This Is How It Ends: Nature's dangerous decline is accelerating. Why? It’s us

Thursday, 14 October 2021

Between one-third and one-half of all species face extinction by the end of this century. In New Zealand, more than 4000 native species are at risk, with irreversible consequences for the environment, humankind and economic activity. Stuff’s This Is How It Ends series investigates why our biodiversity is in crisis, and asks what we are doing to slow the sixth mass extinction?

New Zealand is racing towards the sixth mass extinction. Why? It’s us.

“We are at crisis point,” says Livia Esterhazy, chief executive of WWF-New Zealand. “Unfortunately, the way we feed and fuel our 21st century lifestyle is unsustainable.

“We have fundamentally changed the planet. And it’s completely getting out of balance.”

Life on Earth has already suffered five mass extinctions of biodiversity. These were caused by natural phenomena – volcanic eruptions, deep ice ages or meteor strike.

Many scientists believe we are now in the throes of the sixth. And it will be caused by a single species, a voracious top predator. Us.

On the current trajectory of habitat loss and global warming, scientists predict one-half of all species face extinction by the end of the century.

In New Zealand, that disappearance is even more pronounced, with more than 4000 indigenous species at risk. These include everything from the delicate fairy tern to the lumbering elephant seal.

“Our record, compared to the rest of the world, is awful. When you look at world rankings, and the proportion of threatened species, New Zealand is ranked worst in the world, number one,” Esterhazy says.

“We’re also ranked 13th in the world for the use of fertiliser. And we ranked 89th in the world for conversion of natural habitats. So, we cannot say in any way, shape or form that New Zealand is 100 per cent pure, any more.”

Biological diversity, at its simplest, is understood as the wide variety of plants, animals and micro-organisms.

But it also includes the genetic differences within a species – for example, breeds of livestock. And the variety of ecosystems (lakes, oceans, deserts, forests) that sustains species and hosts interactions between them.

It is nature, and it is all around us. But it is so intrinsic, that it means different things to different people.

Ask conservationists, scientists, or even just wildlife lovers, to define the concept, and you get a, well diverse, range of answers.

Sir David Attenborough, the world’s most famous natural historian, says: “The living world is a unique and spectacular marvel.

“Billions of individuals of millions of kinds of plants and animals dazzling in their variety and richness, working together to benefit from the energy of the sun and the minerals of the Earth, leading lives that interlock in such a way that they sustain each other.

“We rely entirely on this finely-tuned life support machine, and it relies on its biodiversity to run smoothly.”

Department of Conservation principal scientist Colin O’Donnell agrees it is a “tricky question”.

“Biodiversity is just the whole richness of life to me. Everything is interconnected.

“Plants depend on the birds, bees and geckos to disperse seeds or pollinate. There’s a million different examples.

“If you just take a human slant on it, we depend on biodiversity, absolutely, for our food, economies, enjoyment, for our wellbeing.”

These natural resources are the pillars on which we build our societies. More than 80 per cent of the human diet is provided by plants. Fish provide 20 per cent of animal protein to about three billion people.

In New Zealand, wetlands purify water and help prevent flooding and drought. Forests provide carbon sinks and purify the air, as well as products such as timber, fuel, food and medicines. Farming and horticulture depend on fertile soils and fresh water.

But we’ve grown our economies by extracting and abusing nature. The consequences of human population growth, our resource needs, and rapacious desire for growth and profit have left plants and animals displaced, battling to survive; and indigenous ecosystems destroyed or depleted to make way for other land uses.

Almost three-quarters of endemic freshwater fish (39 of 51 species), 90 per cent of seabirds, 80 per cent of shorebirds, 22 per cent of marine mammals, and 84 per cent of reptile species are threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened.

The arrival of humans triggered a wave of extinctions as the delicate jigsaw of life evolved over many millions of years was disrupted.

People brought to bear five pressures responsible for the decline of species and ecosystems: introduced invasive species, changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation and harvesting (including water extraction), pollution, and climate change.

Predators devastated species which never developed defences.

The introduction of herbivores, clearance of vegetation, harvesting and land intensification decimated natural habitats. Less than half of New Zealand’s land area remains in indigenous vegetation cover.

Wetland ecosystems have declined by about 90 per cent. Agriculture and urbanisation have destroyed many freshwater habitats and their species, with sedimentation, pollution and withdrawal.

“We have this term called Earth Overshoot Day,” Esterhazy says. “When we use in one single year more nature, more ecological resources, than the Earth can actually sustain. At the moment, we’re using 1.6 times the Earth every single year.

“We have altered more than 75 per cent of ice-free land, we’ve overfished the oceans, destroyed 85 per cent of our wetlands, decreased the population of monitored species by 68 per cent in one generation. We think we have a right to actually use everything without giving anything back.”

