Did you read my mind? In the last 24 hours, I literally thought "Our community needs to organise". And at Jack Reacher quote sprang to mind : "prepare for the worst, hope for the best".
Thanks Nathan and the Wise Response team for all the upfront work. Here's my email lastnight to local Council leaders here in the Bay of Islands.
Tēnā koutou
This email is a direct request that the Strait of Hormuz crisis should be treated as the dominant issue facing both the NRC and FNDC, and that Council agendas should be cleared to focus on response planning for an emergency due to fuel shortages.
- NZ has a near-total reliance on imported refined fuels and long, vulnerable supply chains reliant on shipping and air transport,
- Asian refineries our fuels are sourced from are heavily reliant on middle east crude oil supplies
the current situation is far more severe than Zealand’s biggest energy shock of 1973,
experts estimate the current shock, in terms of global fuel production, is approximately 100 times greater in relative impact than the crises of the 1970s and 1980s, with the conflict having taken out 20% of the global oil supply,
- as of March 20 New Zealand has only 6-7 weeks of fuel in country and on the water with the "last" shipment scheduled to arrive on March 30,
- the crisis has also significantly impacted global supplies of LNG (30% of the global supply), fertiliser feedstocks, food exports, helium critical to the electronics industry and other critical commodities,
- the modern NZ economy is effectively a “diesel engine” largely reliant on road transport for the movement of critical supplies and commodities, and most importantly the just in time food distribution system. If the fuel stops, the engine seizes,
- as the situation continues to deteriorate in the middle east fuel supply shortages become more inevitable every day,
- fuel prices continue to rise rapidly, impacting all household spending and putting extreme pressure on the ability of Northlanders to cover the costs of living,
- Councils should plan on the basis that significant fuel supply constraints will persist for at least six months, and possibly longer.
Who am I?
I am a resident of rural Kawakawa. My career has been in the Council and Corporate sustainability fields having held senior roles in this space at Fulton Hogan and Fletcher Construction. I am well connected in the corporate sustainability field and with members of Wise Response.
What I am seeking.
Government will do what government does: triage hospitals, police, essential freight corridors etc. That is appropriate. But it means communities are largely on their own for everything else - food distribution, transport, heating, health access, economic survival. Civil Defence is built for earthquakes and floods, not for a slow-onset nationwide supply chain collapse with no clear end date. In keeping with Nathan's correspondence to Environment Southland I request the following:
1. Convene an extraordinary meeting of the Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management Co-ordinating Executive Group (CEG) to assess Northland’s fuel supply position, including an inventory of council-held fuel stocks across all four Northland councils and generator capacity at critical facilities,
2. Request that fuel distributors operating in Northland provide current stock and resupply projections. Any refusal to provide this information citing commercial sensitivity should be considered untenable in the interests of community resilience,
3. A key priority should be the integration of food security into emergency response planning. Northland’s food production system is fuel-dependent at every stage: fertiliser application, harvesting, processing, refrigeration, transport distribution. A six-month fuel shortage is also a food system emergency. Council's should be coordinating with key food system players including agricultural and horticultural producers, companies and industry groups to understand their minimum fuel requirements and contingency plans.
4. Activate community response plan networks now, before a formal emergency declaration. The community response plans developed for CDEM events include the identification of vulnerable people, key resources, and contact trees. Those same networks are relevant for fuel rationing. Wise Response has developed an excellent open source guide When the Trucks Stop: Mutual Aid Arrangements for a Fuel-Constrained New Zealand - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S2sWsBXqtwgkP-AGDtp-PsMRALIXtAOBXi2D6RouS6w/edit?usp=sharing. It's a practical briefing covering ten areas where communities can organise now to meet basic needs if fuel imports fall to zero or near-zero for weeks or months. It covers food production and distribution, water, energy, transport, health, economic alternatives like timebanking and local currencies, communication, governance, and the specific needs of vulnerable populations.
