Let's chat conservation in Aotearoa. Meet the CEO of WWF-NZ, Kayla.

I thoroughly enjoy talking to incredibly smart people who make you realise you know nothing compared to them.

Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb is the CEO of WWF NewZealand and is a passionate advocate for conservation and has a very interesting background in indigenous studies and treaty law.

If you’re interested in conservation and how the organisations involved try to help the world, then this is a chat for you. And if you’re interested in finding out howmuch help even the big groups need, this will be an eye opener!

In this episode we talk about:

-       Why marine protection actually is a common ground for a lot of different people

-       Her prediction on whether 30% can be protected by 2030

-       What are the specific tangible benefits to Aotearoa if we protect 40% of the oceans

-       Other things WWF works on besides oceans

-       What WWF needs

-       What she wants to see happen in the next 5 years

-       Her advice to people on how to engage with the natural world more

You can support WWF New Zealand here: https://wwf.org.nz/

You can also follow Kayla on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaylakingdon/

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Transcript:

Brianne (intro): Kia ora kaitiaki and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host, Brianne West, an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about creating a scientific approach to making the world a better place, without the judgment and making it fun. And of course, we will be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet with. So if you are looking to navigate through everything green or not so green, you have come to the right place.

Brianne: Kia ora, welcome back. Before we dive into today's conversation, I want to let you know that we have experienced a bit of a technical glitch during the recording, so some parts of the interview were unfortunately lost. They were, of course, the best bits. Now, my wonderful podcast editor, Sam, has done his absolute best to piece everything together, but if it does feel like there's a weird jump in the conversation, that's why. However, it is fabulous because today we are talking to the CEO of WWF New Zealand, who is of course a passionate advocate for conservation with a very unique background in indigenous studies and treaty law. Fascinating story of how she got to where she is. And honestly, you think you know stuff about stuff, right? And then you talk to people like Kayla, and you think, cool, I am an idiot. But she is wonderful. We have a chat about how she got here, the challenges we're facing, and what WWF really needs from us. So, let's crack into it. So, you are the relatively new CEO of WWF. How did you get here? Why? Why are you involved in conservation and what did you want to do?

Kayla: These are questions I ask myself when I get up every morning, Brianne. Who am I? Where am I? You know, growing up, I never, I couldn't, if you had told me when I was a child that I would end up running an NGO, I would have laughed at you. It just was never something that seemed remotely an option for me. Growing up, our family card had a bumper sticker on it that said, hug a logger, you'll never go back to trees. I'm like, literally not, I'm not even kidding. My dad is a civil culture forester. And when I was growing up, there's all these conversations around the dinner table about environmental protests around the mining of old growth forests on the west coast of British Columbia. And that's not to say that my family was like hard out, log all the forests and mine all the mines. But I came to these issues from a different perspective, which was one of, you know, communities being able to have jobs and people being able to make a living and how you strike an appropriate balance between enduring ecological integrity and human development, basically. And also, just for the record, no, I don't think we should mine or log old ghost forests. But my journey to conservation actually was not straightforward. When I left university, or I went to university the first time I did a business degree, I somehow kind of expanded my academic work into Indigenous studies. And then all the graduate work I did became about Indigenous studies and Indigenous self-determination and treaty law, which is interesting because there's a really strong natural resources component of that, certainly in Canada and to some extent in New Zealand, treaty settlements often relate to the return of land that's possessed by the Crown, often it's conservation land. And certainly we've seen from successive Waitangi Tribunal reports here, the Y262 inquiry particularly, that the persistence of Maori culture and the connection to flora and fauna, there's a very strong intersect there with the management of what we call public conservation lands in this country and also how the Department of Conservation manages species and ecosystems for persistence or otherwise. So when I moved to Aotearoa many moons ago, sort of for one year, but here we are, I was a visiting scholar at the University of Victoria Law School while I was finishing my PhD.

