Conservation and the Human Factor —

Forest and Bird, Volume 18, Issue 4, 1 November 1987, Page 12

Conservation and the Human Factor —

by

Guy Salmon,

The following is an abridged version of this year’s Sanderson Memorial Address delivered

to the Society's Council meeting

Director of the Native Forest Action Council.

Ir the last fifteen years, New Zealand has moved further and faster in the field of nature conservation — especially forest conservation — than any other Western country. The intensity and energy of the conservation movement, the broad following it commands, and above all, the relative lack of serious popular opposition, compared to other countries, have been key factors. In the 1970s, conservationists ceased to be a minority tradition, and became the mainstream. | first became convinced of this when gathering signatures for the Maruia Declaration petition in 1976. Nine out of every ten people we approached would sign. With 341,160 signatures it bacame the biggest petition in New Zealand's history to that time. The huge wave of public support for our rather radical tree top protest at Pureora in 1978 was another sign that the times had changed. The decision of the Muldoon Government to set aside permanently the huge tracts of Okarito and Waikukupa forests in 1981 was an important confirmation. And much has been achieved since under the present Government. The sense of having become a conservationist majority raised questions about our relationship to the new minorities — the forestry and timber workers, the associated towns and regions dependent on native timber milling, the users of native timber, and the owners of private forest including the Maori people.

Deep Ecology These questions arose at the same time as the growth within the conservation movement of a ‘deep ecology’ consciousness. Deep ecology calls for a radically new aesthetic, ethical and metaphysical grasp of the human relationship to nature. Drawing on the Western Romantic tradition, the Tao and Zen traditions of the East, tribal cultures like the American Indians, and philosophers such as Spinoza and Whitehead, thinkers of the deep ecology school have sought a renewed reverence for things natural, and a more humble place for humans in the natural world. This also means new personal lifestyles. Dismissed as ‘‘shallow ecology’ is the idea that the earth exists for the benefit of humans or even for our socalled ‘responsible stewardship’ through management and engineering. I believe there is much in deep ecology thinking that is exciting and valuable and there is no doubt it will become far more dominant in Western conservation thinking in the future. But it needs to be integrated with a wider philosophy about what it means to be human. In its more simplified political manifestations, deep ecology presents certain dangers. The characterising of

humans as ‘just another species’ with no special right to rule the rest of creation can lead to an inadequate response to the human factor which is central to the resolution of almost every conservation issue. The deep ecology slogan of ‘no compromise in defence of mother earth’ is a formula that would deny the conservation movement any meaningful dialogue with the people affected by our campaigning. There have been strong arguments within the conservation movement on these issues for some years. But these arguments have not been publicly visible, at least until the recent signing of the West Coast Accord led to the setting up of the Beech Action Committee, admittedly a very small group. The unity we have in New Zealand is a different situation from that in some other Pacific rim countries where splits have weakened the conservation movement, and deep ecology activists have polarized elements of the popular culture into strong opposition to environmentalism, setting the cause back a long way. The mainstream conservation movement in New Zealand has consistently integrated human concerns into its advocacy. Ways to maintain employment or create alternative employment have always been to the fore in our forest protection proposals and, inadequately at first but more consistently in recent years, there has been direct dialogue and involvement with people affected by

our proposals. The most remarkable exercise of this kind was last year’s Blakeley Committee which, over a period of months, generated an agreed resolution to the longstanding conflict of forest conservation and forest industry employment on the West Coast. Our commitment to that process and its outcome was, I believe, important. Similarly, there has been a willingness by conservationists to recognise the wishes of those New Zealanders who want to use the native timbers of their own country in their homes. In the Crown land allocation process most conservationists have accepted that areas for the sustained yield production of rimu, the beeches and kauri should be set aside. These areas also serve a long term aim of deflecting future pressures for native timber to be extracted from Department of Conservation lands. Private Forests In these and other ways, the New Zealand conservation movement has been acknowledging that democracy is more than a simple majoritarianism, that the values and aspirations of all sectors of the community must be addressed and understood. The next challenge is to address the question of native forest on private and Maori land, on the basis of a full understanding of the human and cultural values (both Maori and Pakeha) of land ownership. This issue is going to be the big one for the period immediately ahead. More than half the potentially exploitable native forest in the North Island is in private (especially Maori) ownership. Many rare and valuable types of native forest, especially those of coastal and lowland areas, are found only on private land. But these private forests are fast disappearing. For example, in Northland, where only 10 percent of the original forest cover survives, mostly in private ownership, a recent survey revealed that 13,000 ha was lost over the five years to 1983. If destruction continues at this rate, all the private native forest in Northland will have gone by early next century. The pace of destruction is even greater where the forest industry has concentrated its pine planting expansions, notably in the Bay of Plenty and Hawkes Bay, and where its woodchip mills are chipping up native forests for the Japanese export trade, notably in Nelson and Southland. Native woodchip exports have expanded more than threefold since 1982. The native log export trade to Taiwan, which has been permitted to spring up just in the last year, is a new and powerful force for native forest destruction. The pace of destruction is alarming. Complete removal of the longstanding controls over the export of native timber is now being contemplated by the Government. If no other means are put in place to effectively protect the remaining native forest, it is obvious what will happen: the rate of forest clearance in New Zealand will surge up to levels not seen since last century. It will be the final boom and bust, squandering in a few short years an inheritance that most New Zealanders already know we do not want to lose. Yet, in the new atmosphere of the more market economy, will we as a na-

