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Past eventsAGM and fourth Edward Goldsmith Memorial LectureThursday, 27 October 2016 5.30–6.30pm: Lecture by Alison Dewes, One Health Professionals, Cambridge: NZ livestock farming is facing a multitude of challenges:
Also the wellbeing of farm animals is increasingly important to consumers, who want food from sources they can trust. It’s time for a health check on traditional but increasingly intensified farming models now being followed. We need to think about being fit and able to change. Gains in increased efficiency and reduced risk of pollution can be found in using more land for non-animal protein sources. We also need land use practices that lead to a substantial reduction in air and water pollution. Alison is a fourth generation dairy farmer and second generation veterinarian, She is a firm believer that our future food production systems have to be profitable and resilient while maintaining ecological health. She was elected to the NZ Veterinary Board in 2015 and is on the National Environmental Reference Group for Landcorp. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting AGM and third Edward Goldsmith Memorial LectureThursday, 29 October 2015 5.30–6.30pm: Lecture by James O’Neill, writer and barrister, Brisbane – From the West’s Wars to the Silk Roads of the New Eurasia The United States has been the dominant world power since World War II, even prior to USSR break-up, as indicated by more than 70 governments overthrown by the US in that period. The USSR collapse led to a complete reshaping of the European landscape, but at the same time China has emerged as a leading world power, as it had been before the 17th century. In recent years its growing financial and economic strength is transforming not only China, but also laying the foundations for a completely new economic order through a ‘new silk roads’ policy that is accompanied by a network of regional and world-wide agreements. Once again Eurasia is at the heart of what Sir Halford Mackinder in 1904 called the ‘world island’. For the west, these developments will shape the foreseeable future world-wide. James writes on geopolitical issues with a legal and human rights perspective. He was educated at Canterbury, Victoria and Auckland Universities, and has practised as a barrister in Brisbane since 1984. He publishes in Counterpunch and New Eastern Outlook, and presents to organisations such as the Australian Institute for International Affairs. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting 2014 AGM and second Edward Goldsmith Memorial LectureTuesday, 28 October 2014 5.30–6.30pm: Lecture by Kay Weir, Pacific Ecologist editor – The Ecological World View: Conserving life, ending the culture of war
Replacing the life-threatening economic view is now vital. The ecological world view offers a high quality of life for all people worldwide, a joyful, life affirming cultural renaissance, ending the war culture while conserving the Earth’s ecosystems on which we depend for life itself. Breaking out of the mind-set of an outdated paradigm is the greatest adventure in which humanity can engage. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting 2013 AGM and inaugural Edward Goldsmith Memorial LectureTuesday, 22 October 2013 5.30–6.30pm: Lecture by Alan Bagnall – Being Just to a Changing Environment
Alan will talk on the changing environment and vegetation of the Eastbourne area over the last 1000 years or so, and his hopes for its future. He is one of a number of New Zealanders who have committed a significant part of their lives to restoring the natural environment to its pre-settlement state. He is a primary school teacher and children's author, and has lived all his life in the eastern bays of Wellington Harbour. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting Honouring the 25th Anniversary Year of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Nuclear-Free legislationTuesday, 23 October 2012 5.30–6.30pm: Presentation by Dr Nancy Pollock: Food contamination from US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific Dr Pollock (Anthropology and Development studies (retired), Victoria University of Wellington) has been involved in studies of food security and health in Pacific communities over the last 40 years. The effects of ingested radiation from local food due to US atomic tests at Bikini are a particular concern today for Marshallese communities in the northern Pacific, and earlier for Hiroshima survivors. The situation requires us to examine recently declassified documentation to seek ways of learning about the effects of food contaminated by radiation on people’s health. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting
More details, including information on nominating officers are available in this PDF. Korero by Bishop Muru Walters on Maori environmental philosophy, and PIRM 2011 AGMThursday, 27 October 2010 5.30–6.30pm: “Maori environmental philosophy – how it can guide us to a life sustaining culture” by Rt. Reverend Bishop Muru Walters, Bishop of the Southern Region of Aotearoa Muru Walters is an artist, sculptor, teacher, community leader and an Anglican bishop. He is also a noted former Maori All Black. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting
Talk: A Genuine Progress Index for the Wellington Region, and PIRM 2010 AGMMonday, 27 September 2010 5.30–6.30pm: “A Genuine Progress Index for the Wellington Region” The GPI is increasing becoming a proxy for measuring the well-being of a nation or region. It is a more holistic measure of wellbeing, which incorporates economic, social, environmental and cultural measures. We will report on progress all the councils in the Wellington region are making toward a regional GPI under the auspices of the Wellington Regional Strategy. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting
The reality behind Brazilian Biofuels in New Zealand – a presentation by Padre Thorlby, Pastoral Land Commission, Pernambuco, BrazilThursday 22 April 2010, 6–8.30pm Resolution agreed to by the meeting
Note: The Brazilian biofuels issue is covered in detail in Pacific Ecologist #17. Padre Thorlby is a priest who has worked for 25 years with landless people, homesteaders and sugarcane workers in Brazil. He will provide a first-hand report of the ecological and human rights issues that result from cheap Brazilian ethanol, which is now being imported to fuel New Zealand cars.
