As the world’s population hits seven billion, Dr Ganesh Nana says a long-term view has to drive the decisions that must be made around the use of resources.
My full name is Ganesh Rajaram Nana Ahirao and I am a first generation New Zealander. My parents recently became great-grandparents, so the family here is up to generation number three. I can’t speak for us all but I’m certain that several generations into the future my family will still have a presence here in this part of the world.
For me, that was reinforced when, on the recent passing of my mother, decisions had to be made on where to sprinkle her remains. While it was entirely appropriate that we reunited her with her birthplace far away, it was also non-negotiable that she be close to family here, now, and into the future.
I relate this because it reflects my perception that we, my family, are “here to stay”. It follows that I should take a long-term view, and give weight to the benefits of my decisions even if they don’t arise until long into the distant horizon. This suggests the answers to many of the decisions we now face will be very different – along with the questions themselves. If you do not view yourself as being “here to stay” then your perspective may well differ.
Take food and population. Apparently, the world’s human population has just topped seven billion. This immediately raises issues around the sustainability of the use of resources – land, water, nutrients, energy, and the like. And this is central to an economy, such as New Zealand’s, that is based on the “wise” use of land and water resources.
Wise, to me, implies decisions that are cognisant of impacts both now and into the distant future.
As a nation blessed with relatively ample land and water resources, New Zealand has an obligation to use those resources wisely. In a future that will increasingly demand more and more food, our contribution – to the community of nations – is to ensure our food is produced efficiently. And, in doing so, that our efforts do not erode the land and water resources we hold so dear. To close the circle, wealth created from food production activities will need to be utilised in a manner that maintains, replenishes, and, indeed, improves the value of land and water resources. Economists call this investment, others refer to it as sustainability.
Challenges facing iwi and the broader Māori economy bring this starkly to the fore. During recent projects that I have contributed to, I heard consistently that “Māori are here to stay”. The need to lift yields on their land-holdings, not only to provide income today but also to build wealth for tomorrow’s generations, is broadly accepted. The option of “doing nothing” with the resources and taonga endowed by our tupuna is to ignore the obligations that came with such an inheritance.
Influencing these decisions is what attracted me to economics. If you are here to stay, then critical decisions about resource use (how, what, where and why) take on a different complexion. Rather than the archetypal coloniser whose primary goal is to wantonly pillage a land and its resources before departing, wise decisions mean thinking carefully about next year, next decade, next generation, next century.
This is probably the critical challenge facing New Zealand today. Whether it be challenges concerning the rebuilding of Christchurch, the use of land and water, or the distribution of income from Māori land holdings to iwi members, the answers (and questions) at hand are very different if we see ourselves as being “here to stay”.
So, perhaps now, in the development of our nation, is a good time to really ask that question. Are we here to stay?
Dr Ganesh Nana is chief economist at BERL.
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Originally published in IN-Business March/April 2012
