 Kia ora, kaupapa. Welcome to our seventh webisode in the series O Tatao Nihiri. It's the second of our regenerative futures brought to you by Pure Advantage. This particular series is in partnership with Tanei's Tree Trust. The webisodes are being presented and managed by Edmund Hillary Fellowships. We're very grateful for their assistance. My name is Vincent Herringer. I'm your host for this series and for tonight. And what a series it's been. It's opened up a whole world of possibilities for us talking about the potential of our native Nahiri. You'll find a lot more information about the whole theme on our website, PureAdvantage.org, including the beautiful film of farmer Ian Brennan who is in the process of turning his farm in the Waikato into a beautiful regenerative farm full of native trees, fresh water, and sheep and beef, and a very cute dog called Cassie. In fact, it's called Cassie's Farm. The whole thing, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. So in this series we've looked at a lot of problems. We've been scratching our head about all the reasons we shouldn't and can't and won't plant native forests in New Zealand. And so tonight's really about changing that paradigm into a conversation about opportunities and possibilities and hope and ambition. And to help us with that discussion, I'm joined by a really esteemed group of panellists, Dame Ann Sammon, who is a, I'll get the language, right, distinguished professor at Auckland University in Anthropology. Peter Berg, who is a forester and the chair of Tarnage Tree Trust in the studio. Hello, Peter. Welcome in Auckland. Also, Natalie Whitaker, who is the co-founder and CEO of Toha and a Gisborne resident in Tairawhiti. Also we're Dame Ann. I think Dame Ann is beaming in from all the way from Devonport today, possibly. And Jeff Ross, well-known entrepreneur and less well-known sheep farmer and stomps about now in his gumboot. So we're going to hear about what Jeff is up to. So thank you very much for joining us. You'll see the bios of all of those fine people on the chat and also on our website. Well, let's just rip into it. I thought, Dame Ann, I'd like to give you the opportunity to cast for us a vision of what success could be. And I know that you are not lacking in vision or in ambition. If we were successful in this program of getting our native indigenous Nahiri to revive and flourish, what kind of place would it be? I had the privilege of beaming into a global webinar last week of Nobel Prize winners from around the planet. And what they were talking about was basically a train wreck of colliding crises. They were talking about climate change, but they were talking about biodiversity losses. They were talking about what's happening to the ocean. They were talking about radical inequalities. They were talking about what's happened to our soils across the planet. In Aotearoa, New Zealand, we're part of a much, much bigger story. And it's really important to realise how incredibly urgent this is because these people, some of the finest thinkers on Earth, gave us a decade to deal with this cosmic train wreck, which is going on at the moment. And they included, for example, James Lublock, the great thinker who came up with the idea of Gaia. And he said, actually, climate change is a biological problem. What we are doing is releasing millennia of photosynthesis in a geological instant. This is the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution and deforestation. So it bears directly on the issues we're talking about in this webinar. And they all talked about siloed thinking, the dangers of fragmented science of short-term vision of extractive, exploitive ways of relating not just to other life forms and living systems, but to each other as well and how urgently we need to change this. And then they came up, but at the same time they were all expressing a kind of guarded optimism, which I share. And they were talking about the web of life and what we absolutely have to do as people on this planet at the moment. And in Aotearoa New Zealand, you know, I think we have an extraordinary opportunity. One of the, maybe in some ways, you know, one of the best opportunities, a small intimate society in these very beautiful, diverse islands of ours. And we have the chance to actually tackle these things together and intelligently. So it's all about intelligent land use, intelligent ways of communities structuring themselves to make a living with the land, with the rivers, with the sea. And it's much more than the right tree in the right place. That's part of it. But it's this idea, the vision that I have of our country is one where we have this mosaic of land use, where we are using, you know, the productive land for productive purposes. We're taking land which is best suited to being closed in native bush for long-term carbon sequestration, but as habitat for the birds, for cleansing the waterways, and also providing timber potentially, beautiful native timbers for our own uses. And this kind of tapestry of land use is woven across the land so that the birds sing again, and our rivers run clean and clear, and we have thriving communities. Communities that have got, because radical inequality is all part of this as well. That's the extractive use of people. And communities that are no longer disengaged from the landscapes that support and surround and animate us, but are radically linked with them and working with them in ways that are thoughtful, productive, creative, humble, not arrogant. And where we're learning from the people on the land and people that have been on this land for a long time too, which is the Panga Te Penua. You sometimes hear people say if New Zealand can't do it, nobody could do it. Did that kind of expectation come up in that