Letter to Aotearoa
June 2020
Aotearoa has emerged in good health from the Covid 19 crisis, thanks to the leadership of Jacinda Adern and her Government, and the common sense and positive cooperation of most of us, the people of Aotearoa.
Yet Covid 19 has changed our country and the whole planet in a way that was unimaginable just a few months ago. Even in Aotearoa, it has caused great loss, great suffering and introduced a world of uncertainty. We are much less certain about what the future holds for us. Many things that we once took for granted are no longer within reach.
But Covid 19 has taught us many valuable lessons. It has reminded us how much we need each other, and that the key to our future is caring for one another, and importantly for the land that is our home.
But we are in danger of forgetting the lessons that we have so recently learnt. Our planet is still on the threshold of ecological collapse. Climate change, sea level rise, global scale pollution and the exhaustion of the planet’s resources are still realities that we are yet to address effectively.
In our haste to return to normal and to restore our economy we must not reinstate the practices that have brought our planet to this point of crisis. We need to look hard at ourselves and the future we are manifesting as we look to restore the way of life that we treasure and claim as our right.
The aim of the Resource Management Act was to manage our country’s resources in a sustainable way, to ensure that the generations that follow us will have what they need to be well. It was not put in place to ensure that businesses can operate profitably.
Suspending some of the provisions of the RMA to enable businesses to get back up and running, as is being proposed, may create employment and help re-establish the country’s economy, but the cost to future generations will be far in excess of repaying the billions of dollars that we have had to borrow to survive.
We may be taking from them the resources they need to repay those billions. The economy may more quickly recover, in the short term, but the planet itself will have been delivered yet another blow as it struggles to cope with the damage that we have caused by taking more than what the planet was able to give.
We need to remember the saying:
Ka ora te whenua, ka ora te tangata.
When the earth is well, we are well.
Our future depends on the wellness of the earth, not on the wellness of our economy.
Our long term future depends on the wellness of the earth.
To ensure that we recover as a people from Covid 19, we need to change the order of priorities that we live by.
Our first priority must be caring for the whenua. Papatuanuku. Mother Earth. There can be no exceptions to that.
The first question in any business proposal needs to be: Does this proposal
help the earth more than it hurts it. If the answer is yes, then it can be approved. If the answer is unclear, it must be reconsidered. If the answer, is no, the business or activity will take more than it gives, then it is declined.
Short term gains must not come at the cost of long term pain. We do not
have the right to jeopardise the futures of those who follow us.
This is a challenge for us who call Aotearoa our home. We are a fortunate country. We have more than enough to ensure that every one of us has a warm home to live in, enough food to be well, a way of living that ensures that we live together in harmony and in respect, and an environment that is healthy and sustains all the life that belongs here, not just us, people.
Let’s make that our goal. Let’s not return to a world in which individual rights are paramount, no matter the cost to others and to the whole network of life that we all part of and need to be well.
It is achievable. We only need to work together.
- Pa Ropata / Rob McGowan, June 2020