The panel will be chaired by economist Bill Rosenberg, NZ Council of Trade Unions, and include Paul Bruce, Wellington Regional Councillor; Father Gerard Burns, chair of Caritas/social justice worker; Doug Clover, convenor, Sustainable Energy Forum; Jim Kebble, founder, Commonsense Organics and Kay Weir, editor, Pacific Ecologist. Visit arrangements: Padre Thorlby will be in Wellington from April 18 to 25 on the invitation of the Pacific Institute of Resource Management. Contact Kay Weir at Tel 04 939 4553 or 389 5384 or e-mail pirmeditor@paradise.net.nz. Padre Thorlby will also be speaking Victoria University on the evning of Monday 19 April. Email john.overton@vuw.ac.nz for more details. Background to the issue: See Padre Thorlby’s article in Pacific Ecologist #17 Notes on Padre Tiago Thorlby The CPT was one of several Brazilian civil rights and social justice organisations which contributed to two reports on biofuels, published in Brazil: Agroenergy Myths & Impacts in Latin America, published in October 2007 and Food & Energy Sovereignty Now: Brazilian Grassroots Position on Agroenergy, published February 2008. The NZ government, advised by the EECA, our Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, has developed a policy of introducing “sustainable biofuels” from Brazil into NZ petrol stations under a sustainability option and they are currently sold in several Mobil petrol stations around NZ particularly in the Wellington region. But millions of farmers in third world countries, including in Brazil, know they are not sustainable at all. There is a clear possibility we will soon have a huge amount of biofuels in petrol stations which will be a human rights and environmental horror story masquerading as sustainable. EECA is holding a conference on 21 April this year on Biofuels and Electric Cars. A speaker on biofuels at this conference will be Elizabeth Beall, from the (green-washing) Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels, who has also worked for the Inter-American Development Bank, which promotes biofuels, particularly from Latin American countries. We are holding our meeting on 22 April to address the human rights and ecological issues not being addressed at the EECA conference. Meeting supported by The Latin American Solidarity Committee, LAC, The Alternative Technology & Living Association, and Friends of the Earth, NZ. Wellington celebrates life of Eco champion, Edward Goldsmith, Founder of Pacific EcologistThursday 3 December 2009 at 5.30-7.00 pm A celebration of the life and work of pioneering ecologist, Edward Goldsmith will be held on Thursday 3 December 2009. This follows a memorial service in St James, Piccadilly, London on Tuesday 1 December. Widely known as Teddy, Edward Goldsmith's New Zealand connection came through his marriage to New Zealander, Katherine Victoria James, and with her he made many friends here. He contributed to the Green Party in NZ and to Green parties around the world and in 2002 he set up Pacific Ecologist in Wellington, a magazine he enjoyed for its similarity in style to The Ecologist he founded in the UK in 1969. He also gave radio interviews and spoke at public meetings around NZ, once exhorting New Zealanders to dig up genetically modified crops. He participated as a speaker at three PIRM public meetings, on genetic engineering, climate change and the Iraq war. Teddy's work is as relevant today as ever before as he perceived high-consuming industrial societies dependent on finite fossil fuels as essentially short-lived and aberrant. He believed only small-scale, low-consuming societies are truly viable and opposed the World Bank's plans to impose the industrial development model on remaining traditional societies in the third world. He also took direct action against large dams, nuclear power stations and once presented the UN with a petition signed by three million people calling attention to rainforest destruction. His sense of humour and concern for humanity are shown in his most recent collection of short articles with cartoons in The Doomsday Funbook, epitomised by an article titled, "For Exxon-Mobil, human survival is just not economic." He died aged 80 on August 21 in his house in Tuscany, a converted convent, overlooking one of his favourite places in the world, the mediaeval city of Siena. The Siennese acknowledged Teddy as one of their own, so when word got out he was unwell only days before his death, people flocked from the city to pay their respects to a man they admired for his wisdom, humanity and his sense of fun. PIRM members, Friends of Teddy's and members of the public are warmly welcomed. Speakers will include Jeanette Fitzsimons, Green MP, Kay Weir, Editor Pacific Ecologist and Rod Alley, Political Scientist. There will be an opportunity for others to contribute. Meeting arranged by the Pacific Institute of Resource Management, publishers of PACIFIC ECOLOGIST, contact Kay Weir email pirmeditor@paradise.net.nz – 04 939 4553 or Obituary: Edward Goldsmith 8 November 1928 – 21 August 2009 
