 Welcome to this regenerative future webinar this evening, exploring the topic of regenerative forestry for Aotearoa, New Zealand. I'm Alina Siegfried. I'm the author of the our regenerative future content series produced in partnership with Pure Advantage and Edmund Hillary Fellowship. Over the past six months or so, I've taken a real deep dive into the world of regenerative agriculture in New Zealand with a 15-part written content series followed by initially a six-part webinar series, but we've had so much momentum and dialogue around this concept of of regenerative agriculture and regeneration in general that we've launched another six webinars. This is number nine and looking to further explore how we build a much more regenerative economy in other areas as well such as forestry, which is the focus of this evening's discussion, as well as regenerative tourism and urban regenerative agriculture as well. This is I guess in recognition that it's not all on farmers to solve our environmental and climate change challenges and we all have a role to play and through these conversations we're hoping to really spark some cross-sector dialogue and get people thinking about systems level strategies for a regenerative and restorative economy going forward. So welcome, it's wonderful to have you all here and tonight's webinar we'll be looking at how we nurture a regenerative approach and diversify our forestry sector in New Zealand with three highly knowledgeable panellists. So I'd like to welcome Dame Anne Salmond as an anthropologist best known for her work on cross-cultural exchanges in Aotearoa in the Pacific. She was named the Kiwi Bank New Zealander of the Year in 2013, has the Royal Society of New Zealand Rutherford Medal and is a distinguished profession professor at the University of Auckland. A member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Panel, she's very engaged with environmental issues heading up the Te Awaroa voice of the river project and a major restoration project in Gisborne. David Hall, Dr David Hall is a senior researcher at the Policy Observatory at AUT and an associate investigator at Temupu Naha Matati. He has a PhD in politics from the University of Oxford and works on climate change, climate finance innovation, low emissions transition policy and land use and forestry policy. And Ramona Radford supports Maori interests in Ngahere, standing forest protection and restoration, plantation forestry, indigenous forestry and tree-based innovation as Māori partnership advisor at Sion, New Zealand Forest Research Institute. She's responsible for developing a space for Tau Māori to endure inside tomorrow's forests by co-leading and co-facilitating Sion's Māori forestry roadmap and partnerships with trusts, incorporations, collectives and communities who work contributes to the future success of the Māori economy and Aotearoa's emerging bio-economy, the 1 billion trees planting program and a low carbon future, which of course we would all love to see here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Just looking quickly at the results of the poll, looks like we've got about 16% of our attendees in forestry, a little higher than 19% in pastoral agriculture. We've got a few people from horticulture, tourism and by and large it looks like the majority, about 50% are from government business and academia, so wonderful to have a cross-section of people involved in tonight's discussion. Looks like people have read some of the stories in the Our Regenerative Future series which is fantastic and most people are at least somewhat familiar with regeneration. Zero percent say that not at all familiar, so that's a wonderful starting point for our conversation this evening. Welcome to you all again. I'm going to hand it over to our panelists now to briefly introduce themselves as well. Dayman, would you like to begin? So I'm an anthropologist, but I've become passionately interested in environmental issues in the last, well for 20 years now we've been running this regeneration project at Waikeredu in Gisborne and growing a lot of trees and the place has been, I guess, my teacher and guide. So yeah, the inspiration comes from the land. Wonderful, thank you. Ramona. Oh you're on mute. Kia ora koutou, kō tainui te waka, ngaitai te iwi, nōtō re re ahau. My name's Ramona Radford, obviously. I'm the Māori Partnership Advisor at Scion and have been working here for two and a half years. Prior to that I came from the commercial sector in dairy and export, working between Māori and offshore markets. Nice to be with you all tonight. Thank you and David over to you. Kia ora koutou, David Hall and my background is in political theory and public policy but also geography. I grew up in North Canterbury on a small sheep farm just outside of Waikoku and I've always had interests in land use and and some of the environmental issues like erosion and so on when I was started off in academia I was doing geography and studying erosion but then I decided I wanted to do more things to stop the erosion and so that's what got me interested in tree planting and the role that can play in erosion control and I've been involved in initiatives ever since but certainly in that intersection between land use policy and climate policy primarily. Thank you David. Would love to start off this evening's discussion by asking you Ramona what a whole systems or a landscape approach to forestry looks like from a Māori perspective in Aotearoa. All right so I work with a number of Māori groups across the country in my current role and the way that it is expressed in terms of how the ideal or the aspirational forestry ideal is expressed by Māori is a a New Zealand forestry sector that is designed using indigenous or tangata whenua to our Māori worldview so that's balanced circular no waste intergenerational this is the ideal of course in some cases matriarchal interconnected and where the forest is seen as a spirit in