meeting of minds? I think, you know, what I learned from listening to those great thinkers, it was amazing talking about the future of our planet, not just the future of our country. And that sense of urgency, which I think this is a problem we have. We have everything going for us, but there's a lot of people that have no idea how urgent this is. And many of our leaders I think are kind of fiddling while Rome is burning. Thank you, that was an excellent korero, and set us up well for this discussion. Peter, you are a partner in this whole series with Pure Advantage. What was your motivation? You know, why did you set out to do this work on Otato Nahiri? First of all, I must say that I really love Dayman's vision and the way she expressed it. And of course, a lot of that is about why we got started. We realised that if we were going to make a difference in New Zealand and in a forestry sense, people had to have the ability to do it. They needed to be better informed. They needed to have the proper tools and so forth. So when we set up Tarnes Tree Trust, that was our focus. But it's become pretty clear over time that we haven't been talking to people enough. We probably haven't been listening enough. So the series gave us the opportunity, firstly, to hear from a lot of other people who have got great ideas. It's really about giving people a voice and hearing what they're doing and seeing how we can add that to the process. But it's also about giving people access to the information and the ideas, not just ours, but those that many other organisations are now contributing. One of the things that struck me about all the content that's on there is that there's a lovely mix of ambition, business ambition, but also quite technical discussions about where trees should be planted. I'm thinking of David Norton's piece on the 10 rules for native forests. There's a real kind of... It is David Norton, isn't it? David Bergen. David Bergen, excuse me. So there's a lovely mix there, isn't there? And that's kind of your mission, isn't it, of strong ambition but practical tools? Yeah, absolutely. So things like the Carbon Calculator, we've got a series of how-to information gradually coming onto the website. We link with other information where we need to. And first and foremost, it's about making sure that, as I say, people have the tools and the information they need to do. I think it's a great resource. But of course, we need a great attitude. And I'm thinking, Jeff, you have written the book on overcoming difficulties. Every bastard says no is the name of the book about your success with 42 Below. What kind of attitude should we be adopting to this problem as a country? Because I can give you a billion reasons why we can't solve it. Kia ora Vincent. Kia ora all. Look, being part of Pure Advantage, since the onset for 10 years, what we did at Pure Advantage is recognise those are oncoming climate challenge. And as Dame says, I think we should now, as Dame says, we should now call it the climate crisis. So the first thing we need to do is act with urgency. A decade is a very short period of time. Pure Advantage's approach was that economic shifts need to happen to drive behaviours that will help heal the planet. And the two can happen side by side. We recognise that our country to succeed in a global marketplace has to draw on its unique advantages, hence the name Pure Advantage. One of our advantages is obviously the way we present to the world. So we don't want to look like a whole bunch of other countries. And that's why monocultures of pine trees is not going to help our unique advantage. It's not going to help necessarily tourism, certainly not going to help biodiversity. So first of all, we need to move to much larger amounts of native forests. And that's obviously why we're part of this programme. How can we do that fast? How can we do that and adopt the right attitude? Look, it's very easy at a time like this to point the finger and blame other entities and blame the government. I think what we've got to do at a time like this is lead ourselves and make a start. And moving now just to farming, which we're now involved in a station, Lake Aware Station. We've planted over 15,000 trees. I mean, the really interesting thing from New Zealand's point of view is actually we have another advantage here. So much of our land, for instance, in New Zealand, is sheep and beef farm, 40% of it. And that's a low-intensive agricultural use. And the farmers we speak to are pretty keen, actually, to plant more native trees, not just waterways, not just marginal land, but shelter bouts and some pretty large tracks of land on their land. And that can make a huge difference. So really long way of answering your question to make a change, we've got to start individuals. Even if you've got a small backyard, we can all plant a tree, right? We can all plant trees. And if you don't feel you're in a position to do that, then support Tarnes Trees. Support trees that counts. There's these fantastic organisations, which Peter is leading, that allow all New Zealanders to make a start and lead the world. So tomorrow morning, wake up, either plant a tree or work with Tarnes Trees that count and get them to plant a tree. That's how it works. That's sort of practical action, but to a kind of global, you know, it's a brand issue for New Zealand as we've managed to slather our beautiful land in these exotic trees, and more and more so, we're actually not helping ourselves at the very least at a brand level. No, at the very least, certainly not at a brand level. I mean, we don't like monoculture. Nature never invented a monoculture, and I'm sure Dayman will support me there. I'm not a scientist. Point one, so we don't want to become a country that looks like a monoculture, not