Te Ara Paerangi - Future Pathways for Science in Aotearoa New Zealand

The March 2022 opportunity to submit to the Te Ara Paerangi - Future Pathways Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) consultation was welcomed by the PSGR. The overarching scope of the consultation, discussed in the MBIE Green paper, was how to best position New Zealand’s research system for the future.

Original Submission. The PSGR suggested that the following (submission exerpt):

These are as Boston et al. (2019) have discussed, often creeping policy problems and have significant long-term implications. Our science trajectory has handicapped New Zealand in the very decades that the globe has observed major transitions that directly affect the resilience and security of Aotearoa:

Planetary boundaries overshoot, reducing the safe space for humanity.
Current and emerging technologies as central to existential risk threatening both: (a) biodiversity and human health; and (b) Democracy and national sovereignty.

These major transitions involve navigation of ethical issues that intersect with Renn’s challenges of risk governance complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. They require that modern democratic policy arenas entrench accountability metrics that protect sovereignty and entrench rights that override political shifts. They require that precautionary approaches are integrated across the legal and science-policy interface.

Focus on climate change has overshadowed the urgency of these similarly pressing issues. In many ways, pollution driving biodiversity loss may be accelerating risk scenarios more rapidly than climate change. Democratic crises driven by digital capture, which reduces accountability and transparency mechanisms, may be even more pressing in the shorter term.

Therefore, the principles that determine the scope and focus of New Zealand’s research priorities should be informed by principles of stewardship and resilience.

I. Appreciation that science, research and innovation is:

Engaged to protect and promote the health of the citizens of New Zealand;
Engaged to protect and promote the flora and fauna and the ecologies of New Zealand.
Embedded in our social, indigenous, political, and economic cultures.
A function of influences across these cultures.
Often complex and uncertain, particularly concerning the impact of emerging technologies and human and environmental health.

II. Establishes the principle of kaitiakitanga to ensure the guardianship and protection of the people and ecologies of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Kaitiakitanga extends across resource management; defence; ecosystem protections; infrastructure; the protection of human health and stewardship of digital and emerging technologies.
The principle of kaitiakitanga obligates New Zealand’s science system to prioritise science which can inform policy to:
1. Protect environmental systems to ensure planetary boundaries (thresholds) are not irreversibly transgressed.
2. Promote agriculture that protects ecosystem services and ensures that soil quality is protected.
3. Resource science and technology to support critical local, regional and national publicly owned infrastructure and ensure that the national interest is protected.
4. Resource robust public sector digital and technological infrastructure to ensure the strategic protection of the citizens of New Zealand from predatory or abusive interests.
5. Research and report on the social and environmental determinants of health that drive multimorbidity and infectious and non-infectious disease risk.
6. Strategically target and protect democratic systems from predatory and abusive institutional interests.
7. Prioritise the protection of future generations.

III. Prioritise critical research which can proactively inform and provide feedback loops into the regulatory sphere.

IV. Promote cutting-edge basic science that engages research, science and innovation across disciplinary boundaries.

V. Resource global alliances which specifically support scientific endeavour:

To prevent overstepping of planetary boundary thresholds.
To address the social and environmental drivers of disease.
To protect from existential threats from current and emerging technologies.
To promote open science and open source democratic safeguards.

VI. Communicate that leading edge innovation will arise from active regulation:

Active regulation requires that science is resourced to support public interest
Technologies in global demand are those that address concurrent crises:
1. Pollution from industrial and urban activities.
2. Potential for digital technologies to erode sovereignty & rights.
3. Stewardship and best practice science to ensure a robust national infrastructure.
4. Chronic disease epidemics driven by food insufficiency and nutrient depletion.
Innovation is not decoupled from public life; but is embedded in the social, political and economic life of New Zealand and deployed to contribute to the wellbeing of the citizens of New Zealand.

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