New Zealand as brand

In the modern age, everything is branded. Even people try to brand themselves. Countries do it too. The U.S. has marketed the American Dream in the past; African countries their indomitable spirit and kindness; Alaska its frontier spirit, etc.

And New Zealand...


Note the caption

... cashing in on the Lord of the Rings mystique.

Well fair enough. Obviously if you've seen the movie, you probably wished you were there in those landscapes. But this 100% PURE brand image is a bit of a misnomer, as most ad campaigns are.

Take a look at a Google Maps satellite image of New Zealand and compare it to BC. The dark green in New Zealand is forest. EVERYTHING used to be dark green in New Zealand. For a country of 4 million people keen on agriculture, they're sure good at clearing land. Granted, it was the maori who started slash and burn tactics to drive birds out of the woods for hunting. And due to NZ's particular species of trees, forest doesn't regenerate as quickly in areas that have been cleared. But I'm not pointing fingers, I'm just saying that for Middle Earth, my expectations were for a bit more green cover. On the South Island, east of the main divide (which encompasses probably 40% of the country), it's all farm land. Uninterrupted forest is extremely rare. Plus it's hot and often dry, so brown tussock grass is the norm. And I'd thought all the brown hills that I saw in pictures were just avalanche slopes in the autumn! The North Island looks a bit greener from above, but is still back to back to back dairy farms.

So of this brand image, the question begs itself: 100% pure what exactly?

The common generalization of both travellers and kiwis themselves is that New Zealand is a fairly environmentally-friendly country and surely the tourism benefits from this belief. And certainly there is some world-class scenery, don't get me wrong. But from everything we've seen, there's as much environmental malpractice here as elsewhere. There's the NIMBYs fighting the wind farms, very little recycling facilities in remote areas, the mining history (including coal), the massive infringement of Big Dairy on the environment, and a ridiculous amount of food beign imported and exported unnecessarily.

There are the pluses though. While hydropower isn't going to save the world, it's certainly better than coal, and there is a fair amount of renewable energy here. The country does have a history of being proudly nuclear-free.

What I'm saying is that New Zealand isn't really ahead of the curve, in my opinion, not enough to deserve that reputation. The government will gladly pump out ads to bring you here to view its natural wonders, but as I was bluntly informed in Queenstown, "this is adventure tourism, not eco-tourism."

Some might say that perhaps the country's reputation means that tourists will hold the country up to some high standards, much in the way the China was given the Olympics to help boost democracy. Catch my drift?

The Department of Conservation (akin to Canada's Ministry of Environment) often seems more focused on bringing in tourist dollars than protecting the land. There was a huge fight a few years ago when the government wanted to start mining in National Parks. The hut system here is fantastic, but it didn't come about as some forward thinking outdoor recreation campaign. It was simply the huts leftover from trying to eradicate all the introduced species. With the hut system as it is, it's a bit of an interesting cycle. The wilderness brings hikers who enjoy the huts which brings more visitors which means more huts need to be built which means accomodation for even more hikers. And on and on. So it's great that the huts are here because it gets people outside and for the numbers that are here, minimizes their impact (much in the same way that not having facilities in national parks would minimize impact).

What is really needed, I think, is two things. For the Department of Conservation to impose an airport head tax on people entering the countries (all of who are their to see nature in one form or another) and a crackdown on goofball tourists. Leaving garbage behind at a hut needs to be punishable by law, becuase it's happening in a hundred places every day. And something like this:

...also needs to be punishable. Thousands of photos a day, many clearly violating posted signs. I was standing 10m from that seal when I took the photo. That lady was practically over top of the thing taking its portrait. It's rare that I'll actually reprimand a complete stranger like that, but boy did it feel good (and still accomplish nothing, judging by their complacent smiles). I've seen signs that say to stay 200m from penguins, the rarest in the world, mind you, and people oblivious and care-free, barely 30 feet away from the birds. And despite the popularity of the spot, no one within 10km that could possible enforce anything.

Am I becoming an eco-Nazi?

-Dan