Outlook for 2021? Lessons from Covid-19

The following is a contribution I wrote for 'What Will the World Look Like in a Year' and published in Weekend Herald, Canvas magazine, 16 May 2020, amidst wonderful reflections from Mike Joy, Teresa Gattung and others

Small steps, big targets

He iti mokoroa, ka hinga puriri

Although the caterpillar is small, it can fell the ironwood tree 

This is my favourite whakatauki (proverb) to show students an example of how mātauranga, Māori knowledge and science are embedded together in these little pearls of wisdom. Here, we are introduced to mokoroa, the name for the larva or caterpillar before it metamorphosises into the puriri moth. Another species from Tane’s domain is specifically named – puriri. Settlers called this tree ‘iron wood’: its heavy, hard wood was used to great effect in pā palisades and railway sleepers. The whakatauki alludes to puriri wood’s density, Māori materials physics, anyone? It also alludes to the ecological relationship between mokoroa and puriri. Whakatauki provide astute observations of the natural world, and they also have a social message for us humans. 

One interpretation of this whakatauki is that you don’t have to be great, to achieve great things. There are many Māuis, Davids and Gretas that have tackled seemingly insurmountable obstacles in spite of humble origins. Small things can have big impacts, and small, coordinated steps toward big targets, such as elimination, eradication, net-zero emissions or 1.5C warming, can achieve their ends. But it’s not just the targets that need to be there, it’s clear and agreed strategies. Lately in Aotearoa we’ve seen effective leadership and good communication encourage us to trust that radically changing our own behaviours will ‘save lives’. Can we do the same for protecting Papatūānuku?

Besides Covid-19’s global impacts, we’ve got other urgent crises and big mountains to scale – planetary health, social injustice, green jobs, attention to maximum wages as well as living wages, emotional, mental and spiritual resilience, the list goes on. The palpable pandemic-induced will to do things differently, in 2021 I hope will translate into coordinated plans and fresh actions, that empower individuals to feel like what they do, makes a difference. 

Like many whakatauki, ‘e hinga puriri’ has multiple interpretations. The message of ‘we can do anything’ that is there, sits alongside one of ‘we can wreck anything’. We might feel relatively insignificant as individuals, but we have a huge collective impact on our environment. We draw voraciously on an Earth with finite resources. Our numbers and our patterns of consumption are putting the whole puriri tree at risk of complete collapse. 

We have power, either way, as individuals. We can either bring about catastrophic changes through selfish individual actions, or we can make small and coordinated steps towards ambitious, positive targets that together amount to a metaphorical bringing down of Goliath. A year from now, I hope that we’ve captured what’s been good about lockdown. I expect to fly less, to be more active locally, to travel more consciously and wisely, cook more, and take action to reduce the other wasteful impacts of human life. In lockdown, my husband and I started using te reo Māori while solving our crosswords. In 2021 it will be normal to hear te reo in our home. In our shared office during lockdown, I couldn’t help but be drawn into my husband’s environmental advocacy work, and he for my environmental research. In 2021 our home will continue to be a place of exchanging ideas, learning from each other and working together. 

How can each of us respond as individuals and smaller communities such as households and whanau? My wish-list is of small, coordinated convictions and actions, but they add up to a bigger whole. Actions that are informed by science and mātauranga, governed by Tiriti principles, will help us move, even if only with baby steps, together into a healthy future.