In the Solomon Islands this week I heard how Tourism is being promoted as a major development industry to replace forestry – when all the trees are gone in probably less than a decade. To many people in the world forestry is just an extractive industry – like mining.
We had to delay our visit to the Solomon’s capital of Honiara by one week as the place had been booked out by 300 Japanese monks who had come to pray for the war fallen. A must-do for anyone interested in South Pacific history is the War Tour on Guadalcanal. The tragedy is almost as well captured in the 1990s movie The Thin Red Line, which takes its title form another famous war poet – Rudyard Kipling.
Why is it that we were together?
Who were you that I lived with?
Walked with?
The Brother
The Friend
In 1942 the Japanese had pushed down from the north through South East Asia and Pacific Islands. The Americans were pushing up from their bases in Santo, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) and all the way back south from Cairns and Auckland. The two Pacific superpowers smashed head-on into each other at Guadalcanal. A century of West-East taunting and pent up bad-feeling all came out at once.
The bay on Guadalcanal’s north coast is called Iron Bottom Sound because it’s littered with the wrecks of ships and submarines from both sides. 35,000 boys, mostly Japanese and American, lost their lives in the vicious 6 month see-saw battle for control of the Japanese-built airfield on the island. But looking back sixty years later it’s hard to know why they bothered. The Americans are even less conspicuous now in the South Pacific than the Japanese that they supposedly liberated it from. Why is it that we were together indeed?
Contrast this unusal visitor experience to New Zealand. Award winning Coromandel tourism operator “Kiwi Dundee” Doug Johansen has appealed to both National and Labour governments to insist that forestry companies be made to put a 50m buffer zone along roadsides to cover what overseas visitors consider disgusting eyesores – the clear felling of pines. “We have to explain that it is production forest not our native forest. But how many thousands of tourists drive through our country and do not know or find this out,” he wonders.
Mr Johansen won respect in the Eco Dawn when, almost single-handedly, he managed to have the government stop the felling of Kauri forests in the Coromandel. He says forestry companies now are clearing larger areas of pine at a time.
“This looks shocking as seen as an example on the road to Whangamata which thousands of tourists drive each year. I have seen many cars and campervans stopped and taking photos of the mess obviously to show their friends back home that New Zealand is not clean and green as claimed. Neither National or Labour appear to have the nous nor the balls to take action on this to improve our overseas image as a country that cares about the environment. The timber companies have an obligation to manage the environment much better than they are.”
Firstly, full marks to Doug for his work in saving the Coromandel kauri, and the subsequent detailed environmental interpretation he has provided to thousands of overseas visitors. This is very helpful to improving global understanding of Green Brand New Zealand. But as I planted some of the pine trees in the Coromandel’s Tairua and Whangapoua forests that Doug’s visitors are in horror seeing felled, I suggest we need to think this through a bit more. (Just for the record, my mates and I also planted many Kauri nearby the pines, which are still there).
In New Zealand we farm pine trees, like wheat or corn. Do people complain about seeing harvested wheat and corn fields? No.
Because New Zealand is a pioneer in plantation forestry, our practices are foreign to many overseas visitors. Their countries still harvest large areas of natural forests for wood fibre (eg North America). Or where natural forests have long been plundered (eg metropolitan Asia), import wood from developing countries who are only now in full plunder mode.
But New Zealand is a sustainable world leader in that almost all of our wood fibre needs are supplied from plantations established for that purpose, ie, tree farms. “These forests cover an area of 1.8 million hectares and produce over 99% of the country’s wood.” In fact, we generate a vast surplus of sustainably produced wood and paper products and are able to export this to other countries. We thereby save a few of someone else’s natural forests.
Why doesn’t our tourism industry at large explain New Zealand’s tree farming leadership to our international visitors? At the moment the tourist coaches hurry frantically through the Central North Island’s clearfelled areas hoping that the passengers might be asleep through the “nasty bits.” Campervan drivers, who mostly are not sleeping, pull over and take photos of the “carnage”.
But tour buses have microphones. Most drivers are skilled in drawling out a lot of anecdotal dribble their companies think may be of interest to visitors. So why not explain our wonderful world-leader plantation story while they are at it? Leading campervan companies have introduced GPS-guided information systems that update occupants on points of interest along the route. Why not explain the plantation story as they pass through the clearfelled areas? And regions throughout the land produce brochures on what they have to offer visitors, which are distributed via websites and information centres. Why not tell the story the way it is?
Tourism New Zealand has defined New Zealand’s target market as discerning people who have an interest in interacting with and learning about the place they are visiting. We should not be afraid to tell our excellent story to such intelligent people. They will appreciate New Zealand all the more for it, go home and tell their friends, and build our brand.
Here is a clear example of the opportunity presented by a Green Brand New Zealand strategy. At the moment our sectors are operating in silos. Tourism is doing its thing. Forestry is doing its thing. Not only is there virtually no attempt to work together, but flickers of interest in doing so have been actively discouraged. The attempt of a timber merchant to leverage the 100% Pure brand being a case in point.
A Green Brand New Zealand strategy can pull together these diverse interests and create huge synergies at very little cost. There is every opportunity to work smarter to add value for all. Conversely, if I have to sit through one more Tourism conference listening to people complaining about our “environmentally insensitive and unsightly pine logging” I think I might throw up. Now that will be unsightly.
One of Al Gore’s 7 climate change pledges is “plant trees”. New Zealand can proudly extend the famous eco-motto of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle by adding the 4th R – “Replant”. Over the last century, New Zealanders have planted more trees per capita than in any other country on the planet. Perhaps if our European visitors understood that, instead of tut-tutting when they view our tree harvesting operations, they would be clapping.
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Tags: 100% Pure New Zealand, clean & green, clean & green NZ, Clean and Green, clean and green New Zealand, climate change, Forestry, Kaitiakitanga, Solomon Islands, Tourism
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[...] A Tale of Two Industries [...]
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