It is all about mining national parks here in NZ at the moment, with the government keen to find some easy export dollars by digging up whatever can be found below our national parks and other highly-protected conservation land. This has generated a lot of debate, with most of it focused on the cost of any mining to the “clean and green” image of New Zealand, and any impact to our other export earnings (tourism and milk). I think this is a false argument, and I think it’s been generated by the environmental / conservation movements.
The value of this top-tier conservation land should nto be measured in dollar terms. The land, the trees, the rivers, the wildlife, all have some intrinsic value of being there. To say that this part of the Corramandel is worth this much, or the Western Paparoa ranges that much to the clean and green image, is incorrect. If we as a country keep our parks soley and cynically to make our export prices better, we’ll be found out very fast and will fail at it very quickly. There have already been articles in The Guardian and The Economist pointing out the degree of greenwash in Tourism New Zealand’s 100% pure branding, and this negative publicity will only continue as we continue not to practise what we preach with regards to our environmental purity. Especially if we view whatever environmental purity is left as having only a pure dollar value.
The problem for the conservation movements is that they started using the value of NZ’s clean and green image when trying to convince the rest of the country not to “develop” X, or to conserve Y. This is now being used by the government against them; the Prime Minister has just said essentially that we can get away with the recently-announced mining without excessive damage to our image. The value of the mining land is not in its part in New Zealand’s faux-greeen image, and it is a mistake from the conservationists to use this argument. It only encourages the current government and others to use it against them.