nature not as a resource possibly even kin but a different creation from man or people the sector would be non-linear it would possibly not reside in ownership but more in guardianship and look a lot like new forests so forests that deliver a range of benefits such as biodiversity the the ability for forests to regenerate and to conserve water and to clean air and to revitalise I guess the soil and the the the soil the life in the soil and that that is generally the the dream the aspiration of Māori around the country as we as we visit and we talk with and we work alongside Māori. Thank you yeah certainly a little a little bit different from the predominant way that we're looking at forestry at the moment in this country um Daman I wonder if you can briefly outline New Zealand's um forestry history from a from an anthropological perspective. Well actually probably my my my thoughts about this spring out of Te Aumāti as well and the Pacific because that's where I've worked a lot and you know I think the deep history the history before people you know according to the scientists about 80 million years this was a land of forests and birds and then um in the last five minutes we rocked up and so uh human beings turned up the first Polynesian explorers and and and we know that they came ashore and started settling the coastlines in particular and clear quite a lot of forest a lot of coastal forest was cleared during the pre-European era but at the same time large areas of forest were left as food baskets and also for wood timber for building waka and housing and so on and then you know as we all know 1769 1814 Europeans started arriving and a different kind of model of forestry emerged and uh to start off with you know huge enthusiasm beautiful forests uh with marvellous timbers and we said about cutting a lot of that down to build our building stock our construction of all sorts of things and then um burned a lot of it and especially the hill country uh for pastoral farming and then in the 20s 1920s so this history is really new when the forestry service the forest service was set up started planting lots of exotic forests uh that had been happening before but it got you know on a large scale at that point and these are monocultures um clear felled relatively short rotation 25 to 30 years planted in grids on the landscape um loss of biodiversity obviously when you spread a lot of monoculing with pasture um and then when you clear fell the impact on highly erodible soils like those in Tairapiti where I'm from so we've been seeing this and for me it's very personal because I know spent a lot of time in places like Uwawa, Tolaga Bay and seen the devastation there and these are friends of mine so just seeing the impacts of this kind of industrial model of forestry um and how new it is but knowing at the same time that we have changed course you know in our short human history in these islands last place on the planet to be found and settled by people of any size so we could do it again so that's why I'm very excited about regenerative forestry. Thank you um I understand you've spent a little bit of time in Germany and um and looking at some of their forest systems over there um would you like to share any thoughts about what sort of a mixed forestry approach um might look like in New Zealand the likes of what you've seen in in Germany? Well because I got very interested in environmental issues um I've spent some time I've got a Hombolt fellowship and I was really lucky I was at the Carson Rachel Carson Center in Munich last year supposed to be there now actually again um and I got very keen on looking at the rivers restoration projects there but also forestry and um at Munich and I met the forester he's a professor at the same time and what he was showing me and and what we were learning about and going into these forests were forests at a mixed age they're mixed species they're local species so they're closely adapted to the local environment almost no spraying um they are harvested in small coops so that you don't get you're not opening up the canopy in any any um so there's no clearfelling going on and very you know high value high quality timbers and forestry and um the foresters there are trained in ecology so then they're thinking about the the whole system and I kind of um and I was looking at Alexander von Hombolt who was the great German natural scientist around about the time this country was first uh the first Europeans came ashore and he was talking about the web of life so there's a European tradition which is kind of like fuckerpuppets the web of life it's a total living system people plants animals the rivers the whole living landscape and the the challenges to make it all thrive and prosper and for me that's what regenerative forestry it's about a regenerative living landscape so this is what I saw and I got very excited by it I love that concept of the of the web of life um just before we go on I'll let people know that if you've got any questions for our panelists this evening you can enter them through the Q&A box which you can access the bottom bar there we'll have some questions that I've got for our panelists but would love to include some from you as well so please get in there um so at the moment we um we seem to have some incentives in New Zealand to be planting quite a lot of exotic species um a lot of pine plantation forestry I wonder David if you could speak briefly to um to to uh the mechanisms by which it's it's reasonably hard to be planting other forms of trees right now sure I mean it's just just to riff off what Anne was talking about a little bit first I mean you know there's a new movement um around the idea of a landscape approach which is kind of an umbrella term which captures some of what Anne was talking about and also Ramona there's um you know Maori ideas of Kiyuta, Kitai like from the river to the sea you know where you take this holistic approach um there is a movement towards reintegrating this this kind of approach a landscape approach and thinking about the complexity of the landscape and the diversity of land uses that can um that can track across the landscape and in some way complement and synergize with one another and I guess that's where I see you know regenerative forestry playing a complementary role to pastoral land uses where the two are woven together as our land uses that um you know balance one another out a bit and in all sorts of ways in environmental and economic ways as well as far as diversifying the economy and the and the landscape and I think the key thing is is that a lot of people really get this um you know we we don't see purely monolithic land uses we we do see certain instances of it certainly where I'm from in the Canterbury Plains it gets quite a standardized sort of pastoral land use and and you know I notice you know what the remnants of the forest that used to be there disappears as the irrigators come in um so there are parts of the country that are going like that but um you know the question is how do we how do we support people's aspirations for more diverse land uses um how do we build the capabilities to make those land use choices um around say planting trees for restoration purposes or planting trees for horticulture to diversify their farm and and so on and so forth but yeah so so one of the conversations that is emerging is it is a biodiversity credit or a biodiversity payment I mean that's particularly to incentivize um native trees um for for the specific role that they play um in enhancing biodiversity um and and certainly that's something that a lot of landowners are looking for but they just lack um the finances they lack perhaps the technical expertise and so on and so what's the sorts of mechanisms that we can put in place there to support that because you know one of the problems that the ETS does support this to to a to an extent um the emissions trading scheme because it does monetize carbon and it does enable landowners to generate cash flow by growing trees the problem and and this is what we're seeing playing out at the moment and in public debates over forestry is that the emissions trading scheme is designed merely to value and to monetize carbon and especially um carbon over carbon sequestration so the faster you can sequester that carbon the more carbon credits you can get and the more you can earn from selling them on the on the market um and so this just incentivizes um you know whichever trees are the fastest growing and whichever are the cheapest to establish which generally means finance radiata um but but the emissions trading scheme is not necessarily pricing you know the lost opportunity for biodiversity and it's not necessarily pricing the um the the climate risks um you know the the the higher risk of fire um the higher risk of of disease um as as the climate changes and so it's not necessarily while it might be generating the optimal outcome from a you know short-term carbon sequestration perspective it's not necessarily driving the best outcome from a climate adaptation perspective and that also means it's not necessarily the optimal outcome from a long-term carbon storage perspective either because if we're losing large chunks of the forest of fire or disease then um we're losing that carbon back into the atmosphere so the first principle to you know to ensure yourself against this is is biodiversity um native biodiversity but also biodiversity that includes other kinds of exotic trees that um that play other sorts of roles um you can incentivize this in multiple different ways but certainly the you know biodiversity payments is is one way and through a variety of reckon um mechanisms you know the New South Wales has a bio banking scheme for instance where um it's a it's another kind of offsetting scheme where people developers pay um for those biodiversity offsets there's also um results-based payment mechanisms um such as the Burrin program in um an island where farmers are ranked on the the biodiversity in their farms and paid according to that um and then there's emerging mechanisms around agro forestry as well for instance where um you know venture capital companies you know provide capital for establishing trees on farms and then um you know have access to some of the returns from that so there is a multitude of different ways to go about that and um that's really where we need to get to is to work out where we want to go and how we're going to get there using these different mechanisms which are available. Got it yeah it sounds like we need a complementary suite of of different market mechanisms there um there's a question that's come through here um around the carbon storage um capacity for native trees as compared to uh standard pine forests and I understand that there is some pretty compelling new research that's come through science journal around the capacity of native forests can you speak a little bit to that David? I'm not sure which science journal article that refers to um but but I think it may be the one that that just makes the point that if it's a permanent forest that is not being harvested then over time it it accumulates much more carbon over time because you're not pulling the wood out whereas if you have a rotation cycle for commercial forestry you know you're really only sequestering that sort of average over time um so which which is a much lower proportion and also if you're selectively harvesting from a forest you're taking that carbon out of there so there was a journal article that was making that case and um and raising um awareness and and and caution around governments thinking that they can solve the problem by um by just upscaling the amount of commercial forestry they have available because you know that forestry is coming back down and that's associated with secondary emissions as well and so it it doesn't necessarily look as