Brianne: Just casually dropped your PhD in there…

Kayla: It took me forever to finish it, honestly. It was pretty casual by the end. I was sort of in the PhD valley of despair and very broke at the time as well. And I was in a Mojo Coffee waiting for a flat white because at that time I was like measuring out expenditure by how many flat whites I would be allowed in a month. Anyway, I was in a particularly low moment and they were making my coffee and I was leafing through this newspaper that was on the table, I guess. And I was really struck by this one article, which is around an action the New Zealand Māori Council took against the Crown around freshwater management. So it was the Y2358 claim and the Waitangi Tribunal freshwater contemporary freshwater claim. And it's kind of related to what I was doing my PhD in really, which was around, I was working with First Nation in Canada, but it was all around kind of the intersection of indigenous customary law and colonial law in the context of natural resource management. And one of the assertions at the center of the Y2358 claim was around how tikanga could be applied to the management of freshwater and the fact that the New Zealand's regulatory regime for managing freshwater really did not provide for that. I was like, that's super interesting. And it's so interesting to me that these issues are so widely persistent in different colonies that apply the common law particularly. And so I decided I was going to apply for a job at MFE. And like, surprise, surprise, they actually hired me. And I got to work on that claim, which was really cool. I worked on this really amazing program of work with, it's kind of like the first, one of the first times the Crown ever did really, truly collaborative policy development with iwi. So we're working with the freshwater iwi leaders group of the National Iwi Chairs Forum, and the iwi technical advisors who were reporting to those leaders. And we did this whole program of policy work, which resulted in Tīmānoa to Wai, Mana Whakahona a Rūhe arrangements. And it was like, it's been one of the highlights of my public service career. It kind of set the benchmark for me around what good collaborative kind of treaty consistent policy development can look like. And it required a lot of, you know, faith on both sides of the equation. But I think we produced some pretty good stuff. And I was really, really proud to be a part of it. And then later on in my career, I moved it to the Department of Conservation after a few years in Parliament, supporting various ministers in the conservation space. And yeah, I led most of our treaty policy work there and then became the Director of Policy after a little while, so like very broad portfolio. But treaty consistent policy development in the conservation space, it's like kind of been more or less the focus of my entire career. So that's important to me here at WWF because that's a big focus for us too.

Brianne: Yeah, as it should be. That should be done, can be done, why haven't we done it?

Kayla: Well, I'm going to speak to the case in New Zealand. I mean, our view is that largely it comes down to political will, right? There's a lot of different overlapping interests in our marine environment in New Zealand. It's not just people who, you know, want to preserve it. So conservationists there's always often, you know, like something like 7.4 billion dollars of our economy is directly related to sectors active in the marine environment. So there's big economic interests. You know, and you look at the Hauraki Gulf as well, it's not just extractive interests, the state of the Gulf reports and the recent NZ IER valuation of the Gulf, you know, it's worth billions of dollars to New Zealand's economy. And that's not just about extraction, it's about people going there to enjoy it and tourism and all that stuff. So there's a lot of overlapping interests which are hard to navigate. And a lot of those interests, commercial fishers, rec fishers, iwi hapu, conservationists, offshore wind developers, seabed miners, shipping companies, we all talk about these issues in different ways. I think it's possible that there's more common ground around marine protection than people realise. Because when you draw out your time horizon, fundamentally everyone's interested in abundance and resilience, right? Whether you're a commercial fisherman who's looking to ensure that your way of life persists and you can continue to make a living, or you're a rec fisherman who wants to be able to take your children off to go catch snapper off the end of the dock, or you're mana whenua and you have kaitiaki responsibilities to a particular area and are deeply invested in seeing their long-term persistence intergenerationally, we are all interested in ensuring the health of our natural world persists for whatever reason. And in the context of our changing climate, we're already seeing impacts in marine species and ecosystems that are really gravely concerning. And they're concerning for us at WWF because of the risk of some of those species and ecosystems being lost forever. To our mates in the commercial fisheries sector, they're concerning because they threaten the commercial viability of their industry. And I think eventually we will find a way to come together around the need to manage for abundance. And I don't just mean abundance in terms of the maximum commercial yield. Abundance for long term resilience in the mix that we need to be looking at to ensure long-term sustainability and resilience of our ocean.