an agriculture, not in our forests, not in anything. But certainly, we don't want to be a me too, to parts of Canada or parts of Norway. We want to enhance, amplify the unique cultural and biodiversity values that we have. If we do that, it's going to have a halo effect on all of our export items. Natalie, thank you, Geoff, very interesting. Natalie, one of the, I suppose, ambitions you have with the work that you do is trying to bring market solutions to Ngalei problems, and Geoff has just challenged us to think about not just the government fixing this and the government fixing that, but the market is not working for native forests, is it? Is there something that has to be done first to fix the market before we can bring market solutions? Kia ora, everybody. Yes. Yes, they're not working for native forests. But I think the first step is to realise that we make the markets. We are the market. And so what we want the market to do for us, we can stipulate that. And it is really, I think, my experience as the founder of Giviliddle really taught me about the power of crowds. And, you know, whenever I've come too close to the politics that so much of these decisions is driven by, I'm always reminded by something that a politics lecturer once said to me, which is, if you really want to make change, you have to move the bricks of public opinion so that the politicians are just like balloons in the wind. They just flail about on a spectrum and move wherever the bricks of public opinion allow them to go. So markets are just tools. They're just a set of mechanisms to help us achieve what we value. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is why is the market missing the value of our native forests? And just the environment more generally. And that is the work that we've been focused on in Tōhara is to really get to the bottom of what drives markets, what makes them work, what do they need as a prerequisite. And where we've kind of landed is that this is all driven by measurement and data. Every single market that is in play in the world is really just flowing information. The problem is we haven't spent enough time building up the information and data and measurement about the true value of our native forests. And the moment we solve that, we have the opportunity to start to ask the market to do different things with that information. So for me, this is about the science. It's about the measurement and then packaging up that data into instruments that can then support the market to value and put a price on this incredible asset that we are at risk of losing. I just don't accept that the market is flawed. We are the market. We better own up to that. It sounds like you're saying that people are flawed. I've never heard of such a thing. Pita, it's very interesting. She is talking about values and that's something that's come up a lot in our series, isn't it? But the full value of trees, the full value of forests, not just for timber. You're a forester. Tell us from a forestry perspective what other values do we need to elevate and then following Natalie's suggestion, measure, quantify and put some hard data into it. But what other values of forests do we need to be looking for? Well, I think, first of all, the point that Natalie's made is absolutely correct and you're correct too that everybody in every webinar we've had is at some point raised the fact that trees and forests provide a whole lot of other values. When you plant a tree, you're transforming a landscape. You're transforming the environment and you're doing it for a long time because those trees are going to sit there for a long time and they're going to do a whole lot of other things. They're a perch for birds, they're a habitat for birds, they're holding the soil together, they're cleaning the water. I mean this is all stuff that we've probably heard about even at primary school. If you ask your children or my case grandchildren about these things, most of them can tell you some of that and those sort of values are not easy to monetise. People can't translate it in a way that's meaningful to them and I think that it's one of the problems with things like the ETS that it doesn't recognise the fact that these other values do exist and in fact, as we've already acknowledged in other webisodes, probably disadvantages native trees and encourages able to move in another direction. Well, let's talk about that because the ETS is at one level quite a bold attempt to put some value onto timber, put value onto, dare I use the word, carbon farming. If I was in the room, Dayman would be throwing something at me at this point but Dayman, what is wrong with the ETS in a different form that is not allowing our native forests to be planted for landowners to be rewarded? Well, the ETS is a sort of attempt to build an artificial market because this is a market which has been sort of set up of you like in order to try and deal to generate carbon sequestration so that the country can meet some of its climate change goals. But the problem with it is it's riddled with legacy effects. I mean, our experience of forests over the last 50 years or much longer actually in New Zealand where we've gone into silver culture for a very long time now we've been focused almost entirely on exotics. And so we've got pine trees researched to the ETS degree and we know how much they'll sequester above ground at least from parts of the country at different ages and we can put a price on it. And this is the problem that Natalie's talking about. We can put a price on that because the work's being done. But the native forest and I think this is a kind of an extreme version of colonial cringe. When the European settlers arrived we looked at the bush, we started to burn and fell it. We used a lot of it to build our building stock but also we cleared it and we put a lot of land into pasture that never should have been into pasture. And then when it all started falling apart before that we thought, well, what are we going to do to hold it together? And lo and behold we came up with pine trees again. We're using exotic solutions for problems that we have imported in a way. Instead of looking at what's already here both the ways of relating to landscapes and seascapes but also our fantastic biota. 