5. NRC and FNDC to formally advocate for the government to investigate a fair and equitable energy rationing system such as Tradable Energy Quotas. TEQs are an electronic energy allocation system where every adult receives a free, weekly fuel entitlement, but can legally buy and sell that entitlement on an open national market. Those who use less than their entitlement sell surplus units and earn money, while those who need more eg freight operators, buy additional units on the market. See the Wise Response white paper on TEQs How New Zealand Could Build a Fair Rationing System in Eight Weeks - https://wiseresponse.substack.com/p/how-new-zealand-could-build-a-fair?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I request a written response indicating what steps NRC and FNDC intend to take regarding:
1. Northland’s Civil Defence Emergency Management Group readiness for a prolonged fuel supply disruption.
2. The categorisation of Council's own fuel-dependent operations.
3. Whether Council will formally advocate for the government to investigate Tradable Energy Quotas.
I am available for further discussion on this matter. As a Northland local I obviously have a keen interest in ensuring my community is prepared to deal with this rapidly developing situation proactively and to the best of our abilities.
As the saying goes. It's wise to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, however hope unfortunately is not a strategy.
Thanks, and FYI, I was in an Auckland Woolworths early this morning (Sunday 22nd), one of only three shoppers. Then a New World, same. And I bought a new chest freezer from Harvey Norman yesterday, easy. Seems most folks are by in large unconcerned, or unaware of potential food supply shortages. Here in Auckland anyway.
"Mutual Aid Arrangements for a Fuel-Constrained Aotearoa New Zealand" This is a fantastic document Nathan - thank you for preparing.
On food, the guide talks about local butchering of animals and hunting of course (the latter having a significant co-benefit for indigenous biodiversity given that rabbits, deer, pigs are major pests in the wild).
But it feels like it would be a good opportunity also to talk about the longer term need to move to a plant-rich diet. This was the central pillar of the National Emergency Briefing on food security by Professor Paul Behrens https://www.nebriefing.org/expert-briefings/food-security as well as the UK's National Food Strategy https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/. As Prof. Behrens outlines, we can feed more people with plant-based protein with much smaller footprints on land, water, fertiliser, biodiversity etc - and it is much healthier for humans! (It also addresses the animal welfare issue that another reader raised.) We know that legumes, nuts and seeds and some grains are high in protein. Commonly homegrown veges like spinach and broccoli are also quite high (though I don't imagine enough on their own).
On energy, not an immediate solution but is there room for the recommendation of allocating some land to grow canola for fuel production (for agricultural machinery etc) as per Prof. Nick Wilson, Matt Boyd et al's work on response to catastrophic disaster? https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroom/greater-fuel-resilience-needed-study
Hi Catherine, thanks for sharing! In response to your questions: we should absolutely be utilizing the best possible ethical standards when eating animals. Two angles that I believe support continued ethical consumption: Preserving Native Biodiversity in our resource constrained future requires us to hunt and act as apex predator in the absence of other viable means of control. And secondly, in resource constrained temperate climate local food systems, animal fat and protein is an important part of seasonal dietary patterns that use "‘live-stock” to bridge the hunger gap. This is the period of time from late winter to late spring when nothing much is coming from farmed vegetables. A personal note too is that I find I do much better on a diet higher in animal proteins and fat, and from my reading it seems this is a replicable finding for certain neurotypes, phenotypes and genotypes… I don't think it's as simple as a broad statement that plant based diets are overall much healthier for humans, even at the level of carbon emissions… I agree with the lower overall emissions comparing plant based and animal industrial food supply, but in a post carbon future, that performance benefit vanishes as neither system can leverage fossil carbon to the same extent. Also animals in hybrid post carbon farming systems provide both energy inputs that human struggle to match, and manure as a critical source of fertilizlser.
On the energy front, I agreed broadly with the analysis Matt put forward in his excellent research on how we could manage with little to no fuel imports. The context concern regarding liquid biofuels net energy is real though, and I think it has to be a decentralised, local thing as larger centralised biofuel production initiatives will struggle with the energy cost of transportation in terms of production a net benefit…
And this government’s great idea is to toss everything up in the air and put all the onus back on local governments to fix and pay for everything. Insane.
I am a principal of a primary school and have read and tried to work in the regenerative space for a number of years. I’m in central Auckland. Given your far greater knowledge and planning of these things I will read all the documents you’ve attached.
I would also like to know what would be the best response for me with my school community. We have solar, we have some thinkers in regen attached to us. We have gardens and are establishing a food forest. All taking time and not necessarily curriculum but we’re working with that. We have spaces and contacts. I will introduce your ideas and thinking to my local Waitakere Orincioals Assocuation to ensure they at least know some stuff. I will contact my local politicians.