Brianne: So you reckon 30% protected by 2030?

Kayla: Look, it's not going to be easy.

Brianne: It's not a no.

Kayla: It's not going to be easy because we're tracking at less than 1% in Aotearoa, but it's not impossible. Yeah. It's not impossible.

Brianne: No, no, it's not. How are other countries doing?

Kayla: Variably. You know, it's really interesting to be a country in the Pacific region on the doorstep of Timona, Nui-a-Kiwa. A lot of our neighbours in the Pacific, who are also island people, are further advanced in their thinking around the utility of marine protection and achieving the goals they hold for their societies. They see, you know, those countries, Vanuatu, Fiji, Niue, even you look to the Maldives, they're on the front lines of climate change. They are the ones who are getting hit with the cyclones, they're the ones who are at threat from rising sea levels, their water tables are the ones that are becoming brackish. They increasingly are seeing the role of marine protected areas in their survival. So it's really interesting for Aotearoa New Zealand to be part of that Pacific community, and we have been for a long time. We're considered the Teina of the Pacific, the young one, not the Tuakana. But we're definitely the youngest, and are thinking about the need for protection as well.

Brianne: I went to Niue not so long ago, and it really was one of the most spectacular marine environments, totally untouched. It would be pretty cool to see something, you know, just leave it alone and see what happens. But I appreciate there are so many parties that do want or need access to, so leaving alone, as you pointed out, is just not the answer. What are the specific tangible benefits to Aotearoa if we were to protect 30 percent. Why should people be championing this and campaigning for it?

Kayla: I mean, the everyday person. Well, in Aotearoa, we're ocean people, right? Whether it's the long ancestral, the history of the ancestral voyage from Hawai'i, or whether it's the fact that a huge number of Kiwis live within five kilometers of the coast. We have, you know, the number of boats per capita up in the North Island, for example, is just world leading. In fact, people are out in the water all the time. And we have an inherent tie to the ocean environment from an identity
perspective. It's also critically important to our well-being, our economic well-being. A lot of people feed their families from the oceans directly or indirectly. So there's a number of benefits that are immediately obvious, right? So one, we all benefit from a healthy ocean. Every second breath you take comes from the ocean. So breathing is important, right? Particularly in the context of our changing climate where we're seeing ocean acidification and the ocean's ability to sequester carbon is also really incredible. So a very important asset to us in the fight against climate change.

Brianne: And the interesting development is the dark oxygen, as we're calling it now, deep sea mining?

Kayla: Yes. Interesting.

Brianne: There's so much we don't know.

Kayla: There is so much we don't know. But what we do know is that marine protected areas are also really important for food security. So highly protected offshore marine protected areas can help the resilience and long-term sustainability of commercial fisheries. We know that they're great in terms of our work to adapt to climate change and also mitigate it. So whether you're talking about a healthy, restored kelp forest that's inshore, which can help prevent storm surges and mitigate the impacts of severe weather events, or whether you're looking at a healthy reef system where you've got fish that eat coral for offshore islands like the Maldives, the health of those reef systems and the role of the fish in actually building the sand up and keeping those atolls above water is critically important. And we have also examples in New Zealand of where marine protected areas have been really important to our ecotourism economy. So you look at Akaroa particularly, we've had a marine reserve there for 10 years now. It's not a huge one. It's a critically important area for the endangered Hector’s dolphins though. And that community in Akaroa have largely just completely rallied around it. I mean, the tourism industry in Akaroa is really critically important to that town. And there's some really great, very responsible tourism operators who are now absolutely benefiting from that marine reserve having been in place for the marine biodiversity and it having flourished and becoming abundant. The dolphins are there all the time. You know, that's some real tangible benefits to communities from having these places.

Brianne: Yeah. I think New Zealanders are just particularly attached to the ocean. There's something special about it. I remember when I was, what, seven? I moved here. I was just a buttoned up English kid, tucked in my t-shirt into my pants and nothing got in. You know, I didn't get dirty, didn't go outside. My parents bought me a slide and I would read on it rather than sliding down it. And then it sort of digs its way inside and you become more and more aware of how incredible our planet is. And hopefully more and more people start to see that. Although I think New Zealanders do, they just don't necessarily see the link between what we do now and the longer-term future. Beyond oceans, what else is WWF working on?

Kayla: Well, another kind of priority focus area for us is around accelerated action at the nexus of climate change and nature loss. So obviously there's the notions component there, because ocean health is important to both, critically important to both. But we've been quite active in trying to ensure that New Zealand's climate action is a) scaled up and expedited, but b), that it's done so in a way that's nature positive. So we're a small country, right? We don't have hugely deep pockets and we are really at the pointy end of nature loss, having, being with one of the highest per capita species, rates of species extinction, stroke threatenance on planet. And we are really strong advocates for climate action that's nature positive. So, they're fiscally responsible interventions where you can basically, this is like the worst turn of phrase, but kill two birds with one stone, right? You're doing something that's good for nature and you're helping the country meet its climate goals. So, an example of that, which I like to try and constantly remind this government of because they keep professing to be the government of infrastructure and are like obsessed with building like seawalls and dikes and stuff. But a lot of times if you're trying to prevent coastal inundation and you're trying to ensure resilience communities for from against adverse weather, climate related weather events, storm surges, etc. You can use other things besides a seawall for that.

Brianne: Besides more concrete, you mean?

Kayla: Yeah, besides more concrete, you could restore some wetlands, you could plant some mangroves, you can do dune system restoration. There's a heap of nature-positive interventions that are real possibilities for all sorts of communities in New Zealand, which offer twin benefits, you know, more than twin benefits. They can help protect us against climate emergencies. They can also provide much-needed habitat for some of our most threatened species. They have great immunity value. People love walking through wetlands with boardwalks. It's a way for people to get out into nature.

Brianne: It's beautiful. It's not one or the other.

Kayla: That's right. And so we're quite big on the idea of natural infrastructure, room for rivers to run, riparian planting, etc. There's a native forest restoration. There's a heap of things that New Zealand can be doing that can give us real benefit from a climate perspective that also can help us address the growing crisis of nature loss. So we've been big champions for that, and it's a real priority for us.

Brianne: I know you're relatively new-ish in the role. What are you most proud of so far?

Kayla: Oh, man, that's such a good question. I mean, speaking very frankly, WWF, like a lot of charities, had a pretty bumpy time through COVID. And when I rocked up, we, you know, kind of had a bit of a skeleton crew of staff. It's been a real privilege to lead this organisation through the process of strategy development, and then building a team around that. Like, very challenging given that compared to a lot of other organisations in New Zealand, our colleague organisations like Greenpeace and Forrest and Bird were like, although we're a global brand in this country, we're heaps smaller. But the process of bringing a team together around a set of really clearly defined goals and priorities has been really gratifying to me. And we've made some really great progress in the first kind of 18 months, I guess. A particular highlight most recently was a decision by the Ministry of Primary Industries on seabird bycatch mitigation regulations. So just to give you a bit of a picture of what that means, New Zealand is the seabird capital of the world. Something like 286 of the 700 seabird species that exist globally breed here. Many of them are endemic and breed nowhere else. So I think the seabird capital of the world is kind of like a naff turn of phrase, but it is true. But 90% of our seabirds are threatened with extinction. 90! Nine zero. That's crazy, right? I think that's crazy.

Brianne: Frickin' hideous.