good um from the long-term perspective as it does from a shorter term perspective when you're just focusing on that first you know 10 20 years of of um tree growth sure so I think it's it's about perhaps focusing on the the carbon sequestration capacity of a forest versus just the biomass of the of the trees of the that that are going to be taken out um Ramona I'd love to hear from you what what is Zion's approach to helping the forestry sector be better prepared for a quite a uncertain future particularly with the economic shocks that we've been seeing over the last six months or so yeah so I guess we've we've been um doing a lot of work to look at um how forestry can evolve um so you would all be aware that um that the the um forest research institute has um has had a history of of uh forestry science that has been um exported across the world so plantation forestry began in New Zealand I'm not sure if everybody realizes that but it began in New Zealand and it was exported from here um so that was the first bit of work that New Zealand did in the way of forestry and and how you know and and we contributed that to the world the next thing that we did as a nation was we worked out how we could take these plantations and add value to them so we added manufacturing and processing and um how and and methods by which these plantations could be um increased in value so so we've been driving innovation and growth in the forestry sector for 70 years as a nation and also as a research institute um we're moving now into the third wave so our ceo that this morning spoke of three waves of um of forestry innovation and the third wave looks more like a um an endeavor of intelligently designed forestry so what what what we mean by that is we're looking at how can you take forests um how can you design forests for particular purposes so our catch phrase at the moment is right tree right place right purpose and that is deliberate because we are the science and innovation and research that we're doing here is a type that looks at what can you do beyond plantation forestry and what can you do beyond plantation forestry to maintain the value of the land and of the sectors and of the industries and the businesses and communities that live in and around these forests and we think that it's moving more in the direction of a so away from centralized economies of scale so commodity based forestry into um distributive uh scales of economy so what do we mean by that we mean um local and regional cooperative ventures working together to um to provide um to answer local market needs first off is how do we maintain and make sure that our own uh forestry needs are met here in this country and then secondly how do we drive greater levels of innovation in this forest in these new forests so we're talking about new forests and those forests probably would be uh integrated with the primary sector so we're getting beyond bits of land chopped up like blocks of chocolate having specific land uses and looking towards a more integrated primary sector so that you can have a a a group of landowners working together cooperatively to design land use and to design solutions for um minimizing impacts on land and waterways and communities and if we follow that line of thought um we're looking at a and remember New Zealand's actually ahead of the game in the forestry uh in terms of where we might go um and the science that that we have here if we were able to um design forests for specific purposes and scion is more recently talking about circular bio economy so how do we move away from our reliance on fossil fuels and on plastic and on packaging that requires both fossil fuel and package and and plastic how do we move away from um from waste what do we do with all of the um the debris that that you know that floods our waterways when we get an extreme weather event what can we do with that waste so that's been the business and the the preoccupation of scion for several years now and we are quite excited about where this might go and and are in the throes of co-designing I guess a program of research and innovation with it with the um the um with government and with industry with the wood processing manufacturing industry and of course central to that picture is the idea that Māori forestry which um is currently only 15 percent of the total national estate of forest um Māori forestry can be the innovation or be the the the innovative um and kind of what would a blend of um indigenous world view and forest science and sector manufacturing and processing look like that we think is an exciting um proposition for New Zealand and something that we could all get behind it means that not everybody's that that not one sector of of the primary sector is sidelined it means that we can start working together to regenerate our land and look at um at sharing cost and perhaps sharing benefit where it makes sense um so that's generally where we're where we're heading um so we're looking at you know what what does it look like to draw our boundaries differently and I think that's where we need to go as a nation as a sector and as a export reliant nation how do we move from the dominant regimes um to niche type systems where we we we have higher value where we don't have to have large scale uh land use that that um perhaps creates greater impact on our landscapes and our communities so I'll leave it to to the others to contribute their thoughts on that so yes we're looking at a much more integrated approach um there and I think the value add is something um certainly that been very happy to see um in the past week or so with the government's fit for a better world report for the primary sector and uh wonderful to see regenerative farming being touted as as a potential solution to help towards that I'd love to come to you in a moment David with a question around integration between agriculture and forestry but I'll just quickly point out that I've copied