Life on Land with David Norton

Emeritus Professor David Norton has dedicated his life to the ecology and conservation of New Zealand’s native biodiversity. Most of his career was spent working at the University of Canterbury, where he worked teaching ecology focusing on forests, as well as in more recent years where he focused on how we can conserve and sustain native forest, and manage their biodiversity values. Retiring at the end of 2021, David and his wife relocated to Lake Hawea, where he now works throughout Aotearoa doing individual farm consultancy, workshops, public speaking events and industry body and independent advocacy. David is passionate about educating and engaging an audience around biodiversity conservation and sustainable farm management, something which he communicates with his followers on Instagram too.

David is of the strong belief that farmers are custodians of some amazing biodiversity, and he is passionate about the fact that the best people to look after that biodiversity are the people who are there on the land. However, he sees one of the major things that is holding farmers back is not necessarily being aware of what they have in terms of biodiversity on farm and its value. In light of this, David is all about enthusing and helping farmers to better understand what they have on their land.

One thing that is abundantly clear about David is that he is fiercely passionate about plants and our native flora, and he can’t get enough of it. As an avid mountaineer and tramper, David spends a lot of time getting out amongst the high country where a lot of the threatened plants are found. Working with students on threatened plants at University of Canterbury, he started to develop and interest in restoration. Much of that restoration was occurring on farmland, so David began engaging with more farmers, and from there moved further into working in agricultural systems.

“And so, from there I sort of moved more into working in agricultural systems and I think it came at the same time that I realised that most of the ecology conservation work that’s been done in New Zealand universities by academics and by students was focusing mainly on the public conservation land. And there’s actually very little occurring on the rest of New Zealand and remember two-thirds of New Zealand is not public conservation land and yet there is amazing biodiversity on that two thirds. And we actually with my post grads back about 2000, we did a survey of the New Zealand ecological literature over the previous few decades and we showed that 90% of the science was being done on public conservation land, yet this is two-thirds  in New Zealand that was getting very little attention and I guess I basically just shifted my attention to those parts of New Zealand, particularly sheep and beef farms, and really trying to understand what’s there, trying to understand how it’s interacting with farming systems and then particularly how can we then start to sustain it and enhance it and move forward from there.”

SDG #15: Life on Land

SDG #15 is quite a meaty goal that seeks to:

• protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems
• sustainably manage forests
• combat desertification,
• halt and reverse land degradation
• halt biodiversity loss

While there’s a lot too this goal and the targets underneath it, there are so many connections between them and benefits from working on different areas on land provide great benefits for the landscape as a whole.

“The things that motivate me and that I draw from those particular targets, really overlap several of them, but to me, I look at New Zealand, I look at our beautiful country and I see this incredible biodiversity that is largely endemic, it only occurs in New Zealand, and I think well, you know we need to sustain this biodiversity, It’s what makes us unique. It’s what defines us as who we are, whether we are Māori or Pākehā, it’s very much our identity and the only place we can sustain, whether it’s Kaka or whether it’s rimu or whatever the species are, is in New Zealand. We’re not gonna sustain them anywhere else.

And then I guess going back to what I talked about before, there’s been so much focus on biodiversity conservation, on public land in New Zealand, but very, very little on farmland. And I look at our farmland and our farmland is mainly in the lowlands and it’s mainly in the areas where we’ve had the greatest biodiversity loss. And so, I feel that whether we’re talking about reversing the effects of habitat loss, or we’re talking about sustaining threatened species, there’s a lot of it has to occur within the rural landscapes of New Zealand and so to me, a lot of what I do overlaps with these different goals. I really feel we’ve gotta look after we’ve got, we’ve got to improve the condition of what we’ve got and we’ve gotta get more biodiversity in there. And I really believe that the people on the ground, the farmers are the people who are in the best position to do all of that as long as we can support them properly.”

The importance of conserving and sustaining our biodiversity is never far from David’s mind. But it’s not just about sustaining the trees. It’s also about understanding their value, what they provide the environment, the biodiversity of an area, but also what it can provide beyond its own value. David also touches on the importance of biodiversity for environmental management and increasing resilience to environmental shocks such as Cyclone Gabrielle on the North Islands East Coast.

“I actually feel it’s fundamentally important. Unless you want to live in a country where you basically go to a park to see biodiversity and public conservation land is all in the mountains. Unless we want to really separate and I think none of us, and that’s not what sustainable development is about. It’s not about separating, it’s about trying to bring everything together in the same environment and so I think we have to sustain, we have to enhance biodiversity across all of Aotearoa NZ and I do believe that that biodiversity, because it’s evolved here, is also much better adapted to growing here, so it can offer us a whole raft of other benefits aside from its own value. So, I mean, I think native forest across hillsides are going to be far better. If we had Tairāwhiti and East Cape in native forest rather than monocultural pine stands, I doubt would have had the impacts we’ve been having up there over the last couple of weeks for example. So, I feel I’ve got so much more to offer us in just its own value.”

David’s take on sustainability, and his most aligned SDG

When it comes to sustainability, David is focused on resilience and thinking beyond the status quo.

