The Green Desk

Today on the Green Desk Bronnie spoke to Philip Solaris, the CEO of Xcraft, a company who develop UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for environmental and humanitarian use in New Zealand and the Pacific. As well as drones, they have more recently begun work on unmanned seacraft, one of which, named Proteus, was the topic of the interview. Along with its many functions for emergency rescue and scientific data collection, it also has the ability to identify and report illegal fishing vessels. Solaris begins by talking about the difficulties posed by fisheries regulation. 

Last week, Oscar Perress was able to talk to Samuel Miller McDonald, a journalist, writer and student currently based in the UK for his studies at Oxford. Though talking for over an hour, their discussion around Covid-19 can be understood as a discussion on a need for systems change.

Miller McDonald’s studies are focussed in Climate and Energy Politics, so a large section of their discussion was around conceptualising a response to the climate crisis from how our world has reacted and responded to Covid-19. Oscar started by asking Miller McDonald for his intial reaction to the global response to Covid-19 and what we need to take from it to start a response to the climate crisis.

They also discussed the effect that national emergencies have on our every day structures and politics’ place in creating our reactions to Covid-19. You can find the rest of this series written by Oscar Perress, online by bCast and on air through out the next 2 weeks. Miller McDonald’s other work is accessible on https://www.samueljmm.com/

With finance minister Grant Robertson announcing billions of dollars to combat the effects of Covid-19 and the subsequent recession, some have seen this as an opportunity to change the way live, work and interact with our planet. Bronwyn spoke to Amanda Larsson from Greenpeace about their proposed Green Covid Response, which urges the government to invest this money into clean transformative industries and uplifting marginalised communities.

No doubt you have seen the stories about the positive impacts on the climate as a result of a world under rāhui. Whether it be pollution levels in New York reduced by nearly 50%, or a 40% drop in coal use by China's six largest power plants, the global pandemic has curbed carbon emissions in ways that climate activists have been trying unsuccessfully to do for decades. However in the long term, the International Energy Agency warns that Covid-19 could cause a slowdown in world’s clean energy transition. Bronwyn began by asking Amanda how we can ensure pollution levels don't just bounce back once the pandemic is over.

There is currently an online petition calling for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to adopt the Green Covid Response, with a goal of 10,000 signatures.

Today on the Green Desk, Bronwyn had a kо̄rero with Phil Jones from the Sustainable Business Network about their GulfX project which aims to restore the mauri of the Hauraki Gulf. The recently published State of our Gulf report highlighted the increasingly dire state of the marine park.  Some of the more shocking statistics of the included the occurrence of ten mass mortality events due to fish and shellfish in the gulf in the past ten years, and nine toxic algal blooms. This is due in part to the fact that 3,730 tonnes of nitrogen flow into the Firth of Thames from rivers in Hauraki each year. Crayfish are also functionally extinct in the Gulf, despite once being one of its most abundant species.

While overfishing is undeniable a serious cause of biodiversity loss, the GulfX project chose to focus on some of the lesser-known terrestrial sources of environmental degradation such as sediment, plastic and heavy metals. 

Phil began by telling Bronwyn what we mean when we talk about the Hauraki Gulf: