Sobering address on state of the environment
New Zealand and the world are failing to fulfil many of the basic principles of sustainability and we must face up to
our situation in order to avert serious risks, warns renowned conservationist Emetrius Professor Sir Alan Mark.
Sir Alan, of the University of Otago, spoke to a packed lecture theatre at Lincoln University last week as keynote
speaker for the University’s annual State of the Nation’s Environment Address.
During his hour-long presentation on 30 September, he suggested that economic growth had become “an end unto itself
rather than a means to a better life” and this attitude was bad news for environmental sustainability.
“Many people assume that if we have a healthy economy, other aspects of well-being will follow,” he said. “Extreme
wealth is considered a major sign of success. How do we achieve a sustainable economy with a financial system that
requires growth for stability?
“At the moment, we are living in a non-sustainable world and as Professor John Kay, of the London School of Economics
has said, ‘the world economy is a ticking time-bomb and global markets are a lit fuse.’”
Sir Alan raised several environmental concerns affecting New Zealand, including widespread rangeland degradation and
loss of biodiversity in key areas such as the Denniston Plateau and Secretary Island.
He also drew attention to what he called the negative environmental impacts of opencast mining in the Stockton Plateau
and Happy Valley and pointed out that the increasingly extreme weather patterns seen in the country were likely
symptomatic of global warming.
He went on to describe the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as problematic, due to it being “shrouded in
secrecy” and “offering multinational corporations the ability to sue governments for losses relating to policies
designed to protect the environment”.
“Economic development is now outstripping environmental sustainability in many areas,” he said. “Adaptation, or market
forces alone, are not viable options to address the environmental crisis.
“GDP is a crude measure of goods and services, wealth and well-being and we need to get away from solely focusing on
this as an indicator of a country’s performance. Better indicators are healthy children, quality of life and education,
native forests and white sandy beaches, as is covered by the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) approach to assessing our
human welfare.
“To ignore the symptoms of environmental degradation is to fail future generations.”
ENDS