80 million years of independent evolution of co-evolution of plants, animals and the waterways, the ocean mountains and so on. And the wisdom of 80 million years of co-evolution we think we can kind of solve in the blink of an eye and come up with something smart like put it all in pasture or as put it all in pine trees. We're using an exotic solution for an imported problem and we are absolutely ignoring the amazing potential of what's already here which is our native biota. And it's not just good for carbon. It's fantastic for biodiversity. It's brilliant for waterways. It's great for the ocean. It's also wonderful for the waidua of our place for tourism for thriving communities and so on. And it's this legacy effect that's baked into the UTS makes it actually a really stupid instrument in many ways because what we're doing is making the same kinds of mistakes as we've made in the past again with the UTS when we've got other solutions available to us. How stupid is it, Natalie, in your region, what would be the implications if the UTS was left on its own? What would be the outcome? I'm thinking of Taira Awhiti. Yeah, this is very, very serious. So what we know more than anecdotally now because there is research and report that has research that has been done to regionalise the impacts of a soaring carbon price and in an ETS that doesn't properly or adequately value the carbon sequestration potential of natives. We have a runaway transition in land use underway from productive sheep and beef and also productive pine forestry. I might have active management of pines and we've been told that this is a fight between foresters and farmers. It's absolutely not. The real fight that we have is the fight for against permanent pine forestry because permanent pine forestry is not active management. There's no jobs associated with that. It's a set and forget solution. It allows the carbon market to basically trade value that shows up as nil for communities and there is just real risk. On the East Coast I hate to think that the risk right now is land classes 6 to 8. We have an overseas investment office loophole that persists allowing overseas investment that would normally be prohibited from purchasing farms in New Zealand. We currently still have a loophole that enables overseas investment to access land on the proviso that it's flipped to forestry. Current projections on carbon price we are giving overseas investors access to New Zealand land for permanent pine forestry off the back of the carbon price projections. This is a sovereignty issue for New Zealand. This is an environmental issue for New Zealand and it is also an economic issue. But this is not something that we are not in control of. We just need to get informed and ensure that we actually are having the conversation that we need to have, but urgently. Can I chip in on that one? Yeah, please do. Because I totally agree with everything that Natalie said. You know, it's not just happening in Taitapati either. It's happening in many other parts of the country and we are transforming our landscapes in a way which is just completely it's so counterproductive for our country, for our countryside, for our landscapes, for our soils. I mean, talk about permanent forest. A pine tree will live 80 to 90 years. A tortara tree will live 800 to 1000 years. You know, we're talking about permanent solutions. What on earth are we doing with short-lived, shallow-rooting exotics and when we're trying to deal with an existential crisis like climate change, it really just could not be more difficult. I can think of all sorts of east coast terms for it. I think just to be fair, the people that are planting permanent forests with pine trees or anything else have to be able to demonstrate that it is a permanent forest and a lot of the effort now and I think a whole lot more needs to go into how they intend to transition those forests to native forests, to permanent forests in the longer term. I just noted that the Journal of Forestry, which has come out in the last couple of days, has two or three articles in that looking at exactly this discussion. I think there's a whole lot more that are understood and I agree with Natalie that it's a dangerous area to rush into without the work being done, but I think the permanent forest structure requires that the landowner or the person receiving carbon credits is able to demonstrate that the forest they have on the land is permanent. How confident are you that there's going to be intergenerational management of these permanent exotic forests because it's a big ask, isn't it, to manage a forest like that, Peter? When you see foresters rushing in, as it's been said, what confidence levels do you have that management, investment, skills, labour will continue well beyond the initial sales story? I can't claim to have a lot of confidence simply because I don't have a lot of experience and I don't think anybody else has done this for long enough to be able to demonstrate that it'll always work, but I think unless we look at the issue you're quite right we could end up with a disaster in some areas, so we need to do a whole lot more work in this area, but I think in some areas and with some species it certainly looks a lot more promising than we may have first thought. Well, I