tion be prepared to intervene? The instinctive conservationist answer has been to look to the Town and Country Planning Act as an instrument to give expression to community values on private land. Yet my experience of the real inherent failings of this legislation, and my discussions with farmers and with Maori landowners, leads me to doubt that a strengthening of the Planning Act to protect private forest can be developed as the main line of attack on the problem of private forests clearance. Perhaps the most important consideration is the commitment in the Treaty of Waitangi of tino Rangatiratanga or the right of chieftainship by the Maori people over their lands, forests and fisheries. We need to devise policy instruments which respect that, and which can command a broad consensus as to the methods by which private forest logging can be controlled. Initial Steps Some initial steps are apparent. First, there must be proper funding for the Protected Natural Areas Programme, under which outstanding last examples of fast-disap-pearing habitat types are identified, and then acquired or leased for reserve purposes. Forest and Bird and NFAC branches have a major role to play here. Increased central government funding for the PNA programme is going to be difficult to obtain because of the priority which the Government must place on reducing the fiscal deficit. A major avenue for funding of the PNA Programme is through the Department of Conservation reallocating its own priorities within the budget it already has. Because DoC uses a bottom-up budgeting process the key people who can initiate change in the balance within the budget are the regional managers. Locally-based conservation groups are well placed to educate DoC’s regional managers on the importance of PNA in their region, and to influence them to accord it a higher priority in their budgets. As a second major step, local body rating should be reformed so that land not being used for productive or residential purposes, and therefore not using local body services, is not liable for rating. At present, the burdens of unpaid rates are driving many reluctant Maori landowners into the arms of forestry companies. This dilemma is a direct cause of most forest clearance on Maori land. I believe there is a good case for a special Maori-controlled institution to be established and funded to promote conservation on Maori lands, especially by facilitating land exchanges and cross leasing so that Maori groups are able to have continuing involvement in the land-related decisions that have an important place in the traditional culture. The Nga Whenua Rahui proposal, put forward by the Taitokerau people, needs our active support. It is unfortunately a fact that the financial resources available to secure the protection of native forests on private land will not be sufficient in the forseeable future to protect more than a small proportion of the total. The balance of the forest will remain in the marketplace. The use of a fiscal incentive to

secure voluntary compliance with a managed approach to forestry is our best present hope of retaining a native forest cover in these areas for the future. Conservationists must express the strongest possible concerns about what is currently happening to private forests in this country. We must at the same time establish a close dialogue with landowning interests including Maori landowners, and commit ourselves to finding a creative solution that recognises their mana whenua. By about the middle of next century, Maori people may be expected to represent about the same proportion of the total population of New Zealand as the tangata whenua of Fiji did at the time of their recent coup. We Pakeha are a small white people with a Western heritage in a remote corner of the South Pacific. We must recognise that, like the native plants and animals of these islands, our sense of belonging and commitment is to the Pacific. It follows that our relationship with the Maori people is going to be vital to the future of this country. We do not need to put Maori culture on a pedestal, but we do need to adapt our national culture and institutions to acknowledge the Maori way and Maori values. Our commitments under the Treaty of Waitangi must be fundamental to everything we do. In the conservation movement, we need to remember this, and to reach out and establish a fuller and richer encounter with Maoridom. We can work with Maori people on issues like rating and Nga Whenua Rahui, and on other environmental issues close to the heart of the Maori community such as the coastline and the purity of our rivers. A major commitment to a closer relationship with the Maori community is, then, vitally important for conservationists in New Zealand today. That brings me back to my questions about the deep ecology perspective. We in New Zealand are in a sense ahead of most Western countries in the statutory recognition that we have already given — in the National Parks Act, Environment Act, and Conservation Act — to the idea that nature has intrinsic values which we have a responsibility to safeguard. Yet the idea of upholding intrinsic values in nature is, by itself, inadequate to reflect the new environmental! consciousness. We must integrate humans into our perspective more fully by suggesting that self-respect, self-realisation and happiness can only be achieved in a full sense if we treat natural systems and creatures as worthy of respect for what they are, and not merely as instruments. In this sense our relationships with nature must model our best ideals of the other relationships which humans can have. Deep ecology would then spring not only from a love of nature and the wild, but also from our own enlightened understanding of what it is to live a good life. 4