by Gareth Hughes
In 499 days the Rugby World Cup will kick off in New Zealand. The Rugby World Cup will be the biggest international event to come to New Zealand ever and is our best chance in a generation to invest in sustainable infrastructure and build our international brand.
I’ve been writing for a couple of years on the need for a green Rugby World Cup but under this Government our valuable ‘clean and green’ brand really is at risk.
On so many environmental issues they’ve dropped the ball. From mining to genetic engineering, motorway building to dirty dairying this Government is doing untold damage to our economically very important ‘100% Pure’ brand.
The rest of the world is already taking note. Within the last year The Economist picked up on Schedule 4, the New York Times highlighted our unsustainable Hoki fisheries, and The Guardian’s Fred Pearce described our greenwash as ”…the most shameless two fingers to the global community.”
With 60-85,000 fans expected for the Cup and hundreds of millions more watching do you think we can be seen to drop the ball on our green credentials?
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Wed, April 28th, 2010
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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stephensmikm is about right. Rugger fans won’t care. Nor will anyone else, bar a few avid foreign environmentalists. No harm will be done to our reputation, that hasn’t been done already. They won’t think “Too many cows and the rivers are shitty”, they’ll think “Wow! It’s so green!” (especially if they’re Australians). The focus on our ‘international reputation’ is pointless, imo. It’s like digging out dandelions from your front lawn to show how good a gardener you are. The health of our environment should be something that each New Zealander is acutely aware of, for their own sake and in their own sphere. Only then will change for the better occur. Announcing that newspapers from overseas have described us as dirty won’t achieve anything of value and will cause NZers to steel their resolve to defend what we’ve done.
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@greenfly I think they will care. The spotlight will be massive – maybe a billion people tuning in on TV and they wont talk about rugby all the time – they’ll want to explore NZ: who we are, and what we think.
Like the Beijing Olympics and human rights, Tibet and media freedom this could be the lense through which the world judges us.
The flipsides true too – we could embrace a Green World Cup and add value to our brand – so increasing our tourism, agricultural export receipts.
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Gareth – those who tune in through their television will see what ‘we’ want them to see. Doubt there’ll be adds running about the appalling state of our rivers or mining on Stewart Island. Our Tourism Minister will see to that.
If we were to brand the rugger as ‘green’ there would be hell to pay if anyone did dig deeper.
*John Key thinks … must keep Gerry away from the cameras
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There was a moment when we almost grasped the green ball, followed by much fumbling before it was finally dropped. My worry is we may have lost it completely. The trouble is we have no real game plan, the coach is continually distracted by sideline comments and the players are involved in match fixing and fighting amongst themselves. Commentators see no hope of a turn around until we have a change in management.
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Looking at the ‘new’ Zealand landscape from the air, I suggest we adopt lawn bowls as our national sport.
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@ sprout – I agree, the last Government kind of got it, fumbled it and then lost the election.
This Government has kicked the ball into touch.
@ greenfly – or frisbee golf – those few national parks (of course, if there not all mined) would make great hazards.
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Gareth – now I’m thinking ‘Whack-a-mole’ and I see Gerry and Nick in the holes they’re planning to dig, heads popping up and down, me with a truncheon…
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waiting …
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Clean green snoreathon, honestly if people were that concerned about being clean and green do you think they’d be burning so much fossil fuel to get here.
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@ si
Quite a few will be conscious of their environmental footprint travelling to New Zealand. A return trip from the UK to New Zealand emits 7.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide – about the same as the per capita emissions of a Swedish citizen over a year – on just one trip! Many of these travellers will be flying into Auckland from the U.K and will be paying a distance-based environmental impact duty of around $NZ 240.
Many will choose to offset the emissions caused by their flight and many will be looking to the New Zealand Government to reassure them that we’re serious about our response to climate change. We may have to make a special bid in climate change terms to get people to travel here. Without doubt climate change campaigners will draw attention to their carbon costs.
The thing is also that hundreds of millions of people will also be viewing through the lens of TV and media coverage. When NZ markets itself internationally as 100% Pure it is expected that people will investigate it and ask some questions – I’m saying it’s going to get uncomfortable.
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Gareth,
What proof do you have they will look to offset emissions, I’m assuming this will be by travelling the length of the country to watch games?
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This might be the time to turn Gerry Brownlee’s “postcard on Eden Park” back on him. If the 1.3 ha of Eden Park were the 4.6 million ha of Schedule 4 land, the 7058 ha would be 21 sq metres; nearly the area of a cricket pitch. That would make a good demonstration for rugby crowds.
The 7058 ha is also more than three times the 2090 ha that would have been flooded if Manapouri had been raised the full 11 m originally planned (as derived from a high-resolution digital elevation model of the area), and we managed to be suitably upset about that prospect in the past.
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