hope you're right. Daman, do you share Peter's confidence? Well, no, I don't because in the areas where they're trying to do it at the moment, like the Marlborough Sounds where they are actually trying to restore old pine forests and native forests, what you're seeing there, I listen to that webinar and they talked about seed shouts, for example, having islands in the middle of these vast pine forests and somehow rather the birds are supposed to bring in enough seed to populate them with natives when the seed shout that's going to come out of a conifer forest is going to be overwhelmingly conifer seeds and that's what they're finding in the Marlborough Sounds is that you create a a light island and it fills up with pine seedlings if you want to actually deal to that, it's very expensive and in the sort of country that Natalie and I are familiar with I just don't think it's practical you know how you're going to get in there and sort of spray all these pine seedlings that are popping up in the midst of in this very steep treacherous country it's not going to be economically viable so I'm incredibly skeptical it could be, I think the people that are talking about it are full of the best intentions but when you've got a lot of overseas ownership one thing we've learnt on the East Coasters that they're very good at running for the hills when their environmental impacts happen, they either flick it off or else they go bankrupt, basically they're not there when the shambles arrives and local people are the ones that suffer every time and we're talking into generational as well the lifetime that we're talking about is more than 80 years, so I don't know why would I have gorse coming into my mind as you're talking of good intentions you know it was a terrific idea in Scotland your possums great idea fantastic, you know gorse is one of the best sorry day man, gorse is one of the best nurses for native plants and if you only got to look at the hills around Wellington, around Auckland Auckland, South Auckland areas that were in gorse 20 years ago now in tall native secondary forest really to Shade, fair point point to Peter if we were thinking about planting native forests right from the start and we were a land owner like Jeff Ross what would we do Jeff, tell us about your experience what was your motivation and how have you done it I think it's 15,000 trees did you say yeah that's right I just want to add a little point it's interesting in some parts of the country in land, Gisborne there's a whole lot of monocultures being planted in my part of the world central Otago tax payers are paying a huge amount of money and the landscape of wilding pines at the moment it seems there's a little bit of irony going on there at the moment and something not quite right in that perhaps we have allowed the pine to take a too big a role in our landscape I suspect and unfortunately right at the minute that doesn't seem to be slowing and I find it really interesting you know Dayman published a paper some time ago about the sequestration of a native forest versus an exotic monoculture forest and it would be no surprise that a native forest sequesters a whole heap more carbon certainly in time than a exotic forest and that's exactly what the world needs at the moment so why isn't a market exist that if a tautora tree is far more effective in a tautora forest carbon than a monoculture why isn't there a market that values that and places the same value on that Natalie do you think the voluntary carbon exchange that's starting to emerge I heard a comment this morning that credits that aren't ETS certified are actually starting to achieve quite strong pricing globally and just as one kg of butter from one country and how we price it do you think there's an opportunity for us to whilst we're waiting on Government to act which they need to on this one is there an opportunity for us to price our carbon credits ourselves at a premium and create a market or promote a market that pays a premium for native tree forests over exotic is that something that we can get on and do as New Zealanders is what we absolutely should do under urgency we should be marketing a credit a regenerative credit this is about more than just biodiversity this is about our fresh water systems productive land producing clean green food it's about our ability to sequester more carbon this is about a credit market opportunity that is right at our fingertips we've had an incredible a gift really in terms of how New Zealand has responded to COVID and how we're seen on the world stage in this moment we have an opportunity to launch an alternative to what we have available to us currently is that we get in behind it we also need to recognise that markets love to price risk and we need to recognise that the carbon risk in a native forest is actually an opportunity this long game and all of the conditions that are required for a native forest to thrive it's not a vulnerability for the market it's exactly what the market wants is the ability to speculate on the performance of the value of native forest we just need mechanisms and instruments that allow us to take a punt on the future value and make sure that those investors see the reward at the end this value plays out over time and the market needs to capture that risk and that value fully and I believe we can do it and now is the time to do it and the voluntary markets that provides us with that platform and it feels like just hearing this taken out and some of the voluntary markets are starting to move that way thank goodness so capitalism can drive us in the right direction ideally brands like Patagonia these are kind of flagship brands that are actually starting to raise the bar that other brands will follow and for them to participate