With deep sadness we report the death in Italy on Friday 21 August of Edward Goldsmith, supreme ecologist, whose clarion voice over decades on environmental issues awoke so many of us to the terrible problems created by industrial society. Besides writing many books, including The Great U-Turn and Blueprint for Survival, he was the founding editor of The Ecologist, UK from 1969, and later founded and supported a string of Ecologists, including Pacific Ecologist, and others in France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, India and Lebanon. It has been a great privilege for PIRM as publishers of Pacific Ecologist in Wellington, New Zealand to have had such a close association with Teddy, one of the world’s greatest thinkers and writers on environmental and the interlinked social justice concerns. His intellect, generosity, energy and tireless work in his writings and speeches over decades, laid the foundations for a much broader, more integrated understanding of the study of ecology than the orthodoxy of the day. The book he considered to be the most significant work of his life, The Way: an ecological world view, has been reprinted many times and outlines his ideas on how we must live in harmony with the natural world and return to a sustainable way of life that also satisfies our biological, social, ecological and spiritual needs. In the next issues of Pacific Ecologist we will present more of his work. Rest in peace, dear Teddy. But we must increase our efforts to promote his vision around the world of a truly sustainable way of life. Edward Goldsmith contributed much to New Zealand, because, luckily for us, he married a New Zealander, Katherine Victoria James, with whom he had two children Benedict and Zeno. For many years they escaped the northern winter and came to New Zealand to stay at their home north of Auckland. Teddy was invited often to talk at many events around the country and accepted invitations with enthusiasm, electrifying audiences with the clarity and intensity of his discussions on the need for sustainable agriculture and other concerns. Unafraid of controversy, he was reported in the NZ Sunday Star Times in 1999 as exhorting New Zealanders to rip genetically engineered crops out of the ground. When the Monsanto issue of The Ecologist, UK, which directly challenged the powerful corporation, was finally printed, after frightened printers initially pulped the edition, a court case was half expected. But Teddy was delighted with the idea. He said, “Nothing would give me the greatest pleasure than Monsanto should take us to court.” For him it would have been another opportunity to expose the disastrous practices behind the Monsanto myths. Monsanto did not take The Ecologist to court, recognising no doubt their formidable opponents and the very bad publicity they would have given them. We were very fortunate in having Teddy take part as a speaker in three PIRM public meetings, the first in February 2001, Feeding the World in the Global Economy: GE – Remedy or Ruin?; in April 2002 he gave a key talk on the launch of the first issue of Pacific Ecologist at our public meeting, Can we survive climate change? And in March 2003 he spoke at our meeting, Resource Wars: From the Global Economy to Iraq, on the eve of the US bombing of Iraq. He was an unforgettable speaker, impressing with his vast knowledge and the directness of his words. May your great work continue Teddy, even though we are bereft without you. Read Annabel Freyberg’s 1996 interview with Edward Goldsmith Talk: Lessons from a warmer past, and PIRM 2009 AGMTues 20 October, 5.30–8pm 5.30–6.30pm: “Lessons from a warmer past”: It is difficult to conceive that records of Earth’s climate millions of years ago might have any relevance for us today. Over the last few years new techniques along with old and new geological observations are revealing a great deal about climate from the distant past. These are providing a yardstick against which we can begin to see the profound changes we humans have begun making to our climate. 6.30–7pm Refreshments 7–8pm PIRM Annual General Meeting
