There are few countries in the world with such an alluring reputation as New Zealand — or Aotearoa (“land of the long white cloud”), as it is known in the Maori language. For some, it’s the beautiful landscapes; for others, it’s the country’s welcoming population or its high standard of living. Then there’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, admired across the world as a leader of integrity and honesty.
This image is not without merit. But as the election in September this year will make clear, the country and its prime minister also face major challenges. Although Ardern’s approval ratings remain high, she is nowhere near as popular at home as she is abroad. A slowing economy and worries about inequality are major concerns for her Labour party and its traditional voters. And despite her eco-friendly rhetoric, Ardern’s green credentials will be further challenged, should she win another term in office.
Kings of tourism
Since Kiwi Peter Jackson decided to shoot his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films in New Zealand, the country has been home to a multibillion-dollar film industry and become an increasingly popular destination for international tourists. Of a total tourism expenditure of NZ$ 40.9 billion (€24 billion) in 2018–19, NZ$ 17.2 billion (€10.1 billion) was from international tourists. And it’s about to receive another boost, with Amazon’s much-anticipated Lord of the Rings television series to be made there, likely to be the most expensive TV series ever made. Why New Zealand? “We knew we needed to find somewhere majestic, with pristine coasts, forests, and mountains, that also is a home to world-class sets, studios, and highly skilled and experienced craftspeople and other staff,” said Amazon executive producers J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay.
Such majestic images are central to New Zealand’s attraction as a tourist destination. The country is made up of two principle land masses, North Island (home to more than three-quarters of the population) and South Island. Its nearest neighbour is Australia, around 2,000 kilometres to the north-west across the southern Pacific Ocean, and Fiji, Tonga and other islands across Polynesia.
New Zealand sits on two tectonic plates, the Pacific and the Australian. The shifting of these plates causes the devastating earthquakes that periodically hit the country. In 2011, an earthquake killed 185 people in Christchurch. Underground activity also causes geothermals, boiling mud, geysers and hot springs, such as at the North Island’s Rotorua. Much loved by tourists today, they were first used by the Maori centuries ago.
There is a uniqueness to the diversity of New Zealand’s natural environment, with an estimated 80,000 endemic species. Around two-thirds of the South Island is mountainous, as is around a fifth of the North Island. This is a country of alps and glaciers, beautiful fjords and tranquil waters. More recently, it has also become a country of vast plains, huge areas given over to modern agriculture.
Humans and the environment
New Zealand lay undiscovered by humans until Polynesian people started to settle there around AD 1250–1300, arriving across the sea in canoes. Forebears of today’s Maori, they traditionally saw elements of the natural world, living and non-living, as ancestors. Central to Maori society are the concepts of whanau (“family” and “extended family”), hapū (“sub-tribe”) and iwi (“tribe”).
“The Maori have a very kin-oriented relationship with the natural world,” says Maori Brad Coombes, an expert on the Maori relationship with the land and environment and a senior lecturer at the School of Environment at the University of Auckland. “We don’t separate our own lines of descent from the descent of other species. They intermingle.”
The Maori, therefore, have traditionally had a spiritual association with the land, water and soil. Not only do they derive their sense of identity from these elements, but they also see themselves as guardians of the natural world. “Inevitably, the relationship to things like forests and food gathering sources changed over time,” says Coombes. “But the importance of traditional land to the whole belief system of the Maori cannot be underestimated.”
European settlement followed Captain James Cook’s three voyages, the first of which was in 1769. In their own way, the new settlers also appreciated the beauty and value of the land, and later they formed deep associations with it as farmers. But while Europeans brought modernity, industrialization and affluence, they also introduced invasive species and new diseases. The result has been the depletion of vast areas of forests, polluted rivers and the extinction of a large number of endemic animal and plant species. Today, biodiversity is rapidly declining and 40 per cent of indigenous plants are threatened with extinction in this century. Around 74 per cent of the country’s indigenous freshwater fish are threatened, as are more than 40 per cent of bird species.