in the next generation of native forest I guess my hope is that will drive the market in the right direction and then finally Vincent to answer your question we're fortunate we did plan 15,000 trees and we'll continue to plant trees and it hasn't compromised the productivity of our sheep and beef farm it's connected to existing native forests together so in time we'll have a good corridor and then we think the biodiversity of the region will increase and then we'll start our hope and with the help of David Norton is to start bringing some of that beach forest that used to exist in this area and just some of the gullies that we don't have to think caused down here Peter but we do have a lot of motor gauri and that's also a great seed a great pioneering I guess plan to help bring beach into our region and thankfully we've had some help from trees that count as well and some local volunteer groups so we haven't been entirely alone in it It's interesting that so much goodwill is around native planting volunteer help programs like trees that count if you said hey well I want to plant a thousand pine trees come and help us that's unlikely there's a kind of limit to though because as Natalie was pointing out what is driving a lot of this land use change which is very radical and it's happening at breakneck speed is the ETS itself it's a mechanism, it's a machine and it's producing these impacts on the ground and in communities in a way that they can't really and I think the voluntary stuff can mitigate that it's really important, it's fantastic to harness that but at the same time I think we do also have to look at what we can do to the ETS and there is an opportunity there they've got a permanent forest category coming in I'm sure that the people that are doing these mass plantings of pine trees are going to try and get their pine forests into that category I think that is a complete that would be a huge mistake the rest of the ETS is all geared to pines that category should be for natives only and it then could become one part of the machine at least that was actually giving proper value to the planting of native forests for all the reasons that we've talked about including carbon I think we need a long-term strategy as part of the ETS as well as a short-term one and the long-term strategy is not going to be pine trees because they only last 90 years so when we talk permanent forests let's not play stupid semantics and pretend they are not that should be for natives that category and that would provide another secure properly funded mechanism for landowners to say okay I'll put my land into that category there it's competitive with pines I can do that and I can use this bit of my farm we need something like that in the ETS right now Yes There are some interesting questions related to that on the Q&A and one of them is from Nicola Patrick who's just asking a very basic question how do we transition to longer-term returns on biodiverse carbon-based investments for nature without subsidising private enterprise that'll be music to your ears Jeff because we don't want to have to always rely on the government to fix these things so maybe the question is for Jeff and for Natalie what mechanisms are you seeing in addition to the ETS that are going to be playing into the hands of foresters or landowners that want to plant native forests? If I could just jump in here we're already paying we're already paying for this problem everywhere and we're seeing it show up in terms of emergency responses road costs waterways restoration this is everywhere and it's baked in already we just need to recognise that this cost already exists and start to price it in it's all that we need to do is recognise that this system is connected and so you can't just exclude certain costs and then seek to avoid the same costs somewhere else it doesn't work our regional councils have a role to play our central government has a role to play in stimulating a kind of turnaround in the market but we also need to recognise that this money is flying out the door today so just redirect it do you mean flying out the door in effectively subsidising pine plantations? Absolutely with every single weather event that occurs out on the east coast we have an enormous taxpayer burden to to redo roads to re-stabilise bridges to clear up pine slash from the beaches this is not an this is a reactive subsidy we just need to get into a positive mindset around stimulating the right sort of investment everybody has a role to play public and private but it requires that we're honest about where these costs are showing up today Good answer Jeff at a really practical level as a farmer and a landowner is there a premium that you can gain on your products as a result of having native forest on your land? Starting to be particularly in world we have world customers in Europe who recognise because the big the big macro trend worldwide is consumers want to connect with the source of their food and fibre they want to know where it comes from they want to look into your backyard and via the internet they can quite literally do that so we have world customers in Europe that want to know the source and fibre they want to know the station, the values the animal husbandry and really importantly and in growing importance the biodiversity of where that fibre comes from and so yes they are starting to pay a premium for it it's going to come to meat soon I think we're speaking with some big meat producers that will pay a premium for meat sourced from a biodiversity rich environment and I would hope in time it will come to milk as well there's a few more challenges there so it's the market forces are there somewhat in paying premiums for products from Lake Wall for instance from biodiversity rich environment