[Ngeru]

I see the Guardian has been making itself popular in NZ: Guardian columnist Fred Pearce - an author and environment journalist - said New Zealand was falsely trading on a positive environmental image.

New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend of the earth
Lord of the Rings country trades on its natural beauty, but emissions have risen 22% since it signed up to Kyoto

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/nov/12/new-zealand-greenwash

My prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as "clean and green".

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10609038

[Sam B]

Has there been any reaction to this here yet?

[macs gold]

Was in the papers a few days ago.

Guardian article was over the top IMO, but that's probably what we expect from the press these days.

[Ngeru]

Has there been any reaction to this here yet?

Hardly any at all and it appears to me to be conspicuous by its absence. Other than to quote the original Guardian article there has, as far as I can see, been nothing from NZ to confirm or deny the article. Reading the comments on the Herald's question, it seems that public opinion is largely in agreement that we've been rumbled and 'it's a fair cop':

Does NZ deserve its clean green image? (http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/your-views/2008/1/31/does-nz-deserve-its-clean-green-image/?c_id=1&objectid=10609038&commentpage=2)

This country is living a lie and needs to own up and address the problems at hand.

Our Clean green image is just that and image in our own heads.

Be ashamed NZers, be really ashamed.

I don't see it as over the top, I think the point is more about how NZ markets itself to the rest of the world. The hypocrisy of the '100% Pure NZ' campaigning is why Fred Pearce gives us the two finger salute.

[Kanga]

Way back when we were seriously considering NZ I had a copy of the Vegan society's (of which I was then a member) magazine with a travel article in it titled "NZ: Clean, Green and Vegan Supreme", which my partner and I read and re-read many, many times- it made a huge impression on me and much of my romantisicm about my future life in NZ stemmed from that one article.

Since coming to live here and getting to know Kiwi ways I think NZ is anything but clean, green and vegan supreme. That's not to say it isn't perfectly possible to life a life in NZ that is all three of those things, or that there aren't people here living that way (there are), it's just that the general awareness and lifestyle patterns of many (most?) people here couldn't be further from those three principles.

[macs gold]

I don't see any hypocrisy in marketing our tourism indiustry as 100% Pure. IMO it emotively describes the experience that most tourists to NZ will experience. In fact it would be a much more hypocritical for a tourist to fly from Europe or North America and be disappointed with NZ's green credentials.

Yes there are environmental issues in NZ, as every where, but there are some amazing things in favour of NZ with regards to environment including low population density, extremely high use of renewable sources for electricity, 30-40% of our land is locked up as conservation estate, and perhaps more than any other country we can feed about 10 times our own population without particularly intensive farming. Push comes to shove NZ is a sustainable country.

On the carbon reduction targets, because NZ has always used so much renewable energy, there are no quick fixes here to reduce emissions. For example I understand that Britain for example has met its Kyoto commitments with ease by bringing forward by a few years the replacement of coal fired power stations.

There are complex issues involved with environmental issues (many more than I have tried to cover above), and the article didn't even scratch the surface trying to look at these. That's why I thought it was over the top.

[sweetpea]

Since coming to live here and getting to know Kiwi ways I think NZ is anything but clean, green and vegan supreme. That's not to say it isn't perfectly possible to life a life in NZ that is all three of those things, or that there aren't people here living that way (there are), it's just that the general awareness and lifestyle patterns of many (most?) people here couldn't be further from those three principles.

QFT. I think that the 100% Pure campaign, while wildly successful, is not reality-based. The amount of dairy runoff into waterways and the seepage of farming residues into the water table is troubling. I wouldn't swim in most creeks and rivers around here, that's for sure.

The only good thing about the "Clean, green" mythology is that it is a useful tool to flog blatant anti-environmentalists with.

[able]

I’d rather believe an impartial source than a journalist. Yale University publishes an environmental performance index.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_2006_Environmental_Performance_Index#Overall _EPI_score.2C_2006

In 2006, New Zealand was number 1 in the world. In 2008, it was seventh. It fell despite the fact it had improved its performance. Other countries – such as Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden had improved more.

The UK is in fourteenth place. If the journalist put his principles before his pay packet, he could emigrate and ply his dubious trade in an English speaking country with a better environmental performance than the UK. He could try New Zealand (7th) or Canada (12th). Ireland is in 35th place, the USA is in 39th place and Australia is in 46th place.

So here’s a truer title for this thread. New Zealand the greenest country in the English speaking world.

[Kanga]

I'm not so sure about your new title- I'm no scientist (far from it), but I suspect the EPI doesn't give a true picture of NZ problems given only one (as far as I could see) of the measures is per capita. NZ feels as spacious and pleasant to live in because of its population density, not because the industry and culture here are clean and Green, imo. I think there are probably several different studies and articles one could find on the internet to support either view but I do think the opinion that NZ is not a Green, environmentally conscious utopia (as the tourist marketing tends to portray) is sadly true.

FWIW, I'm not NZ-bashing, far from it because I love living in NZ but I'm not about to pretend its utopia to enjoy it all the more.

[petri]

I don't see any hypocrisy in marketing our tourism indiustry as 100% Pure.