Kayla: Yeah. And some of those species, which are like Taunga species, iconic, the Antipodean albatross, it's literally named for us. We know that one of the biggest drivers, probably the biggest driver of its population decline is being by caught by commercial fishing operations, both in New Zealand's waters and also on the high seas. And for me, it's often hard to explain to donors why advocacy work is so, why it's so important, why it's so powerful. And in the last kind of two months, this decision has finally been taken by the Ministry of Primary Industries mandating that our surface line longline fleets now have to employ three out of three best practice mitigation methods to prevent those operations from catching and killing seabirds while they're commercial fishing. It has been such a long road to get us there. And there were heaps of steps along the way in terms of the science that's been done, particularly on the Antipodean albatross and tracking them and understanding their drivers of decline. The work that WWF has done around the rollout of cameras on boats, so ensuring better transparency and protected species bycatch, etc. has been really crucial, and that's been a multi-year project and program of work for us. Our advocacy has been really important, both direct advocacy with ministers, with the agency. We also are one of the founding organizations of the Southern Seabirds Trust, which is a wonderful organisation that's focused on kind of delivering that change, you know, with fishers, recreational and commercial fishers, and even out in the high seas. We've had our kind of hands around this issue in a number of different ways for a number of years. And the Antipodean albatross is being pretty heavily affected by climate change as well. And some of that is forcing the birds into the path of different commercial fleets, etc. But having that decision has been really massive for us because we know the birds are going to be more safe in New Zealand waters. And now that New Zealand is actually walking the talk at home, we are better positioned internationally as a country to advocate for other countries to pick up those mitigation technologies on the high seas and in their domestic waters where our seabirds are also getting hammered. So it's hard to underscore what a big win that was for us and for the seabirds, but we're really proud of it.

Brianne: I can tell by your face. The sun is coming out of your face. I'll try and describe that better for you later. You said WWF, like so many others, had struggled through COVID. I think people here have this image that WWF is a huge international organisation, which it is, but Aotearoa is supposed to stand on its own, right?

Kayla: Yeah.

Brianne: What do you need?

Kayla: We need heaps more money, Brianne.

Brianne: Yeah, that's what I wanted you to say.

Kayla: Yeah, I think there is a perception that because we're such a global brand that we're really flush with cash. But I think it's fair to say that across the board, internationally and domestically in New Zealand, there's never enough money for the conservation work that needs to be done.

Brianne: Only 2% of philanthropic funds go to the environment, is that right?

Kayla: Yeah, something like that. But I mean, even with government spending, DOC manages a third of the country on less than 1% of GDP. I mean, it's nutty, frankly. But that's right. So there's perceptions that WWF is like the big brother and we don't really need it. But at the end of the day, all of our work is made possible by the support of our donors. And we couldn't do the work that we do without people contributing to the cause. And I would say, relative to Greenpeace and Forrest and Bird who are in absolute terms, much larger organisations for us, I like to think that we offer really good value for money because we managed to speak with a really loud voice here. We've got this great network of international experts, deep capacity, and we're taken very seriously by government and industry. So when people are supporting WWF, in addition to supporting some of our really groundbreaking international work, I like to think that your donations go pretty far in a domestic context.

Brianne: And that's the key for me. I have fond, fond memories of WWF growing up, and it's the fact that you are respected. And it's not to say that other environmental organisations aren't, but I do think you are the authority in the space. You are the ones that business trusts and government trusts. I'm sure this government could pay more attention. I will leave that there. But you are the organisation that I think has the most gravitas, if you like.

Kayla: Oh, well, thank you. I mean, we all have a different role to play, right? Totally. And we need Green Peace. We're not Green Peace, but we need Green Peace. Because you need two sides of an argument. And for every Greenpeace, you've got 13 mining companies saying the exact opposite thing.

Brianne: So true. With more money.

Kayla: Yeah. My own personal kind of view and my ethic when it comes to trying to drive positive change, whether it's positive social change and treaty relations, or whether you're talking about about environmental policy or social policy, real lasting progress happens when you take steps, small steps together in the middle. You know, it requires consensus building. It requires the development of mutual understanding between different perspectives. And one of the reasons I wanted to join WWF is because this organisation is actually very good at that. And that's why we're taken seriously by industry and by government, because we walk into the room willing to listen to them.

Brianne: Yes. Work together. Yeah, exactly. Not just fight. What do you want to see happen in the next five years? It's a really big question. I know. But what would you, you know, say you want to step down in five or 10 years or never, but what would you like to see? What would you like your legacy there to be? What do you think are the most pressing challenges?

