Friday, November 03, 2006

Another 2050 scenario for NZ

is our marine zone.
Take the worst case scenario's for sealife like this one.
Imagine it's 2035 and NZ marine industry has managed it's resources well and achieved a nice sustainable harvesting level. Now imagine the "£"£$ knuckle over the way who hoovered up theirs with the next generation of drift-nets - the Scourer 3000.
What are they going to do? You would hope that they would honour your boundaries and then buy your product at higher prices but then, let's get real... we already see dodgy registered vessels ducking in and out of our marine areas scooping up some free kaimoana do you think they'll have an attack of the guilties in 25 years? with prices even higher due to no local supply?

If i had to pick a scenario as equally scary as climate change and it's impact on NZ's (hunter gatherer) economy, this would be it. Sure we earn (now) more money from meat and butter but we have to farm for that. Long term, i would expect fisheries, among other maritime bounties, to be a far more lucrative and sustainable asset if managed well. How are we going to react if/when our boundaries are violated at will? Will we have a beefed up naval response force? Hard to believe with NZ's character. WTO complaints? Against who? loads of countries will accept the registration fee of a ship, doesn't mean squat about who actually owns the damn thing. Unlike climate change, there is no need for a global consensus, NZ will have to help itself on this one and that is likely to be expensive - we've got, what?, the 4th largest maritime zone per capita in the world or something?

I would suggest NZ start to diversify it's economy so that if and when (and let's hope never) this starts to happen, it becomes a problem for <5%>10%.
I wonder if anyone has already written an analysis on this scenario...?

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