In our travels this and last year through some 30-40 countries, NZ was the most "green" and "pure" we experienced. A lot of this comes from the fact that you do a lot of things in the nature instead of visiting a "concrete platfrom to have a view".

Of course one would be stupid to believe that NZ or any other country is really as green in every respect as their reputation is. Switzerland and Scandinavia are good examples.

[broadsword08]

nz is far from 100% pure... is it clean and green...? well in relation to what.... its certainly greener than most places by virtue of the lack of urban sprawl... and its certainly cleaner by virtue of the low population density... its definitely an ecological timebomb waiting to happen... but then as a new country I guess this is to be expected... it's all down hill from the starting point!

sadly i am of an ambivilent time and an ambivilent age group that quite clearly sees the issues but doesnt have the whatever to do anything about it... thats why i am here... I want to enjoy things while I can with those close to me in as pleasant an environment as possible thats as close as possible to being untouched by mans hand yet still with some technological comforts and tools

i'm not advocating apathy... i act locally every day but I have simply got fed up of thinking naively that these big issues can be dealt to with the political and economic systems us humans have in place for our management and control

i dislike the 100% pure moniker not because its basis is flawed but because it brings the masses ;o))))

have a nice week!

[ourquest]

Hi all. I haven't posted on the forum for a while and although this topic isn't absolutely at the top of my "must comment" issues, I did listen to some reaction to the Guardian's article on Radio Live a few days back, and I felt some urge to contribute.

Irrespective of people's reactions, NZ tourism has some right to use emotive taglines to draw people to visit the country. Advertising is universally based on focussing on the good points, and is not intended to be a balanced "scientific" review. Audi has advanced technology that places it ahead of everybody else, BMW has pure driving experience and if you wear a Rolex watch you can summit Everest without oxygen. You generally go to South Africa to see wildlife...but there are absolutely NO lions whatsoever in downtown Riviersonderend. The experience you have after buying any product might be slightly dissappointing after the media hype, but everyone should be pretty used to that by now.

And on top of all that, journalism universally looks for an angle that allows big issues to be made out of little events, in order to sell newspapers, which if successful then allows newspapers to charge more for placing advertising.

It's all a great example of how media distracts us from just getting on with picking up after ourselves and living our own clean existence.

[Nathan]

NZ is clean and green compared to many places. But.....

NZ has magnificent forest parks. Good. But much of the country's landscape has nothing to do with nature. There was very little pasture land here before the people arrived, and the forests are mostly plantation pine outside the parks. Native birds that have been nearly wiped out. Efforts to protect even the kiwi are abysmal with populations continuing to decline while people clamor to protect the invasive mammals.... mostly so they can milk them, butcher them, or shoot them! For many of NZ's native species the time bomb went off a long time ago.

[bluesky]

NZ has a key difference compared to virtually any significant country I can think of, that could be used to make it really special from an environmental point of view. However, it's not very PC to mention it...

As far as I can make out, NZ has no indigenous people, just immigrants who came here from overseas at various points in the last 800 years. Tens of thousands of years ago, there were people in Africa, Asia, Europe, North & South America, and Australia. But nobody came to NZ until about 1300 AD.

I don't want to belittle Maori culture, in fact I think it's pretty poor that NZ society, architecture, art etc doesn't reflect more Maori, rather than European, influence. However, if we could all accept and celebrate that we are all just recent arrivals to a land that, for almost all its history, was only home to plants and animals, I imagine we'd think a bit differently about the environment in NZ.

[macs gold]

I think the association between 100% Pure and Clean and Green is overstated by some. Pure can mean a whole lot of different things.

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/home/search-results.cfm/startrow/11/endrow/20/tab/page.html?searchfor=%22clean%20and%20green%22

A seach of NZ Tourism's website brings up 17 references to Clean and Green and all are in the blurbs for individual operators, many of whom seem to be genuine eco-tourism providers. National (and regional) based content does not include any reference to Clean and Green, which actually seems a bit non-random, as if there is a deliberate policy not to use those terms.

There does not seem to be a conspiracy to advertise NZ as clean and green, at least from a tourism sector viewpoint. As I alluded to before that's really not so surprising, as genuine eco tourists are not going to fly around the world to have their holiday.

[GrumpyGoat]

I think most of the debate about whether or not NZ deserves the "clean/green" moniker has been covered. But I do have one thing to add.
The one thing that bothers me from an environmental standpoint is the direction that it is moving.
Yes, NZ is more environmentally friendly than other English speaking countries but only because modern "progress" hasn't arrived yet.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that it's not that the kiwis (sorry to generalize)want to preserve this country as it is (or get cleaner and greener), mostly they embrace the modernization process.
I worry that it is just a matter of time before NZ is exactly the same (in terms of pollution etc) as US/UK.
Which would be a shame.
And there won't be anywhere left to run either.

NZ is kind of the last stand for clean and green. I hope we can take the idea from a marketing slogan and get some buy-in from the citizens (native or immigrant).

[Super_BQ]

I think you will find every nation has some PR campaign to show how great they are. Growing up in BC, Canada they too have something similar to say (promoted by the BC Gov't).

http://www.bestplaceonearth.ca/

The Best Place on Earth? Great PR but who's paying for the bill?

BQ