Environmental lessons to be shared between Wales and New Zealand

Cardiff and Waikato Universities are investigating how Wales and New Zealand could learn from each other’s approaches to managing the environment, agriculture and natural hazards.

As part of the Cardiff – Waikato Partnership, Professor Gareth Enticott (School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University) and Professor Iain White (University of Waikato) are analysing how the two countries share common environmental challenges, and how policies and practices can be exchanged between them.

The first part of the project will involve looking at the current levels of knowledge sharing between Wales and New Zealand among people working in environmental policy and practice – people working in government organisations, environmental NGOs, and the agriculture sector in order to connect people working in similar areas and share ideas.

Professor Enticott said: “Historically, there have been important links between both nations, as Wales helped in the development of New Zealand’s agricultural systems.

“Today, we also share very similar challenges in relation to a range of pressing environmental issues, including climate change, which has meant Wales has been looking at New Zealand’s approach for potential solutions. We hope this project will help provide further comparisons for policymakers as well as insights about how can we improve our ways of working to address our shared environmental challenges.”

Professor Iain White added: “Knowledge sharing should be easy in an age of high virtual connectivity, but policy makers are time poor, unsure how to learn from the experience of others in their field, and we still have the tyranny of time zones, if not distance. This project will also examine how policy makers would like to share knowledge”

Anyone connected to policymaking on the environment, land use, agriculture and natural resource management is being asked to fill in an online survey – for people working in Wales it is available in English and Welsh and a separate survey for people working in New Zealand.

To see how policies and practices have already been shared between the two countries, the research team is also keen to speak to people who have worked in both countries. Anyone with experiences to share can get in touch with the researchers directly by email: Professor Enticott: enticottg@cardiff.ac.uk and Professor White: iain.white@waikato.ac.nz