This year, it fell on July 29. “Unfortunately, in New Zealand, it’s even worse. Our Earth Overshoot Day is May.

“New Zealand is so bad because it is an agricultural-producing nation. Since 1970, our GDP has increased four times, the rate of extraction of natural resources has tripled, and our population has doubled in size.

“But nothing has been done to compensate nature for this. Nature cannot keep giving, giving, giving, it will ultimately collapse.

“There's no bank, no government, no corporate on this Earth that would keep running at such a deficit. You wouldn’t be able to sustain it, and nor can the planet.”

Esterhazy says the die-off will upend ecosystems and destabilise human civilisation.

Biodiversity loss could also expand zoonoses – diseases transmitted from animals to humans – such as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Melanie Mark-Shadbolt, an indigenous environmental sociologist, believes we are underestimating the extent of the crisis.

“It’s shadowed by climate change, the sexier cousin of biodiversity loss. But without biodiversity our human health suffers.

“It plays an important role in our mental health and our physical health. Air pollution, our gut content, anxiety and depression, all of those things are linked to declines in biodiversity.”

Almost 30 years ago, politicians and tens of thousands of eco-warriors gathered in Brazil for the Earth Summit.

There was a Woodstock-vibe, bikini-clad activists protested on Rio de Janeiro’s beaches. Roger Moore, Brigitte Bardot, John Denver and Pele showed up.

Cuban President Fidel Castro gave a speech blaming “consumer societies” for “atrocious destruction of the environment” and was applauded by George Bush Sr.

Government leaders from 168 countries signed up to the Convention on Biological Diversity, promising to address the decline of the Earth’s living systems. In 2010, they agreed to 20 targets – known as the Aichi targets – which they hoped would see a 2020 world in which “pressures on biodiversity are reduced, ecosystems are restored”.

Not one of the targets was met by any of the signatories. A 2020 WWF report revealed populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish fell by more than two-thirds in the last five decades and warned “our planet is flashing red warning signs of vital natural systems failure”.

A fresh set of targets was released by UN negotiators in July, including reducing pesticide use, cutting plastic waste and channelling $200 billion a year towards protecting nature in developing countries. The draft proposals, a Paris-style agreement, will be voted on by 196 countries in the UN Convention on Biodiversity.

The pact was due to be agreed at a summit in China in October, but the pandemic delayed face-to-face talks until May 2022.

Last year, the Government produced Te Mana o te Taiao, a road map to reverse the decline over the next 30 years.

It will complement Predator 2050, a bold plan to rid the country of predators: rats, stoats, ferrets, weasels and possums. To succeed, experts believe it will need new genetic solutions, such as gene editing, which are likely to be controversial.

But New Zealand has declined to join a coalition of countries – known as the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People – pledging to protect 30 per cent of land and marine area for biodiversity by 2030.

It’s also not the first biodiversity strategy: a similar “framework” was produced in 2000, to meet the treaty commitments New Zealand had signed up to at Rio.

Up to $187 million in new funding was allocated to government agencies, landowner and community activities to implement the strategy, including $35 million for protecting biodiversity on private land over five years.

But a Department of Conservation review noted in 2020: “Despite the progress made under the NZBS, New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity is still in decline.” It pointed to slow implementation, lack of accountability and funding problems.

In 2006, the Government decided to fund the strategy from within agency baselines – i.e. no new money. The 2020 strategy follows the same path – with the initial outlay coming from DOC’s already-stretched budget.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw was a teenager when New Zealand signed up to the treaty. He is now responsible for climate change, and biodiversity as associate environment minister.

“DOCs baselines, whilst we did significantly expand them in the last term of government, are still pretty small, they have to govern something like 30 per cent of the country’s landmass on about 1 per cent of the Government's budget,” Shaw says.

“There's always a risk with these things that they don’t get supported. There have been previous strategies and they haven’t achieved the outcome that we’re all looking for.

“So this time, we are paying a lot more attention to the implementation plan.”

Shaw is tasked with launching a National Policy Statement, which sets out policies for councils on how to protect nature. Until now they have made their own decisions.

The yet-to-be-finalised document is already polarising – criteria to identify and protect Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) on private land have already been labelled a “land grab”, sparking protests on the West Coast and in Northland.

New freshwater regulations – set out in another NPS which came into force last September – were opposed by some farmers.

And now the same sector is pushing back on the biodiversity action plan, hoping to delay it until the end of the year, at least.

But there does not appear to be urgency at the heart of the Government. Although Te Mana o te Taiao was released with an accompanying report, Biodiversity in Aotearoa –an overview of state, trends and pressures, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has tasked her officials with a further “stocktake”.

“It’s a challenge I’ve put to the Department of Conservation. What’s the state of play here? How do we monitor it?

