August 10th, 2013
New Zealand has for more than a decade now been using the slogan "100% Pure" and marketing itself as "clean and green" in a seemingly successful campaign to attract tourists and boost it's trade with the rest of the world and in some cases to even charge a premium on those exports. While many kiwis may already be well aware that these images have little basis in reality, it seems that this week's Fonterra milk powder contamination scandal has opened the window to the rest of the world as well.
An article on Reuters this week talked about the sad state of many of New Zealand's rivers and the fact that New Zealand is the only OECD country that does not produce a regular national report on its environment.
Another editorial published on the Chinese news website Xinhua talked about the poor standard of New Zealand's housing and called the 100 Percent Pure brand a "festering sore".
While this may end up being very damaging to New Zealand's international branding, perhaps the saddest thing about all of this is that the reality goes far beyond the reporting in either of these articles. If they looked just a little bit deeper into New Zealand's clean green image they would find a country with carbon emissions that have increased (since 1990) at a rate second in the world only to Turkey. A country that pulled out of the Kyoto protocol and was the only developed nation not to submit a 2020 emissions reductions target to the United Nations. A country with government that has decimated it's Department of Conservation, is proposing changes to the resource management act that favour business over the environment, has allowed coal mining on the Denniston Plateau land despite the danger to endangered species and is currently looking to massively expand both fracking and deep sea oil and gas drilling despite the scientific evidence linking them directly to global warming. They would find a country that was even awarded a Colossal Fossil award at the 2012 Doha climate change conference and was described as demonstrating "exceptional blindness to scientific and political realities.... in a campaign of extreme selfishness and irresponsibility."
I guess it's no wonder John Key has compared New Zealand's '100% Pure' campaign to McDonalds' 'I'm Loving It' and said it needs to be taken with 'a pinch of salt'.
The problem Key has now is that once people start seeing that there is nothing to back up the slogans and marketing campaigns the dollars he seems to love so much are likely to dry up along with our reputation.
Maybe then it's time to gave up on the marketing campaigns for the moment and start working towards restoring this country to a place that could be honestly marketed to the world as being clean and green without the need for a pinch of salt.
References:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/06/us-newzealand-milk-image-idUSBRE97503H20130806http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/communities/8757926/RMA-changes-a-threat
http://www.rtcc.org/2013/08/06/frustration-grows-at-new-zealands-climate-change-coma/#sthash.HEdiQCVb.dpuf
http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/campaigns/save-the-denniston-plateau-ours-not-mine
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