across um a a great link here from Tarnist Retrust um on the the carbon sequestration capacity of natives um who've got a carbon calculator there if you want to check that out they've been doing fantastic work over the past 20 years or so in this area um David I wonder if you're able to speak a little bit to um what what it could look like to be combining agroforestry systems or or silver pasture systems on a commercial scale with a whole systems approach um between forestry and and agriculture and in New Zealand yeah well I I just keep on coming back to the word weaving like it feels to me like that's the right word that we're not you know when you say commercial scale it immediately conjures up this um images of of large singular land uses that that are sprawling across the landscape whereas I think it's the question is how do we do the subtle thing where we're weaving in different land uses we have a little bit of trees over here to hold hold some erosion prone land and you know we might have um have have an orchard down the bottom of the hill and you know we've got we've got pastoral land uses in between all of that it's um riparian strips along the riverways it's it's how do we support that kind of um interwoven landscape um which I've written about in the in the past for a for a report a policy paper with that name but um it joins a long list of of other organizations who have been doing this um I think it it must be 20 odd years ago that the um Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Dr Morgan Williams wrote a report weaving resilience into our working lands and um it was talking about exactly this how do we get native biodiversity and other sorts of land uses woven through our farmlands and that's something that Tane's Tree Trust has been exploring as well um you mentioned them especially you know some of their work with Totara up in Northland and the way that that can you know the natural regeneration of Totara on on farms can can be embraced and encouraged and and turned into another revenue stream potentially through through Selective Harvesting and of course the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association as well is another long-standing organization which has been exploring uh different options around um forest on farms whether it's small woodlots um or you know this term agroforestry which um you know encompasses all sorts of different kinds of forestry which exists within agricultural land including silvopastia which is a concept which is um you know quite complimentary to regenerative agriculture where you're really quite deliberately um weaving together grazing with um with with trees and and potentially crops as well and I mean I can give you a general sense I mean some of the the benefits of this is you know trees have have have effects on the on the microclimate you know they can they can they can hold an absorption and and the shading of the trees can you know reduce land temperatures and so on reduces um soil degradation um and and the litter from trees you know complements carbon back into the soil so it's another way to derive that improves soil carbon which is you know core concern for regenerative agriculture um having trees around also can can control the spread of pests and disease because it diversifies um diversifies an ecosystem so so um you know we're if there's a landscape with with a monoculture you know a disease may spread quite quickly through all all of the different species that are that are the same whereas if there's um a diversity of species you are sort of building in that resilience against um pests and other problems um and also managing uh regulating water um you know trees capture a lot of rainfall in in their um in their branches and and uh they release it back into the large proportion into the atmosphere a lot is also absorbed by roots so they can sort of regulate water flow and catchments and um reduce the risk of of floods and so on um and you know I thought actually last week's uh webinar that you gave with um Greg Hart you know he talked a lot about this actually um his experience of trees at Mangarara station and um you know I can speak to that as a as an academic who works with ecologists um especially the the team from the farming and conservation group under the national science challenges like um David Norton and and Hannah Buckley and Brad Case um but but you know there's nothing quite like hearing it from a farmer um like like last week and and hearing the their reflections on on how the trees have improved um their farming outcomes because at the end of the day um there is no universal principle for these you know there are these kind of general effects but they're always going to play out in different ways on different landscapes so so there's obviously some sort of benefits there and that's in the in the literature but it's a matter of um trialing them out and and building the building the knowledge base which is what we're trying to do with um the AUT Living Laboratories project which I'm on with David Norton and Hannah Buckley etc and just to build that knowledge of of you know what are those wider environmental impacts when we start putting trees back into agricultural landscapes? Sure absolutely um and the uh the webinar that that David is referring to is the Building Farm Resilience Episode 8 which you can watch the recording of on the Pure Advantage website in the Edmund Hillary Fellowship Facebook um sorry YouTube channel um Dayman I'd love to ask you um how a regenerative and integrated approach to forestry can help us navigate through this very unique post-COVID economic recovery period um we're certainly in very interesting times any thoughts on um on how that might happen? Well it's part of um being on the New Zealand Sustainability Panel with Sir Jonathan Porritt's been very enlightening for us because he's just written a book called Hope and Hell that gives us basically a decade to