The importance of agriculture
In 1840, a number of Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the British. The Maori interpreted the treaty as giving them a degree of sovereignty and control over their own affairs and land. The British saw things differently. One way or another, the Maori lost control of increasing areas of land throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Vast parts of the country today are given over to agriculture, a lucrative part of which is dairy farming. New Zealand has a human population of 4.9 million, a dairy cattle population of 6.5 million and a sheep population of 27.5 million. Unsurprisingly, the country’s biggest exports are milk and meat products. New Zealand accounts for a colossal 35 per cent of the world’s trade in dairy products, and the country’s dairy exports are worth more than NZ$ 17 billion (€10 billion).
The sheer scale of the New Zealand dairy industry brings with it equally large-scale challenges, for New Zealand’s ecology and for the health of the planet. Brad Coombes talks about the “methane and nitrates that come with an industrialized agricultural system” and about how the “run-off from dairy operations causes huge issues in terms of water pollution”. Indeed, water pollution was a major issue in the 2017 election. New Zealand, says Coombes, is “being forced to recognize the agricultural contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. And that’s very uncomfortable for the nation.”
Professor Robert McLachlan similarly recognizes the environmental challenges facing the country’s agricultural industry. McLachlan, a mathematician at Massey University, runs the Planetary Ecology blog (blog.planetaryecology.org), which regularly includes articles by climate experts. “Agriculture is very sensitive politically,” he explains. “The farming lobby is powerful. New Zealand is very delicately poised politically and it’s not at all clear that the ruling coalition will be re-elected.” Most New Zealanders “are extremely averse to rapid change,” says McLachlan. “We also don’t like arguing too much. We don’t have the culture wars that you see in America, where people take extreme positions and get very angry.”
The Climate Change Performance Index for 2020 places New Zealand at a low 37th best in the world, a long way behind countries such as Sweden and Denmark. At the same time, climate experts tell us that the global livestock sector is responsible for around 14.5 per cent of greenhouse gases. In late 2019, the New Zealand parliament passed a bill to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. This doesn’t include methane emissions, a by-product of the agricultural industry, which are to be cut by between 24 and 47 per cent by 2050.
Economic shocks
Up until the 1960s, the New Zealand economy was very closely linked to that of the United Kingdom, with around half of New Zealand’s exports going to the UK. When Britain joined the EEC (today’s EU) in 1973, and closed its doors to many agricultural products, the New Zealand economy was hit hard. It received a further shock to the system in the 1980s, when the Labour government implemented ultra-radical and highly controversial free-market reforms. For supporters, the reforms were necessary to make the country more competitive. But poverty levels quickly rose and the country soon lost its reputation as being one of the most equal on the planet. The Maori were worst affected, with unemployment reaching 25 per cent by 1992, compared to 10 per cent among the rest of the population.
A key challenge for current prime minister Ardern is that economic growth has slowed to a five-year low. And now that China is New Zealand’s largest export partner, the country is being buffeted by the current turbulence in the Chinese economy and the continuing trade war with the US.
But there are also substantial positives. In 2019, the World Bank named New Zealand the world’s best place for doing business, ahead of Singapore and Denmark. And New Zealand has free-trade deals with both China and Australia, which is New Zealand’s second-largest export partner, followed by the US, Japan, South Korea and then the UK. (The UK is also New Zealand’s third-largest investor, after the US and Australia.)
Mass international tourism is now a mainstay of the country’s economy, but this is at a time when climate experts are demanding we all take far fewer flights. A government report in December 2019 noted that “increasing numbers of tourists — both domestic and international — are putting our environment under pressure and eroding the very attributes that make Aotearoa New Zealand such an attractive country to visit.”
In addition to the normal political issues any country faces, New Zealand therefore also faces challenges relating to its heavy reliance on agriculture and tourism to support economic growth. In environmental terms, neither challenge will likely play a major role in the election later this year. But if New Zealand wants to keep its reputation as one of the most alluring countries on the planet, sooner or later, it will be forced to face up to such issues.