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S4E2 - From Grey to Green: Rethinking Infrastructure w/ David Carter
33 Plays20 days ago
As climate pressures intensify, the way we define infrastructure is being challenged. Increasingly, attention is turning to the role of natural systems—from wetlands and forests to rivers and marine environments—as essential components of resilient infrastructure.
In this episode of Infrastructure Connections, David Carter, Executive Chair at Beca and Guardian of the Aotearoa Circle, shares insights from New Zealand’s Natural Infrastructure Plan and the growing movement to integrate nature into infrastructure planning from the outset.
Drawing on practical examples, the conversation explores how nature-based approaches can complement engineered systems, deliver long-term economic value, and support the regeneration of ecosystems. Rather than focusing solely on conservation, this episode examines a broader shift toward regeneration—and what it means for communities, economies, and the future of infrastructure.
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Transcript
Nature's Overlooked Infrastructure
00:00:00
Speaker
You know, we've taken that infrastructure provided by nature for granted. We haven't really valued it until in some senses we've we've lost it.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome back to Infrastructure Connections. Today we're speaking with David Carter, and he's going to explain to us what is natural infrastructure, how can natural infrastructure and our gray infrastructure work together to create a world that we want to live in, and how do we bring back nature so that it's a place we get to enjoy.
00:00:34
Speaker
David is the Executive Chair of BECCA and Director of Meridian Energy. He's also a guardian for the Altaroa Circle and Chair of the University of Auckland Foundation. He has a doctorate in geotechnical engineering from UC Berkeley, and David was the winner of the Outstanding Leadership and Contribution to Infrastructure Award at Building Nations 2024. Hi, David. Welcome to the show.
00:00:59
Speaker
Thank you. Great to be here.
Personal Insights from the Sea
00:01:01
Speaker
You grew up on the water, and I'm just curious um what you've seen over the years, especially when it comes to the environment that you saw when you were growing up and what's happening there now.
00:01:13
Speaker
Excellent. Look, I have had a really fortunate life. um I was born into a family that that lived on the sea, loved the sea. um As a consequence, I've been on and around boats all of my life, and the Waitemata up and down the coastline of of northern New Zealand and and sailed overseas.
00:01:33
Speaker
um I have very vivid memories. ah the Great Barrier Island holds a very special place for me. And I can still remember snorkeling for c crayfish under Wellington Head at Great Barrier Island and memories of of lines, maybe kilometres, that might be a childhood memory, but lines of gannets diving off its um inside shores and a Those gannets still exist, but in much smaller pockets and crayfish now functionally extinct within the Haraki Gulf. And so while everything looks shimmering and from the surface beneath the surface, a very different state. Yeah, it took place in the diving to count the crayfish off of Waiheke Island last year. And the numbers we were seeing were, I didn't even spot one while I was out there and everybody else counted, you know, one or
Ecological Impact of Mussel Bed Loss
00:02:24
Speaker
two. it was pretty sad.
00:02:25
Speaker
You know, there was something like, 600 to 1500 square kilometers of muscle beds across the further teams and the broader hierarchy gulf and that that change is immeasurable we've we've taken we took those muscle beds partly for food partly for fertilizer and over 4 000 of new zealand's indigenous species are currently listed as threatened threatened or at risk so you know part of it is as
00:02:55
Speaker
as As a nation, we kind of think we're in great shape in the nature perspective. But in reality, the level of degradation that's that's happened over time, and and I'm not forlorn about it because i genuinely believe we can you know return that.
00:03:12
Speaker
Those muscle beds, and it goes to this conversation about infrastructure, right? Those muscle beds were estimated to have filtered all the water in the Firth of Thames within a day. The whole Firth of Thames.
00:03:24
Speaker
To try and do that mechanically is is just practically an impossibility. So we don't, you know, we've we've taken and that that infrastructure provided by nature for granted. We haven't really valued it until in some senses we've we've lost it.
00:03:41
Speaker
and And there are parts of New Zealand where that isn't the case. But, you know, I think there was like there's there's something foundational, fundamental to be able to go out and and secure Kaimoana and It's absolutely possible, but we've we've decimated parts ah parts of our coastline.