“When it comes to the guts of implementing the strategy, there’s no point in just chucking a whole heap of time, energy and cash about. There has to be a really clear plan that guides that work.

“It’s quite hard to calculate how much money is spent per year on the restoration or preservation of biodiversity. The number of organisations across all of government, private sector, voluntary NGO sector.

“Once we’ve connected those dots, I am very confident in our ability. I’ve got a really clear map before us to be able to press go.”

Allan says the Aichi targets were “ambitious” and New Zealand fell “a fair way off” in meeting them.

“It was the first global attempt to be able to set out some goals. Not one country achieved all 20 of those goals. Nor was it intended that any one country had to either.

“I compare it a lot to the climate change movement … the Paris accord was quite pivotal in every single country having to rejig, introduce regulations and really socialise what climate change is doing at a domestic and international level.

“I think what we’ll see, particularly at the international level, is a real focused effort to bring into sharp focus the bare minimum, absolute requirements that we all need to take.”

She won’t be drawn on what the Government is willing to sign up to next year. She points to the fact New Zealand has 30 per cent of land tied up in the conservation estate. “It’s got high levels of protection. And there’s a real focus on protecting some of our biodiversity values on private land as well.

“So, on land we are doing pretty well. But we’re an island country and the EEZ [exclusive economic zone] is a very big environment for us.

“So, if we’re striving towards 30 per cent protection of our ocean environments, that’s more challenging for us, we don’t have the domestic tools. For example, our Marine Reserves Act doesn’t allow us to go to the EEZ.”

The act, along with other laws which govern conservation, are under review. But Allan admits they aren’t a priority before the 2023 election.

“I’m still relying on legislation that dates back to the 1930s to help guide my decision-making, so the whole area needs substantive reform,” she says.

“But the broader law reform, which I would love to see occur, we’re not ready to do that yet. It’s going to take time, it requires a lot of buy-in from key stakeholders.

“I want to take the time to do that right. And then, whether it’s myself or somebody else at the helm in a couple of years’ time, they’ve got a relatively unpolitical, fulsome picture of what needs to happen.”

The Government is also repealing the Resource Management Act, replacing it with legislation that puts a greater emphasis on the environment.

Shaw has seen resistance to Government plans to slash New Zealand’s emissions, and get carbon-neutral by 2050, as well as an overhaul of freshwater standards.

And he was recently met with a backlash when he scolded a “group of Pākehā farmers from down south who have always pushed back against the idea that they should observe any kind of regulation about what they can do to protect the environmental conditions on their land”.

Shaw says the dissent is frustrating, but understandable.

“We have made it very difficult for ourselves to regulate for the environment. The process that we need to go through to create new environmental regulations is astonishingly difficult, and quite easy to get derailed.

“The various attempts, over the course of the last several decades, have created an environment where the situation has ultimately got worse rather than better.

“As a result, you’ve got a situation where we’re trying to fix a lot of these things all at once. And now people are screaming out that there’s too much environmental regulation all at once.

“But, if we allow this to carry on much further, things are going to get really bad. So we need to move quickly.”

Esterhazy says speed is of the essence, and that by 2030 we must halt extinctions and habitat destruction, and halve our consumption footprint.

“We are not doing anywhere near enough to prevent the loss of nature.

“You’ve got NGOs trying to bring light to the problems. You have agencies like the Ministry for the Environment and DOC who are trying to restore nature. You’ve got wonderful iwi and hapū in communities doing work on the ground.

“But we’re tinkering at the edges. We need big, systemic change. Globally, the way we live, and think that GDP growth and extraction is the goal, has to fundamentally change for nature to have a chance to survive again.”

Melanie Mark-Shadbolt, kaiwhakahaere (chief executive) of Te Tira Whakāmataki, questions whether it is fair to ask the less wealthy to adopt restrained consumption patterns.

“We’re up for some tough times in the way we respond to natural disasters, increasing weather events, changing temperatures. And we’re going to have to change the way that we live.

“That’s really hard to say. I’m an urban girl, and I like the way I live. But we all have to start reflecting on what we do, what we wear, what we eat, what we drive, how we get to work.

“It’s a really hard conversation to have. It’s scary.

“If we were thinking about what’s right for the environment, then we’d probably make some pretty easy decisions. But those decisions impact people, their livelihoods, their families and how they survive.

“The primary sector will remind us of that. Balancing across needs, aspirations is always really hard.”

Mark-Shadbolt likes to watch Mad Max-style dystopian movies with her children.

“The next generation, our rangatahi, amaze me. They are way more inclusive, more environmentally aware.

“They are more willing to compromise and to have less than our generation. I watch my children, their friends, and I see hope that they don’t need to have everything, they don’t need to travel the world as much as they may want to, if it means a better planet.

“You have to have hope that there is change coming.”