rescue a habitable planet based on all the science so he's done this very brilliant and kind of very sobering summary of the science that says look we haven't got long and it's not just COVID it's it's biodiversity it's climate change it's the whole our relationship with the living world is is putting our own lives and those of our kids and our grandchildren at risk and so for me the whole hope of the regenerative movement um because it's it's not forestry and it's not just agriculture and it's it's rivers as well it's what we're doing with the ocean it's about coming and I noticed this the thing that gave me so much hope in Germany was that they kind of realised probably about 20 years ago that their forests they had a lot of commercial ponder for forests and they started getting these you know diseases um but also increasingly across northern Europe as we all know they've been these huge fires in the conifer forest as well and so they decided and they made a decision that they would go to this close to nature forestry model which is mixed species mixed age locally adapted very resilient open to the public by law all the forests so the people the plants the animals the the rivers so you're regenerating rivers you're regenerating forests you're bringing back habitat for birds you're making communities um you're giving them wonderful places to live in but also to make a living um and that's what I like about it it's um and as a mechanism one of the things that we've been talking about David and I and a whole lot of others have been talking about this prospect of something like an Altair or credit which basically incentivises native of forestation and some of that could be permanent for carbon sequestration in the long run some of it could be this you know a close canopy harvesting on a very sustainable and carefully managed basis but it would reward native of forestation and help counterbalance the huge weight in the ETS towards pines but it should be set up so that rewards farmers that have you know that are doing for example or planting and a rotable slope it might not be quite big enough to fit in with the ETS but it's got all these benefits it's not just carbon and the point is what I want to make is that the crises we're confronting post-COVID COVID's part of all of this it's partly because of what we're doing in habitat destruction that these viruses are crossing you know the species barrier I I want wonderful I think this is a huge way forward so we have to have smart systems you know the ETS is too crude and it's having a lot of perverse effects and we need food but we need food and thriving landscapes and thriving communities and the people are part of the ecosystem so I think this Altair or credit that actually gives a weight to the full range of benefits is something our government should be looking at straight away basically we haven't got long as my point we haven't got time to play around and because you know these are not just tough times because of the pandemic but I hope too you know and I can see that we can lead the world in this actually we're small enough we're intimate enough we're smart enough and we're collaborative enough to lead the world and I think it just needs the will you know it just needs the will of the people to change and if you look at the way that forestry currently is conducted in New Zealand a great deal of it is it's been designed by one dominant thought which is sorry if I offend anybody but the you know white the white male thinking which in in my opinion and the opinion of many others is what's doing us a great disservice is as a world all of our designs all of our innovations the way that we live and the way we that we trade and communicate is being designed by one group and what that's doing is it's imbalancing it's creating an imbalance both in our relationship with nature but also in our relationship with each other and in the way that we we design our primary sectors it's all being driven by certain certain values and those values seem to reside in in one one particular demographic what would it look like if we were to design with diversity what would it look like if we had more women in forestry if we had more rangatahi and more more young people bringing their thoughts and their ideals and and you know their visions what would it look like if we had more more more nanny and crore and what would it look like if we had other indigenous peoples you know involved in the design of not only our forestry sector or our conservation which is where everybody seems to lump Māori in Kaitiakitanga. Māori have a whole lot more to offer to the world than just you know social science in Kaitiakitanga although that is a very strong framework that we could leverage off and that we could learn from so I'm I'm saying and I'm not the only one that if we as a nation have a a second knowledge system that belongs only to this nation why can we not integrate that inside of our design systems of our our our living systems of our regenerative systems I I you know it really greets me when I see research coming through from across the world and a whole bunch of stuff around regeneration comes from all over the world and we have right here in our own back door a a system of regeneration a system of management a system of sustainability that has evolved with this land for more than 700 years and in some cases more than a thousand years why don't we take hold of some of that knowledge and integrate it into our you know our new forests our new systems our new integrated sectors what would that look like I'd be you know as a Kiwi I'd be extremely proud to represent and promote something like that to the world absolutely and I think you've just neatly answered Steve Garten's question around the the opportunity for New Zealand to be leading the world using Māori wisdom certainly appreciate that that reframe from dominating nature to actually working with what has evolved here over