00:04:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah. What do you think we'll be doing in order to try to help make that happen again?
Innovative Marine Restoration Efforts
00:04:05
Speaker
i think um i was sitting talking to a number of parties the other day and you know yeah almost get that sense of hopelessness, but they were talking about things, fascinating things like using um robotics that they clean the legs of offshore oil and gas platforms. And they've been experimenting with them in the Hurricane Gulf about how you um remove kinnabarans and allow kelp forests to regrow.
00:04:31
Speaker
um I'm probably a believer in you know very large marine parks, not to the exclusion of of stopping ah removing your ability to take fish out of the Gulf, certainly within those marine parks, absolutely not.
00:04:45
Speaker
But because I believe if you provide those environments with a nature nature to prosper, then automatically that will those fish that that sea life will go outside those parks. And then we have this dichotomy where we're not prepared to stop for ah for long enough to allow nature natural systems to restore.
00:05:05
Speaker
I would like to see that expanded those parks expanded, definitely, so that they yeah the wildlife in them has a chance to leave without being caught. Yeah. yeah the So you've been very vocal about nature and about ah about sustainability. Was there a moment sometime in your career when sustainability suddenly made
Sustainability in Major Projects
00:05:25
Speaker
sense? Was there an aha moment or kind of a gradually gradual dawning of realization that this was important to you?
00:05:32
Speaker
um but I don't know. that and I don't know there was an aha moment. I think... I'd like to think, or I certainly feel, you know, a real affinity with nature. Probably the two um events that stand out for me that sort of you know live on vividly in my memory were both around um Project Manukau, which was a project that set out to replace the 400 to 500 hectares of wastewater treatment ponds that sat on the shore of the Manukau Harbour with on-land mechanical treatment.
00:06:07
Speaker
um and then return those ponds to the harbour itself. it It involved a phenomenal amount of work. yeah We did 13 kilometres of foreshore restoration. We built bird roosts in the harbour. But um the the moment that stood out to me as we got to the culmination of that project, where'd we'd dredged up all the sediment that had been left on the bottom of those ponds,
00:06:31
Speaker
and the final day came when we stood out on the end of the bund uh with some large diggers to see to sever that bond and basically allow the ocean allow the harbor back into that area of waterway and you do it on an outgoing tide so you can get a decent hole going before the tide turns around and starts coming in um and you know we were there I was there for the dawn blessing and the kamatua on that band were in tears because they never thought in their lifetime they would see the waters of the Manukau Harbour return to their foreshore of their Mirai.
00:07:07
Speaker
and I didn't have that attachment to nature. I loved nature, but not to the sense that it was just part of me, I was part of it. And I think the second the the second thing that stood out in that is, you know there'd been a huge amount of debate around whether the level of cleanliness, that the cleanup that we've done in inside those ponds was good enough that nature could could get pulled back again. And within then one tide, that foreshore had invertebrates all over it wow and And what i mean by that, the lesson that taught me was
00:07:43
Speaker
You know, if you give nature a sniff, if you give it the slightest chance, if you give it a little bit of help, it's away. That's a great example of where you're regenerating biodiversity. Where do you see us taking that now today?
Rethinking Economic and Environmental Growth
00:07:56
Speaker
i think we've got ourselves into this mindset where we kind of go, um if we're going to be economically prosperous, we have to do that at at the consequence of nature. we You know, degradation of nature is the automatic, inevitable consequence of that prosperity, we kind of see them as mutually exclusive. And and I just fundamentally disagree with that. In fact, I would say to you that, um you know, our prosperity as a nation relies on nature and therefore thriving ecosystems will only promote it. So, you know, how do we how we get to that state where we value nature is is ah probably the far more vexing question
00:08:37
Speaker
um may well take multiple parallel work streams, I so i sense. Yeah, and that's a fantastic example. I didn't realize those mussel beds were used for agriculture, for fertilizer, for land like agriculture. So they're being taken out of the ecosystem of the ocean and put onto the land and then the no longer cleaning the ocean. that's ah That's quite an amazing example. Well, and I think it goes a step further, right? that They themselves will then be polluting and increasing the phosphorus nitrogen in the waterways and putting it back into the
00:09:08
Speaker
and first a di So actually, yeah yeah you get a double whammy. Right. if I think that's that's a perfect segue into what we want to talk about today. you you were part of the Natural Infrastructure Plan Steering Committee, and um and we are seeing the reintroduction of muscle beds as a form of natural infrastructure.