Melting icecaps film and PIRM 2008 AGMThurs 30 October, 5.30–8pm 5.30–6.45pm: Lessons from a Melting Icecap a film by three students from Otago Girls’ High School 6.45–7.15pm: Refreshments 7.15–8pm: Annual General Meeting view full details [130KB PDF] The Amazon, Climate, Biofuels – 2 public talksHosted by the Pacific Institute of Resource Management and the School of Geography, Environment & Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington Presented by international ecologist Peter Bunyard: “The Amazon and climate – Why we neglect the rainforest at our peril” and “Biofuels, will they save or sink us?” on Thursday, 7 February 2008 at Rutherford House, Bunny St, Wellington. Peter Bunyard was educated at Cambridge and Harvard Universities before becoming cofounder with Edward Goldsmith and editor of The Ecologist in 1969. From 1977 to 1992 he was consultant editor for the Industry and Environment Office, United Nations Environment Programme in Paris. Since 1989 he has conducted field work in the Colombian Amazon, and for the last 16 years has coordinated the International Honors Programme, on Rethinking Globalization: Ecology, Justice, and Society (previous name Global Ecology) at Boston University, USA. He has taken part in many seminars and workshops in France, Brazil, Switzerland, the US, Britain and Colombia. His recent publications include: Extreme Weather (Floris Books, 2006); “Gaia, the Amazon and Climate”, in Scientists Debate Climate (MIT Press, 2004); “Feeling Climate: the Shaman’s Cure”, in Pacific Ecologist, Summer 2007/08. Peter also wrote the script for Paco Peña’s Requiem: Canto por la Terra, a flamenco requiem commissioned for the Salisbury Festival 2004, performed again in Oporto, Portugal, and in Cordoba, Spain and in 2007 at London’s Festival Hall. Sustainable cities talk and PIRM 2007 AGMTuesday 30 October 2007, 5.30–8pm 5.30–6.15pm: Talk by Roland Sapsford, Sustainability Solutions Consulting: Transport for sustainable cities: creating the climate for change 6.15–7pm: Refreshments 7–8pm: Annual General Meeting We The People – Climate Change; What Can I Do?Saturday 19 May, at Rutherford House, Wellington. Organised by Wellington Cathedral and Centre for Strategic Studies. A very interesting mix of scientists, theologians, and strategists! view the flyer for full details [200KB PDF] PIRM Panel discussion & 2006 AGMMonday October 30, 5.30–8pm
view full details [65KB PDF] Resource Wars: From the Global Economy to IraqFull day forum, 9am – 4.30pm, Saturday 22 March 2003 
Can we survive climate change?Public meeting: Thursday 4 April 2002, 7pm, Victoria University, Maclaurin Lecture Theatre 3 
Feeding the World in the Global Economy: GE – Remedy or Ruin?Public Meeting: Wednesday 7 February 2001, 7.30pm, Victoria University, Maclaurin Lecture Theatre 3
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The continual flaring of ferocious wars today reflects a conflict-bound world on the wrong track. The new Ukraine conflict adds to the long list, as well as risking all with nuclear war. Wars divert attention and resources away from solving the huge and growing environmental and social problems of our time. These stem from the dominant economic world-view that values financial profits above all else, being divorced as it is from the biological-geological realities in which we live.
Listen to a recording of the event
Padre Thorlby, also known as James Thorlby, is a Scots priest who has worked with landless people, homesteaders and sugarcane workers in Brazil for 25 years with the ecumenical Church organisation, The Pastoral Land Commission, the CPT, Comissao Pastoral da Terra, in Pernambuco, north-east, Brazil. The CPT is an agency of the Bishop's Conference in Brazil. The Brazilian government awarded the CPT the Human Rights Award 2003 in the Eradication of Slave Labour category for its work to combat slave labour throughout the country. Thorlby says biofuels produced in Brazil for the rich world's cars, are creating a catastrophe. To say biofuels produced for ever increasing exports from Brazil are “clean, sustainable” is an attack on Nature and a crime against those expelled from the land, he says in an article in Pacific Ecologist issue 17. Instead, Brazil's massive “latifundia” style sugar-ethanol farms destroy the environment and undermine local food security.