Anything else you could recommend.
Thanks very much for being a communitarian thinker into the future.
You're already doing more than most. Solar, gardens, food forest, regen-minded people around you, spaces and contacts. That's a community resilience hub in waiting.
A few additions:
1. Frame school as community resilience hub. Schools are natural gathering points in a disruption. Worth a conversation with Auckland Emergency Management about formalising that role, they have community response group funding.
2. Check your solar for islanding. Many grid-tied systems shut down when the grid drops. Battery plus a hybrid inverter means the school stays powered during outages. Even a small setup keeping lights, fridges, and a comms station running is significant.
3. Rainwater. Tank storage is cheap relative to its value. First flush diverter and basic filtration covers most needs.
4. Skills, not just stuff. Food growing is good, food preservation is where most home gardens fall short: fermentation, drying, bottling. Bring local elders in. Kids take it home.
5. Comms backup. One or two people with amateur radio changes what's possible when phones drop. Low cost, high leverage.
On local politicians: ask specifically whether Auckland Council has a fuel contingency plan and what the trigger points are. Most haven't thought it through. Pushing that question up matters.
Down in the Eastern Bay of Plenty here. Will be discussing the excellent Wise Response doc within my organisation and community networks, council contacts etc this coming week. More anon.
Did you read my mind? In the last 24 hours, I literally thought "Our community needs to organise". And at Jack Reacher quote sprang to mind : "prepare for the worst, hope for the best".
Thank you for your post!
A Jack Reacher quote? I like your style!! 😊
Thanks Nathan and the Wise Response team for all the upfront work. Here's my email lastnight to local Council leaders here in the Bay of Islands.
Tēnā koutou
This email is a direct request that the Strait of Hormuz crisis should be treated as the dominant issue facing both the NRC and FNDC, and that Council agendas should be cleared to focus on response planning for an emergency due to fuel shortages.
The evidence base for that request is set out in the material presented here - https://energyandresilience.substack.com/p/letter-to-environment-southland-re?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=yn9sg - by Nathan Surendran, a friend and Chairperson of the national collective Wise Response, in his communication to Environment Southland on 17 March.
Key points:
- NZ has a near-total reliance on imported refined fuels and long, vulnerable supply chains reliant on shipping and air transport,
- Asian refineries our fuels are sourced from are heavily reliant on middle east crude oil supplies
the current situation is far more severe than Zealand’s biggest energy shock of 1973,
experts estimate the current shock, in terms of global fuel production, is approximately 100 times greater in relative impact than the crises of the 1970s and 1980s, with the conflict having taken out 20% of the global oil supply,
- as of March 20 New Zealand has only 6-7 weeks of fuel in country and on the water with the "last" shipment scheduled to arrive on March 30,
- the crisis has also significantly impacted global supplies of LNG (30% of the global supply), fertiliser feedstocks, food exports, helium critical to the electronics industry and other critical commodities,
- the modern NZ economy is effectively a “diesel engine” largely reliant on road transport for the movement of critical supplies and commodities, and most importantly the just in time food distribution system. If the fuel stops, the engine seizes,
- as the situation continues to deteriorate in the middle east fuel supply shortages become more inevitable every day,
- fuel prices continue to rise rapidly, impacting all household spending and putting extreme pressure on the ability of Northlanders to cover the costs of living,
- Councils should plan on the basis that significant fuel supply constraints will persist for at least six months, and possibly longer.
Who am I?
I am a resident of rural Kawakawa. My career has been in the Council and Corporate sustainability fields having held senior roles in this space at Fulton Hogan and Fletcher Construction. I am well connected in the corporate sustainability field and with members of Wise Response.
What I am seeking.