Advocating for Natural Infrastructure
00:09:28
Speaker
How did you come to be involved in the plan and what was your role?
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've been a um guardian on the Aotearoa Circle now for about four years. um it's ah It's a six year maximum term. Over that time, the I've seen the circle deliver a really impressive body of work.
00:09:46
Speaker
And in my role as guardian, then I had a governance role for the natural infrastructure plan. And um what is the natural infrastructure plan? what's its What does it advocate? What's its main purpose?
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, look, firstly, In February this year, Te Waihanga, the infrastructure commission, launched its latest national national infrastructure plan as opposed to natural infrastructure plan.
00:10:12
Speaker
And the purpose of that plan really is to address regional development needs for for New Zealand and to guide New Zealand's um infrastructure investment over the next 30 years.
00:10:24
Speaker
It's a substantial body of work, absolutely necessary and hugely important. So I take my hat off to them. Probably the one provocation I would have in that is the focus that plan really is around hard or grey infrastructure solutions. um And it's effectively silent on nature and then and what the natural infrastructure provides.
00:10:47
Speaker
I would say, you know, almost without recognition and on a daily basis, you know, and know the the muscle bed conversation is it would be a perfect example of that. I think um the other comment I would say is too often we tend to think of nature as being separate to the economy.
00:11:08
Speaker
And we tend to regard them in two separate streams. And and I, you know, Ultimately, they're an integral part. you know Our world is a system. It doesn't exist as individual elements. It operates as a system. And therefore, the concept of the the um natural infrastructure plan certainly wasn't to establish a parallel plan to the national infrastructure plan. Rather, the ask that we had was that in time, natural infrastructure would be recognized and incorporated within that national plan as opposed to sitting outside it.
00:11:44
Speaker
And it's really about recognizing that natural infrastructure is a hugely important tool in that infrastructure toolkit. You know, those natural assets are providing resilience, productivity, intergenerational prosperity, and I think they absolutely fit well within that natural infrastructure plan. and When the plan came out, it was the first time I'd heard of it being called natural infrastructure. Of course, I'd heard of nature-based solutions, but somehow to me, nature-based solutions always seem to be serving human interests as opposed to actually being any good for nature, depending on how they were used. um Carbon credits for monocrop trees is a great example. but know
00:12:26
Speaker
So to hear about natural infrastructure where the nature is the infrastructure that we're using, where we're not using gray infrastructure anymore, so wetlands, dunes, forests, rivers, coastal habitats, that that was just fascinating to me. And so I i think the value of the plan is starts with the name and then works its way.
00:12:45
Speaker
It gets even better from there. So what are some of the real world applications of natural infrastructure?
Harmonizing Natural and Gray Solutions
00:12:50
Speaker
You know, I'm not talking about natural infrastructure completely replacing um what we think is hard grey infrastructure. Rather, my concept is that they need to work in concert both types are needed.
00:13:05
Speaker
You can understand why um pipes ah provide an immediate solution in the short term, but you also understand why and and that potentially new natural infrastructure takes a long time to create. But you can also play that game forward and in 50 years you're having to replace pipes, channels, everything else.
00:13:26
Speaker
And yet, you know forests that you planted upstream have taken over themselves and ah and the maintenance costs are a lot less. So You know, it's about, you know, it like classic examples, you see it in Wellington recently, but in Auckland, you know, take your hats off to what's happening, but but it's about making room for water. It's recognising that we've constrained watercourses, we've constrained floodplains.