many hundreds of of years I want to come back to you Daman just quickly about a comment you made before regarding the communities in forestry what what do you foresee and you know say 30 years time if we continue down for rural communities if we continue down this track of planting large areas of productive land into into radiator pine well I've seen it I watched it happen on the coast in the in the 80s so forestry you know plantation forestry arrived in Teidapati 70s 80s the people came around and talked to people on the Marae about leasing their land and so forth and telling them about all the jobs that were going to come and the profits that would happen and of course what ended up happening is that New Zealand companies when the forests were privatised were sold off first of all to New Zealand companies like Carterhold Harvey and others and then they were sold off offshore and this is this is not an ideological point it's a practical point about when you don't live on the land and you don't see what happens when you know you clearfowl on hardier rotable soils and the hills just start to collapse and the sort of things we've got a whole bunch of young scientists with their their lecturers running all over the coast at the moment we're running a rivers project and they're all in the Waipu catchment they're up the Waimata catchment because we've got some of the worst slips and the most highly sediment-laden rivers in the world not just not just in Aotearoa but in the world the amount of topsoil that we are exporting into the ocean and drowning and with the slash as well and the impact that has on the communities I mean it's heartbreaking because it's true that what happens for example if we went into carbon farming with pines and they were just planted on mass and then left there there would be very very few jobs and the communities do die there's not enough work for the shearers or the fences or the cooks or the various people that work for example on the farms and then the schools go and the local store goes and then the community is dead and it just gets too hard for the ones that are left in so it's like a row of dominoes just falling and I've seen it happen and I know that the ETS has such strong incentives at the moment to plant pine trees and it has no limits on carbon farming really through thatism and I just don't think it's given all the different crises we're confronting I think it's ecologically actually stupid is what I think and kind of tragic for our little landscapes potentially but I have faith in New Zealanders I really have a huge amount of faith in our ability to look at our landscapes and to know what's good for them and then all we have to do is just basically persuade the people that represent us to do their job and give us a good future with our land on our land as part of our land and I think Ramona makes really good points about the philosophies here for me it's it's the philosophy of the balance sheet but the trouble is it's the balance sheet of the company and all the stuff that I'm talking about the rec road building systems you know the profits are exported the workers that get killed and injured in the forests the collapsing hillsites the drowned harbours that's all an externality this is kind of crazy economics and it's it's not the kind of economics we need in a small beautiful country so I just think you know the living system our communities as part of the land we shouldn't set ourselves apart from and say it's just there for us to exploit and make a buck because if we destroy it we destroy ourselves and I think the rural community are saying that loud and clear and I think that we should all be listening yeah absolutely um and I I know there have been a couple of questions come through in the q&a that are pointing out that so many of our forests are owned by overseas owners and that there isn't any purely commercial incentive to be to be looking at these regenerative forms of forestry David I wonder if you could briefly speak to I guess the the politics of that and and what yeah how do we deal with that kind of complexity and and different value systems and so on oh we've lost your audio David sorry the key the key is really to start I think with a vision and a sense of what outcomes you want and work backwards from there and I think this is one of the problems with the way that we've approached climate policy so far is through these market mechanisms which to some extent dodge the question of what our vision and what our outcomes are they just um they they simply pull in carbon into into the economy and kind of let it rip in a except for meeting the targets they're kind of indifferent to what other sorts of effects are being created I mean the the emissions trading scheme is is indifferent to the biodiversity of the trees it's only really concerned by the carbon sequestration and so I think we just need to take that step back and think more strategically about it and think about where we want to get to and how things like the emissions trading scheme can serve that purpose rather than being a an end in itself to some extent or or merely an end to to meeting international obligations I mean because I think we're just we're just missing a trick here where we could achieve those obligations by you know through subtle and and more sort of sophisticated ways and um and that we're just not seeing that kind of strategic thinking coming through I mean there's often when we're talking about carbon farming for instance there is a conversation around that the pine trees or some other exotic species could play a role as a nurse species for native trees over the long run um which scientifically is there's you know there's there's an open question there there is native regeneration that occurs within um pineus radiata forests and I know that Adam Forbes has worked a lot on this if if you cut down trees and let the light into what extent that native forest can come