CLEAN & GREEN?

Green Brand New Zealand is

A strategy to boost New Zealand’s earnings through global leadership in environmentally friendly consumer consciousness.

We need to lift our effort and results in the Green Brand New Zealand domain to A+ levels.

You may ask don’t we already have a Green Brand New Zealand Strategy? Isn’t clean and green already core to our development?

But there is disagreement and confusion amoungst the ranks. Some business leaders are reluctant to push the clean and green message. We have already seen that Tourism have at times tried to downplay the environmental content of 100% Pure New Zealand. There is little, if any, cooperation going on between sectors. We have seen that Forestry and Tourism for example, could help each other a lot, but there is almost no dialogue between them. Some feel that we should be setting a more aggressive net emissions reduction target to emphasise our clean and green status. And despite overwhelming evidence about the risks to our credibility in global food markets, we continue to procrastinate in our policies on genetic modification. Clearly, clean and green is only a passive strategy in New Zealand. It has just grown organically as some businesses and sectors independently have discovered its value to them.

We wouldn’t want the All Blacks to run onto the field with confusion, even disagreement, amoungst the players about the strategy. We wouldn’t want there to be no dialogue and cooperation between the forwards and the backs.  So why do we tolerate this confused and disorganised state of affairs for our single most valuable asset for national development – our brand?

We have the opportunity to take on Green Brand New Zealand as a conscious and proactive strategy for national development. We can make clean and green much bigger through a coordinated, synergetic approach. That opportunity is ours to pass up, now.

Interestingly, the Green Brand New Zealand strategy doesn’t require money. It’s about better coordination of existing efforts between multiple organisations and sectors around a single-minded purpose. It also requires some bold policy and PR platforms such as going GM Free, and perhaps setting more aggressive net emissions reductions targets. The money already exists. The strategy is about making better use of existing resources.

A number of Government agencies would need to be involved. Trade and Tourism New Zealand, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry of Economic Development, and Ministry for Environment for starters. Probably a Chief Executive level taskforce structure also including participants from private sector and other stakeholders noted below would be in order. Don Brash is already leading a Taskforce to look at how we can catch up with Australia’s standard of living. Maybe they should look at Green Brand New Zealand.

For those who like structure, a Public/Private CEO level Green Brand New Zealand Task Force could quickly get the Strategy looking like a strategy. Vision, Mission, Goals, Objectives, Key Actions, Responsibilities, Time Frames, Key Performance Indicators, Feedback Mechanisms, Budgets and Resources, Frameworks, Templates, Matrices. These folks are smart enough to put all that together in the blink of an eye. The nuts of it are in Tony Everitt’s book CLEAN & GREEN? Brand New Zealand, but many much smarter minds than mine can create the necessary structures and fill in the many, many gaps.

But of course, success of the strategy is not about committees, structures, and reports. These are just hygiene factors that of course need to be managed well. Attempts focusing on the mechanics of the process have been made previously and not got far. Success is about passion and commitment to reaching the goal.

Things that need to be done fall into 3 broad areas. Firstly, continue to get our own environmental performance house in order. Secondly, adopt a leadership role in global definitions of Green. Thirdly, bravely push out our boat by reminding our world we are a Green leader. These three need to be coordinated though. They sit one on top of the other like a pyramid.

Firstly, get our own environmental performance in order. We need to continue to walk the talk. A good start has been made by the likes of The New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development and many others. Some more effort to get urban Kiwis out of their cars and onto more sustainable forms of transport is badly needed though. Improving our environmental performance is the foundation of the Strategy. And progress in this area will be spurred by turning up the heat in the other two areas. These other areas give direction and purpose to the foundation. The whole thing will go better by working on all three areas concurrently, as a single system.

Secondly, adopt a leadership role in defining Green. Our trade negotiators need to be retrained, refocused, and appropriately resourced. Skills in classical market access for new world agricultural products are a good start, but the Green trade rules are a whole new gambit. Like all trade rules, without intervention they will favour those with the loudest collective voice. By definition, these are the big countries, who are developing Green values on the assumption of big populations.

Our allies in this new environment of Green negotiations may not be traditional to us. For example, as discussed Energy, countries like Switzerland and Norway share our interests in hydro-electricity remaining within the definition of renewable energy. As in all trade negotiations, our scientific and academic institutions also have a big role to play in technical back-up. We need to keep up with legal developments in relation to green claims for products and services.

Thirdly, bravely push out our boat by reminding our world we are a Green leader. This is payback, although needing good grounding in the first two areas to be successful. It is a coordinated publicity campaign the likes of which our nation has never run before. From a logo and tagline perspective, 100% Pure New Zealand can continue to do the job. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But this task is much, much more than just a Tourism advertising campaign.

For example, Tourism helps Forestry by pointing out to international visitors our world leadership in tree planting. Forestry helps Tourism by providing carbon offsets for international travelers. We make bold new Green gestures, like going GM Free, to boost the long-term value of our agricultural exports. We radically focus our limited promotional resources in environmental media and programming like, just for example, Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. In short, we take a number of things that are possibly happening already but in an uncoordinated way and at a snail’s pace, and coordinate them and make them our national priority. Single minded focus to break through in a very cluttered world.

In 2008 the oil shock absorbed a lot of attention, and rightly so. In 2009, taking appropriate action to deal with the global economic crisis has been a valid focus. Jackson’s The Hobbit is imminent and hopefully that will restore some of The Lord of the Rings aura to New Zealand in the global arena. And increasingly the 2011 Rugby World Cup will be top of mind as the opportunity to maximize.

These are all worthwhile pursuits. But New Zealand can’t just go from managing one short term threat or opportunity to the next. That’s not the way to make real long-term forward progress. 2013 will be here soon enough, and all of the above currently topical events will start to seem as remote and irrelevant as the America’s Cup, Millennium, and the Asian Financial Crisis.

New Zealanders pride ourselves in our teamwork, our ability to work together towards a common goal. Our proven track record in punching above our weight globally in sporting and creative initiatives is testimony. We have a fantastic opportunity to apply that Kiwi Spirit to our greatest challenge. That is, building a sustainable economic future for our kids. Green Brand New Zealand could be a global win/win by both doing that, and helping our species address its biggest challenge – surviving the threat of itself.

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Tags: 100% Pure New Zealand, clean & green, clean & green NZ, Clean and Green, clean and green New Zealand, Green Brand New Zealand, Kaitiakitanga

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