00:13:51
Speaker
That works under certain events, but when those events become more extreme, and they are becoming more extreme and more frequent, Those hard systems just can't cope and they need to be working in concert with ah natural natural system design, i think is the best way to go.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We've been seeing quite a few events in the last few years and it's inevitable that we're going to have worse and worse events. And nature has been dealing with water for so long that it's gotten pretty good at handling the soil and and rerouting the water. And so we might as well let it do the work for us. Well, I think, you know, yeah I think the thing we forget, right, is that um what we've ended up with prior to pride a man messing with it is the result of thousands of years of nature playing out in the landscape. And and those systems weren't created overnight. They were created by handling all that diverse range of of um events that got thrown at it.
00:14:50
Speaker
So, and the hillsides that stood up were the ones that had the right type of vegetation on it. So, Yeah, and it's like you were saying before, it seems to be an or approach. They're not going to work in tandem. We're going to replace one system with the other. And I think we're finding that it's, I mean, we we can do that. We have tamed the environment, I guess you could say, but at great cost and a great maintenance requirement. Now this natural infrastructure plan seems to be implementing an and approach.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's about how they work in concept, right? They can both fulfill very different. And the fact is, We've already made substantial changes to our urban environment. We cannot go back to the way it was. And and we can't, we wouldn't expect to, you can't accommodate cities and people without making significant changes. I think we just need to stop and think, you know have we gone too far in some areas and how might we better do it in the future? And we're living the consequence currently of decisions that were made 20, 30, 50 years ago.
00:15:51
Speaker
fifty years ago Well, that's a good point too, because nature doesn't grow very fast and it it could take 30 to 50 years to get those forests back or get those mangroves back or get those mussels back. How do we manage that transition from gray to green so that we're not exposed in the meantime?
00:16:12
Speaker
You can put a pipe in tomorrow, which is why I'm talking about working concept. You can't create a forest tomorrow. Right. But you can start creating a forest tomorrow. that um will be there to serve in 30, 40, 50 years time.
00:16:27
Speaker
You can't put back 600 to 1500 square kilometers of muscle beds tomorrow. But we can start by how do we we could start by learning about um how we grow how we restore some muscle beds, how we get them to a critical size that then things get that then nature can take over and take out the rest of the way. We we can't restore crayfish in the Hauraki Gulf tomorrow.
00:16:51
Speaker
But we can start by um limiting the take, preventing the take, and introducing marine reserves where the young can grow, get to a certain size, and then inevitably they'll start moving out of those reserves. So it it I absolutely believe it's possible to get so to regenerate nature And I don't see that it at the exclusion of economic
Valuing Nature for Investment
00:17:17
Speaker
prosperity. I see the two of them going hand in hand.
00:17:20
Speaker
It was interesting to see them actually mirror sort of what the National Infrastructure Plan was saying, because the National Infrastructure Plan really emphasized the need for maintenance and budgeting for maintenance over time to preserve the assets that we have as opposed to ah necessarily focusing exclusively on new infrastructure. And so nature does that for us as soon as it's planted and it takes minimal amount of. Yeah. You just you don't require a ah great deal of human oversight in order to make sure it's actually maintaining its system and kind of does that naturally, pun intended. But um
00:17:58
Speaker
I thought one of the things that the plan said well was that it demonstrates a financially sound business case for nature based solutions. Look, I think, look, I'd be honest, I, you know, I also struggle with the concept of valuing nature. and And I think part of that is also because so many of those benefits almost seem spiritual. They almost seem foundational, you know.
00:18:19
Speaker
um However, everything, you know, in a business world, in a government world, et cetera, everyone turns around, what's the cost benefit ratio? What's the return on this investment and other bits and pieces? so I think the practical reality is that um in parallel parallel with working people towards understanding that that we need to recognize the value that nature is providing, with ah how you define value is an interesting thing.
00:18:49
Speaker
But if we don't provide a a mechanism that people can they they can get a certain agreement on around how ah how that is valued, then when we get to the point of convincing people that they need to start valuing nature, then we then we won't be able to go the next step. And so the idea of coming up with with methodologies of how you value nature is to provide you know that financial language, I guess, if I want to use that, that will enable governments, businesses,
00:19:16
Speaker
to make more fulsome, longer term apples for apples comparisons. I guess the good news is that the natural infrastructure plan had made an attempt at translating into those financial benefits and um and i actually offered case studies where they showed savings were achieved on real projects yeah as a result. What were some of those financial benefits that projects are seeing just in general?
