealanders have read the
wonderful story of ‘Saving Old Blue’ as children. Species restoration can be bedtime
reading.

We are also working hard to save our national emblem – the kiwi – from extinction.
Many people do joke about having a flightless bird as a national emblem but we see it
as a symbol of plucky determination. The kiwi has had all the odds stacked against it
since humans and other predators arrived in New Zealand, but not only does it survive,
it’s beginning to bounce back through the combined efforts of science and community.

Before Europeans arrived with cats, stoats and ferrets, New Zealand was home to
millions of kiwi. Now there are only tens of thousands. Understanding the decline of
the kiwi which has been exponential has involved painstaking data collection,
complex modelling of kiwi population dynamics and work to understand the ecology,
physiology and breeding behaviour of stoats – the kiwi’s main predator.

New bio molecular research, led by Landcare Research, one of our Crown research
institutes government–owned research organisations began to develop target
specific poisons, while supplementary work in universities, government departments
and other CRIs sought to understand how and when stoats prey on kiwi. Our scientists
worked together to combine these into a strategy that helps individual communities to
take responsibility for controlling stoats and other predators. Communities around New
Zealand that have kiwi in their neighbourhoods are taking up the challenge. Volunteer
groups bringing together a diversity of members – pensioners, hunters, local Maori,
urban professionals are working together to save the kiwi. The science based tools,
techniques and vision and ultimately our science driven success
in saving species from extinction have fired up numerous
volunteer conservation groups involving thousands of volunteers
the length and breadth of the country.

The lesson from this is that people want to contribute to initiatives that make a
difference at a local level; it also shows that it is possible to communicate the
significance of exponential change to the general community in a way that will motivate;
and that motivated people take action. The kiwi now seems safe from extinction
because communities and the government are working together, building on the
knowledge generated by creative scientists working to solve a specific problem.

Karori Wildlife Sanctuary

Another wonderful example of community level action is only three kilometres from my
office in downtown Wellington, where there is a so called “mainland island” of around
200 hectares. A mainland island is an area from which we exclude pests, in this case by
using a New Zealand designed fence that can keep out mice, three species of rat, cats,
weasels, stoats, ferrets, hedgehogs, possums, dogs in fact, everything on four legs.

This mainland island is an old water reservoir area which sits right on an active fault and
was deemed too risky to keep as a dam. Rather than open the land for development, a
group of dedicated volunteers has developed a 500 year plan for the re creation of an
ecosystem of the type found before the arrival of people and containing as many of its
original inhabitants as possible. They have done this with remarkable levels of
community volunteering and corporate sponsorship – a great example of bottom up
initiative.

Getting into this ‘mainland island’ includes bag checks to make sure you haven’t bought
a mouse along in your picnic basket and is tougher than some custom processes. But
it’s working. Now, more than 10 years after it started, we have a collection of New
Zealand’s rarest and most endangered species all flourishing in a natural ecosystem and
with a science based management approach based on a 500 year strategy. 500 years.
Just think about that for a second. Awareness of the exponential function – in this case
decline – has provoked a very long term response – a response based on sound science,
inventiveness and great innovation. And it is community driven. I suggest this is the
kind of science based, community–driven long term thinking that is needed to help
ensure we avoid the kind of overshoot and crash that Limits to Growth alerted us to.

Renewable energy
Energy supply and water management are areas in which New
Zealand is, potentially, particularly lucky from a sustainable
development perspective. Paradoxically, we also face some
significant problems arising from that isolated island status. Let’s
start with energy.

For most of the past century New Zealand met most of its electricity energy demands
largely from renewable sources – hydro and geothermal. We built the world’s first
large scale geothermal power station over 50 years ago and renewable sources of
electricity meet between 60 and 65% of New Zealand’s needs. While in recent years,
renewable energy has not kept pace with economic growth and cheap gas has been
used to meet increased electricity demand, this is now changing. We now have a target
of 90% renewable electricity by the year 2025. New sources of renewable energy are
being harnessed, including our fabulous wind resource. Currently 10% of New Zealand’s
electricity is generated from geothermal sources and this is increasing significantly.

New Zealand’s national investment in energy research and development has increased
by 40% in the last few years to ensure we can meet our energy policy targets. This new
investment focuses on renewable energy. For example, we are taking a serious look at
the potential to harness the enormous energy generated by our marine environment.
The tidal flow rate in Cook Strait shown here is up to 2.5m/s which generates 2kw/m2.

However we have a major challenge in that we are dependent on imported fuels. More
than 50% of our total energy use is currently from fossil fuels, much of it imported for
transport purposes. But electric cars do have great potential in New Zealand because
our renewable electricity supply – unlike other countries which burn coal or oil to
generate electricity is a true replacement for fossil fuels. While we will undoubtedly be
a technology taker for electric vehicle technology, the potential to be energy
independent as an island nation will drive some innovative thinking about how to make
best use of the technologies.

Innovative approaches to local problems can also scale up to global solutions and a
great example here is work being done by Scion (our forestry CRI). Along with a San
Diego based company they are working on the conversion of softwood plantation
forests, which in contrast to hardwood forests grow fast and efficiently – converting
cellulose to ethanol for transport biofuels. The cellulosic digesters they are piloting
would use feed stocks derived from timber production wastes and even grass. The
great thing about all this work is that these softwood forests (eg pinus radiata) generally
grow on marginal hill country that supports very limited food production. So we will not
have the issue of competition with food production.
We are under no illusions that we can tackle these energy issues
alone it will take an unprecedented level of inter disciplinary,
cross sectoral collaboration that builds on strong international
linkages. The European Commission has recognised this in its
energy research work programme and I look forward to seeing significant New Zealand
involvement in that work programme.

Moving now to water…

I would like to now touch on a global challenge for which we have not made as great
progress as the biodiversity example I’ve already spoken about – water management.

Global climate modelling suggests that we will be luckier than most nations in terms of
our future freshwater resources. The models predict that New Zealand will become a
little stormier but that basic weather patterns may not change much. Our mountainous
terrain ensures we have a great variability in our climate – for instance, on the West
Coast of our South Island, the rainfall is on average about 10m per year. On the other
side of the Southern Alps, about 50km due east, the annual rainfall is about 1m. While
global models predict that we will have more extreme events, our maritime climate
means we are less likely to see the potentially devastating climate trends that many
other countries are likely to experience.

This is not the case for our near neighbours in Australia. Flows in water supply
catchments around Melbourne in Australia halved between 1975 and 2000 and then
halved again since 2000.

So climate change will not affect us directly so severely. But climate change and other
resource depletion issues are affecting water resource management indirectly through
the globally connected trade system. We are experiencing an exponential increase in
demand for water in New Zealand – with a doubling of irrigated land roughly every 10
years. The reason is due to increasing demand for food. One of New Zealand’s key
exports is virtual water manifest as food.

The increasing intensity of our farming systems is affecting water quality and the
sustainability of our valuable soils. And there are challenges in managing the supply for
the sometimes competing purposes such as electricity production, irrigation, fishing,
other recreation and ecosystem protection.

The challenges of water management are stark in Australia, because they are at day 28
or even 29 to 30 in the lily pond scenario. But in New Zealand the population is easily
lulled into complacency by the frequent and fulsome rainfall. “It rains somewhere in NZ
every day so there can’t be a problem” is a general thread of conversation. We have no
burning platform in contrast with some other countries.
In part because people have a more intimate and direct connection
with water issues than with biodiversity, the necessary policy
responses will need to be more sophisticated, but science will be
critical to improved public understanding and to optimal long term
solutions. Debate in New Zealand appears to be coming to a head and I think that water
is becoming recognised as an asset, rather than a commons to be freely used and
abused.

One response has been to invest in research to ensure that we have the knowledge
necessary to deliver sustainable water management. In a typically kiwi response to
flooding, NIWA has taken a unique approach. It has linked a UK Met Office global
climate model together with more detailed regional weather models, with catchment
models and with river channel models. The result? Flood hazard managers now get
predictions of actual river flows before rain even starts to fall – some 40 hours in fact
before a flood event. This unique initiative links all these models and connects with the
water management community to provide information they can use.

New Zealand contributing to global issues

There are two remaining areas I’d like to touch on before concluding – the challenge of
contributing to the global, but retaining a local focus, and lastly responding to global
consumer demands.

Climate change is in many ways the archetypal global issue – no one economy can tackle
it and all have different degrees of exposure to its impacts, and different opportunities
to contribute solutions. This slide illustrates our unique greenhouse gas profile – 52%
of our emissions are agricultural, around 20% are transport and 12 % energy industry
related.

Within New Zealand we are proud of our scientists whose contribution aids our
understanding of the physical phenomena which drives anthropogenic (and other)
changes. Some of them were recognised in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore
and other IPCC scientists. They study the global phenomena and they also investigate
the particular impacts these global changes will have within New Zealand and the Pacific.

But describing the problem is not enough, and science and technology are vital in
finding ways to reduce the human drivers of climate change in ways that are
economically (and politically) feasible. This requires an unprecedented degree of
international collaboration as well as local level collaboration. The local effort is
especially important because adaptation strategies will usually be region and country
specific.
The dramatically different challenges we have was brought home to
me when a senior Australian official and I were invited to talk about
our climate change adaption strategies. He talked of drought as
the number one challenge – our scenarios are more likely to be
floods and storms. I was in Melbourne on 6 February this year when they had
horrendous fire fuelled by storm force winds and a 45 degree celcius heat. Last week
the winds in my home town Wellington reached 140km/h, so strong the wind turbines
had to shut down, and snow fell in the city for the first time in living memory yesterday.
And we are only ‘across the ditch’, as we call the Tasman Sea.

