Climate scientist Mike Joy is to be congratulated for his continuing efforts to go into battle to alleviate the degradation of our waterways and water resources (“Against the flow”, August 5). Since the early days of European settlement, our rivers and waterways have at times been used as open sewers, collecting and discharging all forms of waste into estuaries, harbours and leaching into underground aquifers. Despite efforts to clean up our act, development continues to take precedence over positive action.
This leads me to question the current state of our economy which continues to rely on agriculture, forestry and tourism as major contributors to our nation. Consider, for example, the global food production and distribution chain. Why, in a country that each year makes enough food to feed 40 million people, is one in five NZ children reportedly experiencing food poverty? We send our best products to the world and retain and import inferiorquality, highly-processed food for our own consumption. If we fed ourselves properly, our health problems would abate, with benefits for the entire health system, including dramatically reduced costs.
It is time New Zealand/ Aotearoa grew up and transformed our national economy away from agriculture, forestry and tourism as major export earners and turned to high technology to support
