New Zealand corporations influence Environmental Policy?

It’s not all doom and gloom people. Things change. People change. Organisations change. Culture and popular opinion change. Malcolm Gladwell analysed this phenomenon in his book “The Tipping Point,” where he tried to find out exactly how things change. He came up with a set of characteristics which he dubbed “agents of change” that were responsible for influencing and instigating change. In his research he also discovered how important context is and that human beings are extremely sensitive to their environment and can pick up on situations that are not the way they are meant to be.

Exactly one year ago, in August 2012, over 70% of Auckland bee hives were reported to have gone silent – indicating that colony collapse disorder had reached New Zealand shores. In a big way. This had been the fastest rate of bee decline ever witnessed in the entire world. New Zealand beekeepers were shocked and confused. What was happening to their bees?

In response to this I set out to record exactly what was happening and who the culprits were. In the article entitled “Plight of the Honey Bee” (not to be confused with this months’ TIME magazine leading article “The Plight of The Honeybee”) I noted that the scientific community was blaming pesticides - mainly the neonicotinoids – for the collapse phenomenon. These pesticides were responsible for massive neuronal damage in worker bee populations, upsetting their sense of navigation and inhibiting normal nerve function.

I alluded to one major corporation in that article. A corporation that has been complicit in the selling and active promotion of these harmful pesticides, worldwide, on a massive scale - whilst being fully aware of how toxic the compounds were and the disastrous collateral damage that was taking place in areas where farmers were spraying these compounds.

As a response to the scientific revelations, the EU banned neonicotinoids in July 2013.

Pesticide usage is not monitored in New Zealand. This is the first thing that has to change. And quickly. We cannot wait until the Green Party gets into power next year to see things change. We need to start monitoring and regulating pesticide usage right now. This may not be on the top of the agenda of our current government but it should be.

In my article I also pointed out that our current capitalist system is at fault. Whole sale. This system values profit over sustainability and views ecological damage as an externality. This is an insane outlook to have because it mandates that the destruction of our planet is an inevitability and that we may as well be living on Pluto next century. All corporations are at fault as well as all of us who consume products from these corporations. I compared corporations to wasps in the article because:

“Wasps are predators that feed on the weak and defenceless in the animal kingdom- they are often greedy and often parasitic, some wasps eat so much that their abdomens literally burst.”

I still hold this notion to be true, but believe that the current system can be re-jigged to cater for this Earth and all her plants and animals, taking the delicate natural balance into account when making policy decisions and starting to appreciate the holistic nature of our planet. Everything we do affects everything. And more and more people are catching on to this.

So it was very sobering to read that two of New Zealand’s largest and most profitable corporations, namely Placemakers and The Warehouse, have made the conscious decision to stop stocking the neonicotinoid pesticides in question. They did this without government regulation.

The real hero here is Steffan Browning (a Green Party MP,) who spent most of this year relentlessly writing to all companies in New Zealand that stocked gardening products, asking them to cease selling products that contained the active chemical ingredient neonicotinoid. Placemakers and The Warehouse listened. More companies will follow suit.

So let’s hope that this incredibly selfless act by these two companies (taking our environment into consideration over short-term profit) is a sign that things are changing. A sign that we have reached a tipping point. Because let’s face it, these corporations are run by people, people like you and I, people who have to eat, people who, as it now appears, do have a conscience and do the right thing.

Let’s hope our prime minister takes note of this and instigates sweeping changes to our environmental legislation – including a monitoring board that investigates pesticide usage New Zealand- wide. Unfortunately the draconian reforms recently made to our resource management act (RMA) don’t seem to suggest this.

But who knows?

Organisations change. People change. Culture and popular opinion change.

Even Bob Dylan sang about it. And we can trust him.

ENDS

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