Government will do what government does: triage hospitals, police, essential freight corridors etc. That is appropriate. But it means communities are largely on their own for everything else - food distribution, transport, heating, health access, economic survival. Civil Defence is built for earthquakes and floods, not for a slow-onset nationwide supply chain collapse with no clear end date. In keeping with Nathan's correspondence to Environment Southland I request the following:
1. Convene an extraordinary meeting of the Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management Co-ordinating Executive Group (CEG) to assess Northland’s fuel supply position, including an inventory of council-held fuel stocks across all four Northland councils and generator capacity at critical facilities,
2. Request that fuel distributors operating in Northland provide current stock and resupply projections. Any refusal to provide this information citing commercial sensitivity should be considered untenable in the interests of community resilience,
3. A key priority should be the integration of food security into emergency response planning. Northland’s food production system is fuel-dependent at every stage: fertiliser application, harvesting, processing, refrigeration, transport distribution. A six-month fuel shortage is also a food system emergency. Council's should be coordinating with key food system players including agricultural and horticultural producers, companies and industry groups to understand their minimum fuel requirements and contingency plans.
4. Activate community response plan networks now, before a formal emergency declaration. The community response plans developed for CDEM events include the identification of vulnerable people, key resources, and contact trees. Those same networks are relevant for fuel rationing. Wise Response has developed an excellent open source guide When the Trucks Stop: Mutual Aid Arrangements for a Fuel-Constrained New Zealand - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S2sWsBXqtwgkP-AGDtp-PsMRALIXtAOBXi2D6RouS6w/edit?usp=sharing. It's a practical briefing covering ten areas where communities can organise now to meet basic needs if fuel imports fall to zero or near-zero for weeks or months. It covers food production and distribution, water, energy, transport, health, economic alternatives like timebanking and local currencies, communication, governance, and the specific needs of vulnerable populations.
5. NRC and FNDC to formally advocate for the government to investigate a fair and equitable energy rationing system such as Tradable Energy Quotas. TEQs are an electronic energy allocation system where every adult receives a free, weekly fuel entitlement, but can legally buy and sell that entitlement on an open national market. Those who use less than their entitlement sell surplus units and earn money, while those who need more eg freight operators, buy additional units on the market. See the Wise Response white paper on TEQs How New Zealand Could Build a Fair Rationing System in Eight Weeks - https://wiseresponse.substack.com/p/how-new-zealand-could-build-a-fair?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I request a written response indicating what steps NRC and FNDC intend to take regarding:
1. Northland’s Civil Defence Emergency Management Group readiness for a prolonged fuel supply disruption.
2. The categorisation of Council's own fuel-dependent operations.
3. Whether Council will formally advocate for the government to investigate Tradable Energy Quotas.
I am available for further discussion on this matter. As a Northland local I obviously have a keen interest in ensuring my community is prepared to deal with this rapidly developing situation proactively and to the best of our abilities.
As the saying goes. It's wise to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, however hope unfortunately is not a strategy.
Ngā mihi nui
Campbell Sturrock
Please everyone, do the same, this only changes if people makes their voices heard!
Thanks, and FYI, I was in an Auckland Woolworths early this morning (Sunday 22nd), one of only three shoppers. Then a New World, same. And I bought a new chest freezer from Harvey Norman yesterday, easy. Seems most folks are by in large unconcerned, or unaware of potential food supply shortages. Here in Auckland anyway.
First mover advantage... 🙏
Thanks for providing this.
"Mutual Aid Arrangements for a Fuel-Constrained Aotearoa New Zealand" This is a fantastic document Nathan - thank you for preparing.
On food, the guide talks about local butchering of animals and hunting of course (the latter having a significant co-benefit for indigenous biodiversity given that rabbits, deer, pigs are major pests in the wild).
But it feels like it would be a good opportunity also to talk about the longer term need to move to a plant-rich diet. This was the central pillar of the National Emergency Briefing on food security by Professor Paul Behrens https://www.nebriefing.org/expert-briefings/food-security as well as the UK's National Food Strategy https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/. As Prof. Behrens outlines, we can feed more people with plant-based protein with much smaller footprints on land, water, fertiliser, biodiversity etc - and it is much healthier for humans! (It also addresses the animal welfare issue that another reader raised.) We know that legumes, nuts and seeds and some grains are high in protein. Commonly homegrown veges like spinach and broccoli are also quite high (though I don't imagine enough on their own).
