New Zealand Environmental Stats
Nearly 1/3 of New Zealand is protected land. Christchurch had air pollution PM10 exceedances 39% of the time in 2005. Canterbury had 94.8 tonnes of agricultural waste collected in 2003-2005 (which far outstrips any other reagion – the 2nd highest is 26.9 tonnes). Canterbury also uses almost half of NZ’s water usage (4015/9815 Mm^3/yr). Canterbury also has the highest amount of available fresh water. Almost the entire population has access to recycling, and nearly 3/4 of paper products are recovered through recycling (nearly 2/3 of aluminum and 1/2 of glass). NZ’s E demand has increased by nearly 100 petajoules since from 1997 to 2005. Greenhouse emissions are up, but so are carbon sinks (granted, most in the temporary form of plantation forests).
And among the critical species (more imperiled than the endangered or vulnerable); 1 bat, 21 birds, 69 byophytes, 1 freshwater fish, 11 freshwater invertebrates, 2 frogs, 49 fungi, 1 macroalgae, 0 marine fish, 10 marine invertebrates, 4 marine mammals, 5 reptiles, 125 terrestrial invertebrates (oh noooo!), and 85 vascular plants. Also, the Tuatara is listed as endangered. Total number of critical and endangered species: 616. Huh – the SOuthern Elephant seal is critical – I wonder why? The ones in CA (northern e. seal?) are a recovery success story (and an example of a genetic bottleneck that’s worked out ok for the time being – if I remember correctly).
Tags: Travel
jwdmeow
I thought I left a comment here, but it must have died, somehow.
I wanted to know what those NZ stats mean. On a scale from 1-10, or whatever measure you like. Are they environmentally friendly, or jerks like us? (US)
Well, they’re pretty different countries. I believe the US has 15.8% of its’ total land mass protected. Of course, that amount of land is quite possibly bigger than all of NZ put together. The US has many more endangered/threatened mammals, but that’s because we have more mammals in general.
FYI, the US currently has (endangered only – not threatened): 69 mammals, 75 birds, 13 reptiles, 13 amphibians, 74 fish, 62 clams, 64 snails, 47 insects, 12 arachnids, 19 crustaceans, 570 flowering plants, 2 conifers/cycads, 24 ferns, and 2 lichens. (According to FWS).
The US has one hotspot (the California Floristic Province) whereas New Zealand in its entirety is its own hotspot.
If I remember from my EA50 course, NZ is the only country in the world to have its own environmental supreme court.
(Possibly) the 2003 CO2 emmissons per capita are 19.8 tonnes (11th) for the US and 8.8 tonnes (42nd) for NZ.
I’ll have to look up US water usage stats and such later.
hmm. That’s interesting. I always assume that we are such jerks for using the world’s resources all out of proportion to our population. Lucky for us we started with such abundance, I guess. Unlucky for the abundance.
I still love Venice’s capital crime of littering or polluting…
Well – we are 11th in the world for emmiting CO2 – so that’s bad. And we do have 1,046 endangered species. We had a lot more to start out with, but it seems like we’re running through it faster.
Wow – when you count in agricultural usage – per capita water consumption in the states is 5000 litres per day apparently. That’s insane.
I love that venice law too – we should put it back into affect.