our carbon footprint was calculated at Lake West Station where we're on the right side of the ledger because of the trees that we had were two times carbon positive so a premium can be gained for that we're hearing as I mentioned before a premium for albeit voluntary carbon credits of native forests but my fear is those dials need to be turned much quicker and stronger and some assistance and messaging from Government and some quite obvious flaws in the current ETS need to be corrected relatively soon for instance there has to be from our country selling ETS credits to the world why isn't there a premium on native forest credits tomorrow in New Zealand I can't understand if we're selling a pine credit and a native forestry credit why can't tomorrow it's simply just legislation why can't tomorrow we add a premium to a native forest credit and then have like all markets then have a supply and demand calculation which time to raise ideally raise the price of that native forest credit and that ultimately will drive behaviours sounds like pure advantages taking on the responsibility for solving that problem we're working and that's the catalyst for this very campaign that's great Peter another revenue opportunity is Timber and we spend a little bit of time in this series talking about native timbers as an opportunity we haven't fully explored it how realistic is it that we could be harvesting and what kind of harvesting would we need to do if we were to develop a timber a native timber industry well of course we do and it is possible to harvest native timber in New Zealand now you have to have a permit from the ministry and the harvest is done on a sustainable basis so it's all feasible it's all possible day man made the point very early on that New Zealand's got a wonderful sweet of native species native timbers and it's ironic that today we barely harvest we barely grow grow them and I think under a good example is a torturer of forests in Northland but we've also got the same case with beach on the west coast there are native forests regenerating on private land and it's quite feasible and practical we've demonstrated the ability to harvest individual trees while maintaining the core forest on the ground and of course these native timbers by taking out high quality logs periodically command a good price in the market as well so we've been doing this with torturer in Northland and we've been I guess pretty impressed by the quality of the timber that we've been able to saw her out of some pretty ugly trees and the ability to use that so I think there's a great opportunity with timber it tends to sneak in behind everything else but it's still probably the single most valuable component of a tree I know Dayman you talk about near to nature forestry and continuous cover forestry in what way those disciplines or new methods of forestry applicable in New Zealand well I think we shouldn't forget that we've been using our forests for probably around about a millennium I mean Māori use the forests for all sorts of purposes for a very long time and then Europeans came and we built most of our buildings originally out of the native forests and they're beautiful timbers so what we haven't done is what many countries in Europe have done over the last 20 years they've looked at conifer forests they've looked at the risks of fire under climate change they're all getting attacked by beatles because they're monocultures and lots and lots of forests are dying in Northern Europe and going up in flames and so 20 years ago Germany and other countries like Denmark and most of the Scandinavian countries Switzerland, a whole range of European countries said monoculture forestry is not let's look at our indigenous forestry stocks let's grow forests regrow forests from species that are well adapted to those particular habitats and those particular settings and they will manage them in ways of which are ecologically astute so they manage them for the water as well as a lot of the foresters are trained in ecology they're trained in hydrology and they manage these forests so that they harvest them in small coops sprays by and large and it's continuous forest it's continuous harvesting in small coops so these are high quality jobs foresters are highly respected in Europe they're knowledgeable people and they understand the full ecosystem that they're dealing with in a way that we have no idea about in the kind of forestry we're doing at the moment so there's a huge opportunity because when Natalie talks about the costs of what's going on with our kind of cover the place and we've implemented rows of pine trees increasingly we do very little to them and if they go into permanent pine forests then it's lock up and leave so there's no jobs this is a terrible thing for rural communities even the transition into pine forests in the first place meant that many communities the school shut down they weren't enough jobs for the fences anymore and the vets so the rural communities one by one on the east coast started to die and this will be the death knell for many if they start doing this lock up and leave forestry you need jobs and that's the beauty of close to nature forestry it creates continuous very skillful kind of ecologically responsible jobs for local people it would be fantastic for iwi for example to have young people being trained in these disciplines and working in the forests and in ways which kind of build on that long connection and i just see so much they're gorgeous timbers my husband's an architect we've used them a lot just to show people how beautiful they are and they're superior in many of their qualities to pine trees by a very long shot I suspect you're even you might even be talking to us from a villa with a remu ceiling perhaps from where we