00:19:41
Speaker
Oh, look, I think um you can reduce CapEx You certainly, you made that point before about once you start planting a forest and you've got it to a certain size, you know the ongoing maintenance and OPEC's associated with those forests, minimal.
00:19:55
Speaker
We well know, I think the plan said, you know over 60% of our expenditure and infrastructure needs to go into maintenance of existing hard assets. That's a cost that we've just underappreciated or under accounted for over over decades. and we're And we're living the consequence of that now in so many areas. and um Improved insurance premiums, if if ah you know you have two options, you either get to a point where um we try and address some of these issues or we get to a point where the insurance industry walks away and says, we're not gonna insure those areas or those things. and And that's not good for anybody.
00:20:35
Speaker
um And then we get into, you know um eight hopefully much better consenting compliance costs. Imagine if we could get to a point which said, you know, this project can go ahead as long as it's net nature positive.
00:20:48
Speaker
Now, that that's a very simple statement, and I understand how simplistic that is, because how you define improved net nature positive, and it will be different for everybody, and it's got geographical issues, you know, is degrading in one rohe acceptable as long as you're getting regeneration in another? but You know, i what we do know is a lot of these debates are both causing massive time delays and massive costs in their own right. And therefore, you know, how do we simplify those systems? Absolutely.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Asking if it's nature positive is definitely a valid question, especially when so much of what we're building, whether we're building on a floodplain or a recovered land or whatnot, you eat if it's...
00:21:35
Speaker
If it's stretching the system so that we need gray infrastructure to repair it, then you question whether it was worth building there in the first place, or if we could build it there in a way that doesn't require that gray infrastructure investment, then that's certainly a win.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah. and And, you know, we have that information now. I mean, insurance companies collect that information on a daily basis. they can they can show you exactly where the wrong places are to live. they can They have the hard data. This isn't esoteric stuff around what the costs are of remaining there and rebuilding versus leaving.
00:22:09
Speaker
And I think, um yeah look, we can't throw a switch. you know As I said before, that this we're living the consequences of decisions that were made 10, 20, 50 years ago. But what we can try and do is make sure that we incorporate that thinking into the planning and consenting and and urban plans that we're putting out now so that we don't perpetuate that continuity of problem and in another 30 and 50 years that that subsequent generations that we know are going to be paying for it.
00:22:40
Speaker
i Yeah. Well, what are some of the projects that are happening
Urban Planning Success Stories
00:22:45
Speaker
now? look, I think, um you know, clearly, ah you know, the work that's going on around in Auckland in Auckland at the moment around making room for water.
00:22:54
Speaker
and and those hard conversations about people that have houses in areas that that need to become floodplains and actually those houses need to be acquired. We're doing it. You know, the Auckland Airport example it speaks to me because for the first 15 years of my career, I spent it in airports building hard stands, runways and other bits and pieces.
00:23:15
Speaker
You know, if you can, you know, we that that solution of coming up with a coupled wetland biofilter solution, which took up a third of the space needed and actually provided a much higher level of treatment and allows for flood flows with a cascading level of going out of the wetlands through the biofilter and direct discharges. An example of how you build something for nature and and future proof um and a kind of futureproof and airport living in that situation.