On energy, not an immediate solution but is there room for the recommendation of allocating some land to grow canola for fuel production (for agricultural machinery etc) as per Prof. Nick Wilson, Matt Boyd et al's work on response to catastrophic disaster? https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroom/greater-fuel-resilience-needed-study
Hi Catherine, thanks for sharing! In response to your questions: we should absolutely be utilizing the best possible ethical standards when eating animals. Two angles that I believe support continued ethical consumption: Preserving Native Biodiversity in our resource constrained future requires us to hunt and act as apex predator in the absence of other viable means of control. And secondly, in resource constrained temperate climate local food systems, animal fat and protein is an important part of seasonal dietary patterns that use "‘live-stock” to bridge the hunger gap. This is the period of time from late winter to late spring when nothing much is coming from farmed vegetables. A personal note too is that I find I do much better on a diet higher in animal proteins and fat, and from my reading it seems this is a replicable finding for certain neurotypes, phenotypes and genotypes… I don't think it's as simple as a broad statement that plant based diets are overall much healthier for humans, even at the level of carbon emissions… I agree with the lower overall emissions comparing plant based and animal industrial food supply, but in a post carbon future, that performance benefit vanishes as neither system can leverage fossil carbon to the same extent. Also animals in hybrid post carbon farming systems provide both energy inputs that human struggle to match, and manure as a critical source of fertilizlser.
On the energy front, I agreed broadly with the analysis Matt put forward in his excellent research on how we could manage with little to no fuel imports. The context concern regarding liquid biofuels net energy is real though, and I think it has to be a decentralised, local thing as larger centralised biofuel production initiatives will struggle with the energy cost of transportation in terms of production a net benefit…
Biofuels require so much diesel to produce where will that come from?
Preparation, tilling, planting, weed control, pest control, harvesting, transportation, processing, packaging, distribution, security....
Machete-wielding gangs will just take it all anyway.
Then the gangs with guns will take it from them. MadMax all over again hooray.
Suggest you read France’s Moore and Anna Lappe’s book “Hope’s Edge” if you want to live sustainably.
And this government’s great idea is to toss everything up in the air and put all the onus back on local governments to fix and pay for everything. Insane.
Thanks Nathan. I think😬
I am a principal of a primary school and have read and tried to work in the regenerative space for a number of years. I’m in central Auckland. Given your far greater knowledge and planning of these things I will read all the documents you’ve attached.
I would also like to know what would be the best response for me with my school community. We have solar, we have some thinkers in regen attached to us. We have gardens and are establishing a food forest. All taking time and not necessarily curriculum but we’re working with that. We have spaces and contacts. I will introduce your ideas and thinking to my local Waitakere Orincioals Assocuation to ensure they at least know some stuff. I will contact my local politicians.
Anything else you could recommend.
Thanks very much for being a communitarian thinker into the future.
Donal
Kia ora Donal, thanks for reading.
You're already doing more than most. Solar, gardens, food forest, regen-minded people around you, spaces and contacts. That's a community resilience hub in waiting.
A few additions:
1. Frame school as community resilience hub. Schools are natural gathering points in a disruption. Worth a conversation with Auckland Emergency Management about formalising that role, they have community response group funding.
2. Check your solar for islanding. Many grid-tied systems shut down when the grid drops. Battery plus a hybrid inverter means the school stays powered during outages. Even a small setup keeping lights, fridges, and a comms station running is significant.
3. Rainwater. Tank storage is cheap relative to its value. First flush diverter and basic filtration covers most needs.
4. Skills, not just stuff. Food growing is good, food preservation is where most home gardens fall short: fermentation, drying, bottling. Bring local elders in. Kids take it home.
5. Comms backup. One or two people with amateur radio changes what's possible when phones drop. Low cost, high leverage.
6. "When the Trucks Stop" mutual aid guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S2sWsBXqtwgkP-AGDtp-PsMRALIXtAOBXi2D6RouS6w/ - written for neighbourhoods, frame works for a school community. Worth sharing with the Waitakere Principals.
On local politicians: ask specifically whether Auckland Council has a fuel contingency plan and what the trigger points are. Most haven't thought it through. Pushing that question up matters.
Keep up the good work, community is where its at.
Down in the Eastern Bay of Plenty here. Will be discussing the excellent Wise Response doc within my organisation and community networks, council contacts etc this coming week. More anon.
Think you're in the wrong echo chamber Knave child....🙄