can see Peter and Natalie we've had young Sheridan Ashford on our very first show and she was a young forester who had she was very excited about her career as a forester opening up in front of her and she was starting to think about ecology and doing exactly what Dayman's talking about maybe first to you Natalie the job opportunities for ecological foresters and farm forest keepers, lovers looker afterers there must be massive opportunity on the east coast for that there's a huge opportunity if we can start to get the market mechanisms working for native forests then we're going to see an absolute boom and green jobs and the sorts of expertise and trades that Dayman has just described that have flourished in Europe this idea that managing a forest and a native forest for the all of the benefits that they provide would be such a profession such a so much full of pride I think to be able to do that work and that's all ahead of us if we can get this right and I really do think we can and to be honest I think the east coast has to there is no other option for the east coast but to embrace this this is the direction we need to go in but I think in doing that we will create a wonderful blueprint for a new type of economy around forests Peter your industry is aging if I can put it politely but what opportunities might exist for young people to come into a different kind of forestry service well I think all of the comments that Natalie and Dayman are making are of course correct there are big opportunities in these areas around planting and management control all of the things that are important in maintaining a forest and maintaining a healthy forest and a thriving forest going forward there's a big opportunity out there right now I think beef and lamb have estimated that there's at least a million hectares of reverting scrub land on freehold farm land out there now most of it hasn't got a fence around it most of it's got weeds most of it has got pest issues if we could only use mechanisms such as the ETS and perhaps some sort of premium credit you could employ a lot of people but even more importantly you could create an extremely valuable source and do it very quickly a lot of these areas have got trees of harvestable dimension and they've got opportunities for things like honey, medicinal drugs, chemicals and so forth so there's really a great opportunity we just need to pick it up and run with it one of the things we haven't touched on and perhaps this is something for you Dayman is really to bring it right back to our whenua the indigenous world view is so much more holistic in this regard isn't it of seeing resources in their complete kind of connected sense what role put Māori and Tiaw Māori world view play in the development of this kind of renewed vision of the Zealand forests well one of the people that we work with in Tairawhiti is Graham Atkins who's kind of helped to spearhead the restoration of the Rokumar arranges a huge huge challenge that's a doctor state forest which is being eaten to death basically and the knowledge of somebody like Graham he lives in these living systems of plants and the waterways he knows how all of these things work together and with the ocean and people like to have a huge amount of knowledge of these ecosystems and a love of them and I think that this is something which is very kiwi as well that you want to be tired to feel where you need to actually understand the landscapes of which you are a part and you need to have our kids need to be in the place with them from a time they're small and for this to be part of the school curriculum and so we've been running a program at our place for young kids to give them those opportunities and I think the future for Aotearoa, New Zealand it's sort of learning what we've already got these beautiful, I mean our islands are so gorgeous, they really are they're beautiful and they're very diverse and we have got this extraordinary biota which is unique on the planet and the challenge for us is to learn to live with it and to understand as you do in Tikanga Māori you're linked up with these things through Whakapapa, this great big network of life of which human beings are one part and when people say I'm the river and the river is me that's actually true, the river's dying so am I, well people do get sick when our rivers start to get polluted when our forests die, when our birds go silent we're all losing part of who we are as Kiwis as New Zealanders and yet there's this opportunity this chance for us to say look world we as a people drawing on the legacies from Europe as well, the web of life those kinds of philosophies in Europe complexity theory with the cutting edge science but also Whakapapa and Tikanga Māori, bring all those together and generate a new regenerative agriculture forestry fisheries so that people in our country are living with the land and the ocean and the waterways in the way that human beings must if we are going to survive Kyota that is an excellent way to end our webisode we couldn't get a bit of summary even if we tried to write it down so it's my pleasure and Judy to thank you as panellists for joining us thank you too for the leadership of Tane Street Trust and Pure Advantage for bringing this whole series together and also the website and please do visit the website read some of that fantastic material join the discussion and thank you audience for joining us in the series, the questions have been greater most times we haven't got to them but we're doing our best and please keep the discussion going we have more in the pipeline not just webisodes but more content as well because so long as the problem exists we need to be part of the solution so thank you for joining us and we wish you well and have a good night and thank you