Our climate change research is one important way we contribute to sustainable

development internationally. However, the structure of our economy (and in particular
the importance of sheep and dairy farming) mean that we have a specific and very direct
interest in a specialised but very important niche in climate research.

I have mentioned that New Zealand has a substantial agricultural sector relative to the
overall size of its economy. In agriculture, our challenge is to turn one of the world’s
most efficient production systems into one of the most sustainable. This is why our
scientists, especially those working at AgResearch, are seeking to reduce the carbon
footprint of sheep and dairy farming by reducing methane emissions from grazing
animals.

This is not a trivial problem. Such emissions are responsible for around 50% of New
Zealand’s total greenhouse gas contribution. Our scientists have discovered that
tannins lie at the root of ruminant emissions but solutions are not readily at hand
because the rumen is a complex biological processor. Reducing animal emissions while
also enhancing the productivity of the animal – milk, meat or wool, is the Holy Grail, and
when we crack it the solutions we develop need to be applicable to other countries, so
that we haven’t just solved a local problem, we would have made a real difference to a
global problem.

Food

My last comments relate to the role of the global consumer. With agriculture,
horticulture and fisheries as the mainstays of New Zealand’s economy – we have world
class food research capability. We have had to think hard about how we get food to
market and make sure it is still edible when it gets there. We pioneered refrigerated
shipping, sending the first frozen lamb to England in 1882. More recently we’re better
known for our expertise in dairy ingredients, new varieties of fruit such as apples and
kiwifruit and the wines that you’ll share with us shortly.

Our strengths in food production cover the production, post harvest handling,
processing and delivery of primary produce to global markets. New Zealand’s distance
from market means that we have long taken a lead in supply chain,
preservation and traceability innovation. Maintaining food safety
and quality in transit are paramount considerations for New
Zealand’s food industry and to these we are now adding consumer
concerns over the environmental footprint of delivering food to global markets.

We are seeing an interesting trend in the last few years in consumers in developed
countries starting to become concerned about the kinds of issues raised by Limits to
Growth. Customers care about the integrity as well as the cost of their food and astute
companies are making sure they address both. Our food industry, including our
research community, is working with supermarket chains to look at carbon footprints,
traceability. This is a new element in food production driven to a large degree by the
power that supermarkets have in the global food system.

New Zealand’s world leading kiwifruit producing company Zespri has recently been
through an intensive life cycle analysis process to measure its carbon footprint. The
company discovered that 3% of its footprint resulted from the production of the plastic
“spifes” (a cross between a spoon and a knife!) that accompany pre packaged kiwifruit.
Collaboration between Zespri and the Scion Crown Research institute – New Zealand’s
world leading forestry and biomaterials research organisation has resulted in a spife
constructed out of a renewable biopolymer which incorporates kiwifruit waste pulp –
and significantly reduces the carbon impact. This will have the dual benefit of being
much kinder to the environment, minimising waste and providing a compelling
marketing “story” for the company to appeal to sustainability conscious consumers.

But it’s not just food. Consumers are increasingly focusing on environmental issues and
some are prepared to pay a premium for a more sustainable product. In New Zealand
we are seeing some companies operating in the sustainability niche. A New Zealand
company, called Icebreaker, has developed designer outdoor garments from fine wool
grown in the colder areas of our South Island. Now these garments, with a suite of
sustainability credentials, are sought after and command a premium. You can use their
“BAA code” to find out where the wool came from, access a video of the framer speaking
about his or her farming philosophy and even introducing his kids. An old product –
wool – has been reinvented into a tremendously wearable, washable, comfortable and
fashionable product.

So coming back to the science sustainability link…

The combination of companies thinking about their long term survival coupled with
consumer awareness of environmental issues are encouraging signs that society is
starting to take notice of the kinds of issues identified in Limits to Growth. Have we left
things too late? Only time will tell.
But we can say that science is critical to both informing society and
providing solutions to help move us away from exponential growth
or decline. In New Zealand we have seen that science has enabled
us to become aware and do something about biodiversity decline.
We have learnt that it is better to act sooner than to wait until the lily pond is half
covered. We are trying to save the kiwi now even though there are still thousands left
rather than waiting until there is one breeding female.

We are seeing signs that societies and industry are recognising global environmental
challenges and want to do something about them. In New Zealand we are responding,
not least in the food production area. We are focusing on sustainable food production
and meeting the needs of markets. And just as we have done in the past we continue to
innovate and develop new ways to provide people with the food they want to eat.

New Zealand, like the rest of the world, needs international science connections to work
on global issues. This is why I’m happy to lead this delegation almost exactly half way
around the world for discussions with the European Commission to identify priority
science areas for the relationship and to agree to initiatives to support these. I note that
these areas of mutual interest are nearly all related to sustainability environment,
renewable energy, food agriculture and Biotechnology, which are all areas that I have
been talking about.

New Zealand’s international connectedness in science and our focus on creating

sustainable futures means we will continue to make a meaningful contribution to
resolving the world’s wicked problems.

Thank you.