Kayla: Well, as I indicated before, Aotearoa New Zealand is kind of almost unique in that we're really at the pointy end of climate change and nature loss, with a huge number of threatened species and more on the brink and the picture looking increasingly bleak because of the impact that our changing climate is going to have on our natural world. I don't think we're beyond hope, though. And I like to think that in situations where you're confronted with a lot of challenge, oftentimes those circumstances can also be seen as opportunities. And I'll give you the seafood sector as an example, right? Our vision for the seafood sector in New Zealand is not that we don't have one. Quite the opposite. I think there is a plausible and in fact desirable future for our seafood sector that New Zealand producers of seafood products achieve market premium internationally because they are the most sustainable, the most transparent, the most respected for credible reasons for their environmental sustainability practices. And I see those types of opportunities for all sorts of industrial sectors across our economy. New Zealand can leverage the fact that we are a global biodiversity hotspot by confronting the challenge of the crisis of climate change and nature loss head on and becoming good at it, right, becoming good at addressing it. And it's going to take a change in mindset, in government and in industry and in our general population. So yes, that's a very big challenge. No big deal, right? No pressure. But I really do think that if we are able to get ourselves there, it could become an enduring source of competitive advantage for this country. And I'm on a bit of a mission actually to inspire government, industry, our society more generally, to think more about our natural environment as an asset and to let that guide our decision making. So Dr. Christina Hood and Rob Morrison, who's the chair of Pure Advantage, recently did this great op-ed on climate accounting, which is New Zealand has signed up to these international commitments.
They're binding, right? They're made manifest in some of our free trade agreements. There's like the whole kind of global rules-based order. Anyway, they're binding. They're not aspirational. And there's an increasing movement to recognise those commitments as liabilities on the Crown Books. And I'm a huge supporter of us doing this, because when politicians take policy decisions, you do cost-benefit analysis, right? But if you're not actively or accurately accounting for what your kind of cost-benefit landscape is, then the decisions you're taking are actually quite poorly informed. And if we were factoring in the cost of future climate liabilities into some more government policy decision-making, you can bet your cotton socks we would be making different choices, particularly in the transport area. Eh hem….Clean car discount….Active transport, etc. I think that argument holds for nature as well. If we were doing a better job of understanding the value that a healthy natural environment provides to us, both economically but in a more holistic sense as well, that too would be shaping different policy decisions. And I know that government isn't the be all and end all, but those policy settings do set the tone, they set the benchmark for our wider economy. And the moment that government starts doing that, I think it's a fair thing to say that industry will again shift, because industry is actually already miles ahead in some of those areas with TNFD, etc. and nature positive movement. Fundamentally, that is the legacy that I would like to leave from this role. And then 30 by 30.

Brianne: Yeah, Sylvia Earle would say “put the blue on the balance sheet”. And you're absolutely right. We don't account for nature at all. And if we did, life would be very, very different. Yeah, totally agree. Well, I end on my last, my favorite question, which I refuse to give people a heads up on. If you were Supreme World Overlord, what would be the very first thing you would do to make the world a better place?

Kayla: I just gotta say, my husband has always touted that as a possible job opportunity for me. I reckon in the context of our relationship, I am Supreme World Overlord. So tick.

Brianne: Done.

Kayla: Yeah. What would I do to make the world a better place? Like, do I have supernatural powers?

Brianne: Oh, no one's ever asked me parameters before. No. Let's make it realistic because, you know, you could be Supreme Overlord, but you could get an army.

Kayla: I have a bigger staff than six people, though.

Brianne: You have a lot of, yeah, you have the world really, to do your bidding.

Kayla: I would like to find a way where people could find common ground more easily. I'm sorry, that's a very abstract answer.

Brianne: It's very wide reaching, actually.

Kayla: But I think fundamentally, so many of the issues we encounter, whether they're, you know, we're trying to deal to environmental crises, or the crises of social injustice. I think, at the end of the day, it's a lot easier to solve problems with a degree of mutual understanding. And it's one of the things that I kind of the information technology age has set us backwards in. It's so easy to dehumanise others when they're at the end of the screen or you're not in an opportunity to meet them face to face or even talk to them. And I think we'd have a lot more generous social policy and environmental policy and foreign policy. I think we'd be just better humans to each other if we could find ways of connecting more deeply and gaining more mutual understanding.

Brianne: It's very peculiar to me that we are right wing or left wing or this or that. You're a Labour voter, you're a National voter or you're Trump. There is middle ground. We don't have to, you know, the more you put people in boxes, the more you refuse to see one another's boxes. And I think it's a very mature answer. I would ban raisins.

Kayla: Raisins are pretty bad.

Brianne: Thank you. Finally, someone agrees with me on horrible things. Is there anything else you'd like to say to people about WWF or about yourself, please donate though, because they do really good stuff.

Kayla: Please donate to us. I guess I would share one other reflection, which is people don't often connect environmental policy decision making to the experiences they have in nature. And I think in New Zealand particularly, because so many of us are blessed with green spaces, and we know we live in close proximity to the ocean where you, unless you're out in the ocean a lot, under the waves, looking around, you don't often see, it's hard to understand the metrics of its health. I just find it really interesting that we can kind of exist and live our lives without truly grappling with the state of the natural world around us, unless we're really intentional about it. And I guess I would just say to Kiwis and New Zealanders that next time you're out in the bush or you're fishing or you're going for a walk along the seashore, like take a moment to think about the health of the place that you're in and the species that share it with us and have a think about how important that resource is to your wellbeing and that of our future generations.

Brianne: Nice. Okay, one final question. Rapidfire, what are the three most important things or impactful things people can do to be better kaitiaki?

Kayla: Should I put donate to WWF at the top of the list?

Brianne: If that's not top of the list. I don't know what you're doing.

Kayla: Boom. Please send us a donation. Number two, vote.

Brianne: Yes. In both ways? With your dollar and with your vote.

Kayla: Absolutely. Vote as a citizen of a democratic country and vote as a consumer. Those choices are incredibly powerful and people, we forget that enfranchisement, getting the vote, right, is not all that recent a thing. We're actually pretty lucky to have it. And it's powerful. So please vote. And when you're voting, please think about what you're trying to achieve for the environment and who might be best placed to help you do that. And three, be hopeful. I think I oscillate every day in this job between moments of like utter despair and moments where I feel ambitious for us. But some of the challenges that we're confronting today as a planet, you know, or as a country or even in communities seem overwhelming. And you have to hang on to aggressive hope, I think. And also you can find that hope in taking small actions. There's lots of things, I know your podcast, Brianne, that you've countenanced a number of things that individuals can be doing to make a contribution. And I think at times when we feel despondent or despairing, and like things are out of our control, there are things that are within your control. And I think those are the ones that are really important to focus on.

Brianne: And remembering, of course, there's millions of other people around the world trying to make the world a better place.

Kayla: Totally.

Brianne: I would just like to say that I would not actually ban raisins immediately. It would be down the list. I would do a few more important things first, just for those who don't know me and my sense of humour. But also, I will not be taking petitions to save raisins. They are the worst fruit. Are they a fruit? I feel like they're a fruit, I guess. Anyway, so just to be perfectly transparent, I am a trustee on the board of trustees for WWF, so I know, well, I'm new, so I'm learning rapidly what it is that WWF does, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to get Kayla on the pod because it is so much more than you think. They are so much more impactful than you think, and unfortunately, we have this opinion that there is massive organisation, and obviously they are, but New Zealand is this massive organisation that doesn't need help, but they do, right? You know, they have a massive job ahead of them. They don't have a government that is in any way favourable for conservation of the environment in any way. So they have a huge job. They are doing wonderful things. And if you do have the ability to help, please do. And help comes in many forms, not just financial. Thank you again to Kayla. Don't forget to vote with your vote and your dollars. Remain hopeful, talk about it, and every single action that you take makes a difference. Kia ora kaitiaki, see you next week.

Brianne (outro): And there you go. I hope you learned something and realised that being green isn't about everything in your pantry matching with those silly glass jars or living in a commune. If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its part is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button. me a rating and hit the subscribe button. Kia ora and I'll see you next week.

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