00:23:51
Speaker
I, you know, you you read the Kaipra Moana example in there, you know, the return on investment, you know, that 4 to 1, even if, and and I well appreciate that that, you know, way of valuing that return can be will be subject to debate and reforming over time. And we absolutely need to do that. So when people talk about hard numbers, everybody's no longer debating the numbers, but are re aligned on on what we land on. And Christchurch City, with its a development of its southwestern um urban area,
00:24:29
Speaker
you know, took took it ah took that exact approach, but they were had enough foresight back in, I don't know, 1990s, late 80s, 90s, in that thinking to actually go away from a traditional pipe based concrete channel channel system to actually incorporating um There's flood zones, natural water channels. And and you know those areas, you know even if they're flooded infrequently in the short in in in between massive flood events, they provide great open spaces for nature to regenerate and for people to enjoy. And it just makes the whole subdivision you know a whole lot more enjoyable. So yeah you know there's there's an example of both saving money, getting another 12,000 homes in an area and and using
00:25:13
Speaker
um natural infrastructure to provide a solution that once you'd have been tempted to maximize that area through through the use of pipes and channels so um yeah yeah well you see that now with christchurch there that that river that runs through it because the floodplains have been left open now they have these beautiful parks that people can use when it's not flooded this is a fantastic example isn't it isn' isn't that fantastic on a sunny day down christchurch i mean how Christchurch is rebuilt and the lower Met River and the public spaces, it's it's just heartwarming.
00:25:44
Speaker
It's definitely a plus for the city. yeah i guess um that also gets back to the question of financing because that's where we always end up with infrastructure is how we're gonna finance it. um So Christchurch, when they're financing those parks, obviously they would have to pay for a park as opposed to, say, if someone's building a subdivision and gray infrastructure needs to go in, that subdivision is going to be providing contribution to the city to pay for that infrastructure. So how do we, um yeahp I don't know if there's an answer quite yet, but how do we help fund the nature solutions, the the natural infrastructure through contributions for it?
00:26:25
Speaker
for things that are maybe not being built. Oh, yeah. Oh, look, you're way out of my my expertise and other things. um That's something for the economists.
00:26:42
Speaker
um My um ah electricity generators is an example, right? where where can We're heavily reliant on what happens in the catchment upstream.
00:26:53
Speaker
we're we we're aligned on both the catchment downstream because of the impact we have on those catchments and and and our social license to operate. But if you think about going upstream, you know if you've got major slips and catchments, if you've got logs coming down rivers, you're going to have you've got siltation in your dams, you've got you know you've got to clear out your log screens.
00:27:12
Speaker
um So there's there's a cost with doing that. you think about um some remote wind sites, you've got big access roads to get to those wind sites. You need to you keep those access road open. if If your hillsides along those roads are unstable, you're going to have a ah continual maintenance. And it's about changing some of the thinking from um we'll deal with the cost when the event happens to actually putting a bit of that thinking back into the upstream and going, we know this is going to happen. We know the inevitability of it.
00:27:44
Speaker
You know, if you take, you know, Waka Kotahi and the recovery that we've seen in the S Valley and other bits and pieces, We now know that um if if the hillsides have exotic forests in the upstream catchments, when they fail and the logs come down the streams and the bridges are going to go. so we know the impact that's going to happen. We know the costs we're going to have to bear. And it's about redirecting some of that money upstream, solving those problems in advance of them happening rather than downstream at the bottom of the cliff. And i I'm conscious, as we talked before,
00:28:17
Speaker
we This is not flicking a switch. This does not happen tomorrow. You can't, particularly since there's larger parts of the economy that rely on those exotic forests and other bits and pieces in the short term.
00:28:29
Speaker
But we need to get towards some longer term thinking of where is that state that we want to end up in, that that's a more sustainable state, Tom. Yeah, I think that was one of the things the plan did well as well, was just to point out that it's in business's best interest to have that natural infrastructure in place. As you mentioned, you know all of those systems, forestry that relies on nature as part of their their actual business model, they're also going to have to rely on natural infrastructure in order to resolve some of those problems.
00:29:01
Speaker
um the The plan said that the bioeconomy delivers 27% of the nation's GDP through food production, and wood products, and tourism. And so that that's no small portion. um And so definitely those organizations are going to be interested in natural infrastructure and how they they can they can assist and really basically you are helping themselves.