“I mean, sustainability is one of those words that has been used and probably misused massively over recent decades. I guess I think sustainability to me is actually about resilience and to me it’s about developing systems that are resilient to external perturbations, external disturbances, so I guess sustainable farming or sustainable biodiversity are biodiversity systems that are resilient to floods or droughts or whatever. So, I guess that’s how I look at sustainability. And I think because it’s becoming more and more important as we face the climate emergency that is out there and I think we have to start thinking not just is this system sustainable under the status quo, I guess resilience to me is thinking beyond the status quo environment and it’s thinking, OK, we’re gonna get more storm events. We’re going to get more droughts. We’re gonna get a range of changes. So, is our system able to be resilient to those changes? Can it adapt and move with those changes? So, I guess that’s why I think of resilience as the key term.”

Choosing just one SDG that you’re most aligned with is a struggle for many, and David talks to the strong interconnections between all the goals and the need to be addressing all of them if we are to tackle the problems the world is facing today.

“I believe that we are now at a stage with the impact of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere where we are facing an unprecedented future and I think to address that unprecedented future, we need to make some pretty major and very rapid changes in the way we do an awful lot of things, and I think when you look at those sustainability goals that they all sort of overlap into that same sort of the area. Again, I mean, some people will say actually the fundamental problem we need to address if we are to address the climate crisis we’re facing is goal #1, which is addressing social inequality that is the fundamental thing and underpinning that, as things like health and education and gender equality and so forth. Jonathan Porritt, the environmentalist, makes the argument in his book Hope in Hell that one of the biggest components of addressing the climate emergency is to give women the right to education in many parts of the world. So, I guess what I’m saying is these things are all interconnected in my mind, and to me I am very driven by trying to find ways that we can progress addressing what I think is an incredible catastrophe that is not that far in the future and I think we are tending to ignore it.”

“I believe very strongly, that the climate emergency is something that unifies everything because it really is real. And I feel very scared and very motivated by it at the same time, but I actually believe the climate emergency also offers us the opportunity to really address other issues like social inequality because I don’t believe we can address the climate emergency without addressing social inequality and I don’t believe that we can address social inequality without addressing the climate emergency, and I see climate and biodiversity as being inextricably linked. I mean, you know, the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis are the same, and I think the solutions, and the solution that I’m getting increasingly involved in, and I really feel if we can enhance native forest in New Zealand, we can actually address the whole raft, the social and obviously climate issues, and you see a lot at the same time so they are incredibly linked.”

Challenge and opportunity

While many may be looking at the climate crisis as a challenge, David is firmly set on seeing it as an opportunity, and believes that it can be an incredible opportunity for the agriculture sector.

“If we can adapt our agriculture systems in New Zealand to become climate neutral or climate positive, if we can adapt our agriculture systems to be biodiversity positive, if we can adapt our agricultural systems becoming water and nutrient positive, then we’ve got an incredible marketing story. I feel we’ve got potentially a unique marketing story. So, I think it’s an opportunity, but it’s also a necessity because I think we are seeing already trade barriers going up and up and up and they’re all being argued around things like carbon and that, but they’re actually trade barriers. So good old fashioned trade barriers. And I think New Zealand will only be successful if we can actually capitalise on these opportunities to be able to market our products, so we actually have to change what we’re doing and we’re already moving in that direction, but it’s gotta be part of our story to market our products. And so that’s the opportunity. But I think we don’t change we’re not able to market our products anyway, so it’s also an essential not just an opportunity.”

One thing that David sees us needing to be able to do is to ‘walk the talk’. We have to be able to prove to the world that we aren’t greenwashing, and hand on heart be able to tell people what we are doing, why we are doing it. how it is helping, and be able to justify and support that change with good objective information.

“And one of the challenges there is it’s really easy to say I planted 1000 plants, or I’ve killed 500 possums, but what is the biodiversity outcome from that? We’ve got to tease both of those out, I mean, I think it’s really important if the farmer plants 1000 plants or kills 500 possums or whatever. But I think it’s more what is the biodiversity outcome, the understory of my forest remnant is really coming back again, that’s a really important statistic. My plants have now started attracting Korimako Bellbirds to my planting and that’s an important statistic. And I also agree with your comment about, I think farmers because of the nature of many farmers don’t necessarily want to be in in the social media glare. Yet farmers telling the stories is pretty awesome too, and I think we need to tell a lot more. There’s a lot more happening out there than the public thinks and I think we need to be telling those stories.”

David leaves us with two key tips for approaching biodiversity on farm:

Firstly, he emphasises utilising the tool we all have in our pockets – the smart phone. Photos tell an awful lot and are really valuable tools in monitoring change over time and having tangible evidence and a reference point to refer to over time.

“I feel that every farmer in New Zealand who’s got biodiversity on their farm should establish photo monitoring, whether it’s planting or a remnant or a tussock covered hillside, establishing photo points and just get an understanding of change. So, you yourself are informed, but also you can show others what’s going on on your farm.”

Secondly, David encourages farmers to get a better understanding of what they have on their farm in regard to biodiversity, and also understanding how that relates to the regional context. Engaging with local groups such as catchment groups to learn about these things in collaboration with others is a great way to approach this. As well as backing things up with your photo monitoring.

“Look, I believe that the answer for a lot of the issues we’re facing are gonna be by working together and I think catchment groups are an incredible thing. And I really think that they have a super important role to play.”

Listen to David’s podcast episode here: