Let’s face it, everyone is sick to death of the ‘s-word’. Sustainability. It’s not fun, it’s not sexy, and it’s everywhere. But it’s something we need to be thinking about and talking about… but above all acting on! As Ian Cassels, property developer and director of the Wellington Company says “It’s nothing more than forward thinking!” So if we think of it like this, what sort of ‘forward thinking’ does our capital need?

Mark Weldon is the CEO of NZX, and says that Wellington is a talent and service based city rather than an industrial city. “It is mainly supplied by renewable energy and becoming the first sustainable capital would be a perfect branding and positioning opportunity for Wellington. Wellington has a reputation for being small but influential and we should continue that in regards to sustainability.”

The city council do indeed have big plans for Wellington to be the ‘world’s first sustainable capital.’ This means the ambitious target of stabilising our corporate carbon emissions by 2010, and achieving a 40 per cent reduction in our corporate emissions, and a 30 per cent reduction in community emissions, by 2020. New Zealand is now becoming part of the global ‘350 movement’. It sounds technical, but it’s quite simple. The number refers to the ideal parts per million concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The current concentration is 387ppm, and the movement aims to reduce the level to – you guessed it – 350ppm.

But why should we care?

Mayor Kerry Prendergast reckons we can use our sustainable status as a strong positioning tool. “People are factoring sustainability into where they choose to visit or live, and it simply makes good business sense. Being ‘first’ would give us an advantage nationally and internationally.”
But Ian is worried. “Well you’ve got to be slightly worried! The world’s first sustainable capital… People don’t always necessarily understand what that means. At the moment we have a three year local election cycle, and we never really get the important things figured out.” More on the politics later... He also says that the whole tourism campaign based around Wellington has two sides. “On one hand it’s great. We used to get 6 passenger liners a year, now we get 26. Tourists in Wellington make a huge difference compared to Auckland, there all they do is clog up Queen Street!” However, he also has an issue with the campaign: that it’s not hitting the key core consideration. “Wellington is the office of the nation, whether we know it or not, and that’s its key earning strand. The city needs to be good at implementing a business plan around that notion, and making it work better.”
Andy Allison is the head of PR firm Creo Communications, and is worried too. “To set a goal like that without credible follow-through would be counter-productive to say the least. Nothing damages the sustainability movement more than hollow, unsubstantiated words. We just need to ensure that we define clearly what we mean by sustainability and we have a clear series of steps towards making this real.”

“We need to change they way sustainability is seen” says Peter Salmon, director of Moxie Design Group. “Unfortunately at the moment it is all about limiting what people are doing. You can’t force people out of cars if the buses and trains aren’t working. You need to first improve the quality of life going forward. We can’t live in caves!” He tells me about his experiences while working for Radio NZ: “You know, we get people ringing up all the time getting excited about going back to gardening and making preserves. I just think we can’t go backwards like that, it’s not the right way. We need to create solutions and stop being phobic.”

Ian doesn’t think we should go back to caves either. “You can’t get rid of technology or the world will be a bleak and miserable place. We need to plan to be here in 500 years. If you look at the way we plan you’d believe Wellington thinks its lucky to be here in three years. But what you do is try to make technology work, be reusable, smarter, and more long-term in its own sphere. “Last year we decided to bring in an electric car from China. It cost $12k and is an absolute lemon. But it was a brave and early attempt. So now we need to move on from that. Wellington is a perfect city for electric cars. It’s so small, we plan a ten-minute car trip and almost want to take sandwiches and coffee.” So it doesn’t actually matter that the car ended up being a ‘completely hopeless piece of junk’? “No! Sustainability is just a series of imperfect steps. And to have any kind of long-term plan, you need an understanding of what the city needs. If you were Bill Gates and you owned Wellington, you would put a light rail system in tomorrow. If Gates can work it out, why cant we?”

Right. So everyone at least agrees that we need to figure out what the ‘s-word’ actually means. What does it mean to them? What will this new capital actually look like?

“It will go well beyond carbon neutrality,” says Andy. “If indeed genuine carbon neutrality is possible. In a resource constrained future, the importance of issues like effective, safe and comfortable public transport and air quality will become even more important.”

Mark agrees with the transport issue too. He suggests extending the airport runway out into the harbour so large planes can land directly from places like Hong Kong, with a boat taking visitors straight to the centre of town.

That’s rather a big change; Kerry sounds as though she disagrees. “I don’t think Wellington will necessarily look substantially different - it’s more about how we do things and always keeping an eye to the future.” But being sustainable has to be more than about the carbon neutral stuff…. Right? “Yes!” says Kerry. “It’s about a livable city that meets the economic, environmental, cultural and social needs of its residents now and for future generations.”

Peter has an additional idea on what sustainable means, other than carbon neutral. “Well, it’s not just about climate, economic sustainability is very important too. Business sustainability needs more focus. I mean, what does carbon neutral mean? If it’s just about offsetting, then aren’t we just shifting our guilt?”

“It’s about asking ourselves what sort of New Zealand we want,” says Karen Fifield, CEO of Wellington Zoo. “We all have to live in this country, we have to have agriculture, native species, forests but we also have to have warm houses and be able to live our lives, and so we need to find out what that looks like.”

THE APATHY that surrounds the ‘s-word’ is widespread. What should be said to the guy who discounts this green focus of late as just another ‘fad’, where everyone is just keen to jump on the bandwagon, save money, and look good?

Andy is disparaging: “If it is a fad it is a pretty huge global version involving many of the brightest minds of our generation. Quite simply we cannot continue to use resources in the way we have been, and whether the response is called sustainability or plain common sense, you would have to be living on another planet not to recognize this.”

Mark, too, has some hard words for the doubters. “The earth has been supplying us with ‘cheap credit’ and eventually as with financially cheap credit things start to go bad and you have to start paying some of that credit back. You would have to have your eyes closed not to see that the time has now come for us to pay back our debts.”