Vision for Urban-Nature Integration
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. you know, we talk about nature conservation and it's almost like we want to, it has this this um implication that we want to stick a fence with barbed wire around the top of it and cord and off cordon off a bit of area and and protect it from, you know, anyone touching it or anyone. I live in a, you know, I approach it from a different angle. i I don't want, I'm not after nature conservation. I'm after nature regeneration. I'm ah i'm after um flooding our cities with bird life. I'm after, you know, flooding our Gulf with crayfish and fish. I'm not, you know, my concept behind marine parks is not to stop fishing. In fact, I think you'll take more fish out of the Hauraki Gulf and more cray, well, I know you'll take more crayfish out of the Hauraki Gulf, but you can't take any now. If we actually are prepared to think long-term and put in place measures that cause nature to regenerate,
00:30:15
Speaker
to get it back to a level where we can then decide what is that sustainable level of extraction. Yeah, well, it's it's like, what was that song, Big Yellow Taxi, which is going, you know, we're putting the trees in a tree museum and we'll charge all the public a dollar just to see them. Wouldn't it be fantastic if Kiwis walked towards their back lawns and you know we you had wood pigeons you know flying around our houses and it is absolutely doable.
00:30:40
Speaker
we have We have enough green space, we have enough parks. you know and I go back to my example around breaching the Manukau Harbour ponds. Give nature a sniff. and she doesn't need a second go at it. All we're going to do is help her. I don't know, though. You might have just solved the the financing problem. You're so you're you're proposing user-pays issue. A dollar per tree, that's a user-pay system. Yeah, well, i yeah I think we'll have to get a lot of people through our museum to play to repart New Zealand.
00:31:11
Speaker
It's going to be a big museum. Why don't we just make the museum the whole of Aotearoa? and allow people to take the trees away with them. How's that? Wow. I think we're doing that right now. Yeah.
00:31:26
Speaker
So looking out 10, 30 years into the future, where do you see all of this culminating and coming together where we have nature regeneration, we have natural integration with the infrastructure
Future of Blended Infrastructures
00:31:39
Speaker
systems? And what does that look like 30, 50 years from now?
00:31:44
Speaker
um So firstly, I think we need to be more overt about understanding, and then I'll use the word valuing, the resilience services that natural infrastructure is already providing.
00:31:59
Speaker
you know It's providing them silently. i'm I'm going to say, dare I say, without cost um on a daily basis. And we just we're we're living the benefit of it. And we don't really realize it until we've removed or messed with that natural system.
00:32:13
Speaker
I think we need to be more deliberate about um how we include natural infrastructure options in our thinking on projects from the outset. but I actually think the bigger challenge is is how do we get the majority of people within New Zealand and across the world, indeed, to understand.
00:32:27
Speaker
Well, that was my next question. what do you What would you say to our listeners to help them make this become a reality? um i think I think we need to constantly reinforce the notion of system thinking.
00:32:42
Speaker
I think too often we think about individual components within a system. We go and make a change that component, and then it surprises us that a whole lot of things happen out here. It's this sort of whack-a-mole approach, right? We're going whack-a-mole and something else pops up. um ah To the people on this call, keep bringing your great ideas forward. No one no one owns the IP. No one knows everything.
00:33:03
Speaker
And you know the right solutions will come through sharing of ideas, sharing of experiences, because there are some great examples. We just don't tend to be talking about them. And ah who knows, maybe AI is going to help us solve so work our way through this.
00:33:19
Speaker
And I'd like to personally, I'll go with a personal note. um I'd like people to start talking about nature regeneration, not nature conservation, because I think I like that. The concept of, you know, we're going to put a border around this and keep it. And then anyone who wants to cross that border and we, we you know, all hell breaks loose because, you know, we need to fight for that border. And I'm going, well, we don't need to fight for a border if it's everywhere, right?
00:33:42
Speaker
Right. And that's not to use it. That's to make sure that in using it, we're we're doing it sustainably and we're replacing it and regenerating it. So there you go. There's three things. How's that?
00:33:54
Speaker
That sounds really good. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I think this was a fantastic conversation and we were really glad to have you. Ka kite.
00:34:06
Speaker
And thank you for listening to Infrastructure Connections. Please take a moment to follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and we want to know what you think. Leave a comment down below to give us your thoughts or drop us a line at the Infrastructure Sustainability Council.
00:34:20
Speaker
Stay tuned for the next episode of Infrastructure Connections.