through but but at the moment where you know we're not even seeing that as part of the the value proposition for the carbon farming that goes in and and then we're missing other sorts of ways of addressing the same problem like for instance continuous cover forestry which is something that you know I've advocated for in the past and which isn't a very common set of forestry systems in New Zealand but we're you know the integrity of the forest is maintained by and allowing only selective harvesting of the forest so in some ways you get that benefit of a permanent carbon sink like forest but without that sense of it being locked away forever um as as we're thinking about with carbon farming at the moment we are after the forest growth plateaus in say 40 50 60 years and there is no revenue being created anymore and that's what people are worrying about whereas if it was a continuous cover forestry it would be creating jobs and especially if that was a native forest then it would also be satisfying other sorts of needs of the community it would be um you know a functioning forest that were that that has native biodiversity but also has those economic opportunities that we could be pulling out really valuable logs which which would be unique to the world so it it maps up again and the only thing that's stopping us really to create that sort of close to nature forestry where we're you know relying on native species is is just patience you know they do take longer to grow to a harvestable wage and than than some of the exotics but it's just a matter of patience and investing and committing to that long-term that long-term vision sure absolutely we're almost out of time here so i'm just going to invite each panelist to give very brief maybe 30 second answers you know if we were to do something tomorrow to move our forestry system towards being more regenerative what where would you start let's start with you Ramona we would we start we would start by applying moral courage as a nation to our decisions and we would we would imagine a different future a future where we have created a home where our children and our mokopana can reside and and feel safe and and connected i guess with with nature and with the rest of the world of course New Zealand's not only responsible for the effects of climate change but i believe that as we have been leaders in forestry before we can be leaders in forestry again and so that's my challenge to the listeners tonight Kilda beautiful answer thank you moral courage i think we need more of that uh david 30 seconds from you well i've talked about diversification already but um it would be that plus care i think we need to we need to care about the forest that we're planting and we need to care about them in the long term because i think the only forests that we're going to look after and invest in and make sure that they flourish in a in a changing climate and a changing world are going to be the forest that people care about and the forest that they like to they like to live with they like to live in and live among and and to visit and to cherish um i think if if the communities feel indifferent or hostile towards the forest that end up in there in the rohe in their um region then um then those forests are just going to get left to waste and i and that's a major issue for a long-term resilience thank you david and um day man anything you would like to finish on what would you do tomorrow i think moral courage absolutely and you know diversification yes and i think practical action that's really urgent as well because i think that without um without shifting some of the the perverse incentives that we have at the moment things will continue to play out the way they're playing out at the moment and i don't see good outcomes for for the landscapes for the people for our economy either um or for or in the end for carbon so practical action i i love this idea of the autearoa credit the idea of being able to if if a farmer joins a project and they all are joining our wayamata project they're all jumped on board because they want to look after the river they want to look after their their land if if they do that and set some of the land aside i think it should be capable of of earning something which is competitive with pines because there are so many rewards for the waterways for biodiversity for our landscapes with the soils and for carbon with those plantings so autearoa credit and one that's smartly designed to incentivize the kind of interwoven landscapes that remona and david have been talking about to make sure it actually happened lovely that sounds amazing how about that for the future hey thank you so much for everybody for joining us tonight thank you to our three panelists wonderful to have you with us and sharing all your expertise wisdom and knowledge with us this evening we have three more web episodes coming up in this our regenerative future webinar series next week we're going to be discussing urban regenerative agriculture with several experts from around the country we've got sarah smuts kennedy and daniel sherman from Auckland we've got sheldon levitt from here in wellington and bailey perryman down in christchurch and then the following week we are looking at regenerative tourism which is also a fascinating thing to be thinking about in this post-covid eras is how do we get more value out of our tourism and do it in such a way that regenerates the land so we'll be speaking in that one with Trent yayo from eco eco zip trek trek tours and also susanne beckon and larisa cooney and then our final webisode will be bringing back a few of our our favorite speakers from this series and talking about how we can move towards a more regenerative economy in general for our terra on new Zealand wonderful to have so many people here engaging in this discussion this evening thank you for your time thank you for attending on your monday evening and we will see you next week