Renowned academic and former politician, Professor Marilyn Waring, says that those who are engaged in the fight against climate change must never back down.
“Ignore the deniers who say it doesn’t mean anything,” she told a large crowd at Lincoln University last week as presenter of the 20th State of the Nation’s Environment Address.
“In the 20th year of this lecture, there is an environmental crisis. The schools climate strike gives me some hope and I am among those who have failed.
“My generation and the one that followed will be seen as insane narcissists. There has to be some responsibility taken by those whose voices dominate the sound space.”
Professor Waring became New Zealand’s youngest Member of Parliament when she was elected as a National party MP in 1975 at the age of 23. Nine years later, she provoked the 1984 snap election after informing Prime Minister Robert Muldoon that she would be voting for the Labour Opposition’s nuclear-free New Zealand legislation.
Leaving parliament that year after the fourth Labour Government came to power, she attended Waikato University and gained a PhD in political economy. She has been professor of public policy at AUT for the past 13 years.
During her speech at Lincoln University, Professor Waring described GDP measures as intrinsically harmful to the environment.
“Gross Domestic Product (GDP), derived from the United System of National Accounts (UNSNA), is unidimensional, mono-cultural, universally sexist and an environmental plunderer,” she said.
“The rules of the UNSNA exclude all consideration of the extraordinary biosphere and ecosystems, except when natural resources are being mined, forested, harvested, deleted, depleted, extracted and exploited.”
Professor Waring said GDP did not care if a transaction was legal or illegal – as long as there was a market, it counted as growth.
“Illegal market transactions, just like trafficking in people, drugs or endangered species, are good for growth.
“New Zealand’s 71 indigenous, different, rare ecosystems are to be ‘resources’, ‘assets’, ‘stocks’, or ‘services’ – treated as capital.”
Professor Waring also expressed concern about the treatment of environmental statistical evidence.
“The OECD framework privileges just two sectors, air pollution and water quality. Why? Because they are the best indicators for international comparison. This leaves significant environmental data out of the loop.
“The need for comparison means we dumb down and generalise to look great internationally, and that is seen as more important than the specific textured data we need to safeguard health.”
Professor Waring said there was a significant difference between the OECD and the intrinsic values of Te Ao Māori.
“Both Māori and New Zealand’s Pacific populations’ values show how ontologically barren the OECD and Treasury’s wellbeing work is.
“When it comes to natural capital, Treasury wants to identify its monetary value. The former Treasury Secretary claimed he wanted to put a price on nature. That is not why New Zealanders hit the streets. They walk for values, not for prices.”
However, Professor Waring said there were a few hopeful activities being conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand.
These included the “very long overdue” draft consultation document from the Ministers of Environment and Agriculture to safeguard productive soils, and the Waitangi Tribunal’s August recommendation that the Crown should devise a new regime in partnership with Māori to allocate water.
She also described the Environment Aotearoa 2019 report as comprehensively honest, with common sense elements and “many wise features”.
“Of the environmental indicators used in this report, 18 are new or have been updated as new data has become available, so we are not trapped in comparability over time. While the report tells a national story, it acknowledges important regional variations where possible.”
She concluded by saying that she was watching the progress of local government declarations of a climate crisis.
“We’ll have a much better chance of moving a government to net zero carbon emissions by 2030 when we enter an election year with more than two-thirds of our population naming the crisis.”
Lincoln University’s annual State of the Nation’s Environment Address focuses on an aspect of the current condition of the environment in New Zealand.
Since its inception in 1999, the address has attracted a number of notable New Zealand speakers, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark, former Environment Minister Nick Smith, and Tā Mark Solomon.