Correspondence.

• Author: Southon, Gray
• Position: Letter to the editor

Sir,

The recent publication of the NZIIA, The Major Economic & Foreign Policy Issues Facing New Zealand 2012-2017, reviewed in the last issue of New Zealand International Review (vol 37, no 3), is a major contribution to our understanding of the way key New Zealanders see the international scene and the role of New Zealand in it. It presents a diverse array of perspectives with a strong economic and trade focus, which provides a refreshing shift away from the dominantly military perspective presented in several recent NZIR issues. This diversity is valuable for providing a variety of views; however it does raise some concerns about contradictions in the treatment of certain critical issues.

I consider specifically the issues of sustainability and global multilateralism.

Sustainability, represented principally by the environmental constraints on our current economic system, is addressed in some substance by five of the papers at this seminar, emphasising how such constraints present a major challenge for our society. Most cogent is the paper on the degradation of the oceans, presented by Dr Duncan Currie and Kateryna Wowk.

The issue of sustainability must be seen in the context of well over 40 years of growing scientific consensus about the many ways in which economic activity is destroying the environment, to the point where the capability of the Earth to continue to sustain us is rapidly declining. Sustainability has been the subject of many global conferences and political negotiations, and is the basis of our government's emission trading scheme. An effective solution would require fundamental shifts in our economic and, possibly, social systems, internationally and domestically. The effects of inadequate solutions would require major adaptations to changing environmental conditions and probable economic losses.

Yet the great majority of the papers completely ignore the problem of sustainability, or dismiss it as being of minor importance.

Global multilateralism represents international co-operation at the global level--the key to addressing a wide range of critical issues of our global commons, including environmental constraints. While many make reference to regional multilateral institutions, such as ASEAN, only four papers address global multilateralism in any depth. One of these, by Dr Duncan Currie and Kateryna Wowk, refers to the many agreements essential to management of the oceans, and Roderic Alley examines the critical issues...