Vanishing Nature: Facing New Zealand’s biodiversity crisis

By Marie A Brown, R T Theo Stephens, Raewyn Peart and Bevis Fedder

This full colour, soft cover publication is suitable for both a general and a technical audience with user friendly language and lots of images.

New Zealand’s remarkable indigenous biodiversity is fragile and it’s in crisis. Our economic institutions promote biodiversity loss by not accounting for environmental costs and our laws and policies are unable to prevent the resulting ongoing losses. The design and implementation of policy and programmes that safeguard ecosystems require both an understanding of political, economic and social factors influencing biodiversity protection as well as being founded on established ecological principles.

The book presents an exhaustive analysis of New Zealand’s biodiversity loss and its conservation. The authors argue that the fundamental drivers of harm as well as the barriers to effective protection must be addressed if we are to halt the loss of our native species and ecosystems and maintain our natural capital. This will require novel economic institutions designed to bring private and public interests toward alignment.  The book includes a comprehensive suite of strategic, tactical and practical solutions and finishes with a vision and action plan that EDS is committed to champion in the coming years. Biodiversity loss is not inevitable, it is a choice.

The Environmental Defence Society sits at the interface of science and policy, working hard to influence politics and society to establish more effective systems of environmental governance.