Monthly Archives: February 2022

How Conservation Invented the Pristine Wilderness – SAPIENS – SAPIENS

Posted: February 5, 2022 at 5:41 am

The year was 1832, and beneath an immense, cloud-filled sky, William Cullen Bryant guided his horse through rippling grasslands as he looked upon a land seemingly shaped by God. A former lawyer, an editor, and a poet, Bryant was visiting his brothers, homesteaders who had set out for the Illinois frontier from Massachusetts two years before.

He found himself stunned into rapture. After riding through the prairies encircling vastness, he wrote of an empty countryside whose majesty could only have come from a higher power:

Man hath no power in all this glorious work: /The hand that built the firmament hath heaved /And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes /With herbage, planted them with island groves, /And hedged them round with forests.

But Bryants reading of the prairie could not have been more wrong.

The treeless expanse that the poet saw had been shaped explicitly by humankind: For centuries, the regions Native peoples had set low-intensity fires to these grasslands, mimicking the effects of lightning, to encourage game to graze on the new growth that followed. The species growing on these lands, fire-adapted and free of arboreal shade, were there because of humanity.

This misconceptionthat North Americas landscapes were essentially untouched before European arrivalactually fits into a much larger story. Geographer William Denevan labeled it the pristine myth, the belief that all of nature was once a sparsely populated wilderness, where humans had little or no influence. Many Europeans and Euro-Americans imagined the landscapes of the Americas as prime examples of such natural spaces.

I loathe that word pristine. There have been no pristine systems on this planet for thousands of years, says Kawika Winter, an Indigenous biocultural ecologist at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. Humans and nature can co-exist, and both can thrive.

Traditional Indigenous practices such as controlled burning have helped to shape the Great Plains in North America. Dukas/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

For example, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in April, a team of researchers from over a dozen institutions reported that humans have been reshaping at least three-quarters of the planets land for as long as 12,000 years. In fact, they found, many landscapes with high biodiversity considered to be wild today are more strongly linked to past human land use than to contemporary practices that emphasize leaving land untouched. This insight contradicts the idea that humans can only have a neutral or negative effect on the landscape.

Anthropologists and other scholars have critiqued the idea of pristine wilderness for over half a century. Today new findings are driving a second wave of research into how humans have shaped the planet, propelled by increasingly powerful scientific techniques, as well as the compounding crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. The conclusions have added to ongoing debates in the conservation worldthough not without controversy. In particular, many discussions hinge on whether Indigenous and preindustrial approaches to the natural world could contribute to a more sustainable future, if applied more widely.

Thanks to todays environmental challenges, these debates have also reached the public sphere. Spencer Greening, a member of the Gitgaat First Nation and a graduate student studying Indigenous resource management and archaeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, believes this attention could have a positive effect. Often, Greening explains, science and research are tools used to extract profit from nature.

As a society, if we were to flip the script and say: Instead of putting our resources into excess profit, we need to put our resources into saving the planet, Greening says. That shift is going to be huge.

The myth of pristine wilderness has deep roots. Some draw the line all the way back to 1095, when Pope Urban II purportedly introduced the concept of terra nullius: the idea that any non-Christian land is a blank slate for the taking. The link between this phrase and Pope Urban may be apocryphal; nonetheless, over the centuries, waves of European colonization rode on the back of this sentiment. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, English writers expounded on the idea that if Indigenous peoples did not fully occupy, or sufficiently cultivate, land, they had no title to it. These concepts formed the basis of British colonization, including their justification for ruling Australia and dispossessing Aboriginal peoples of their lands.

Such thinking led many European colonists to ignore the influence of Indigenous peoples they encountered. As University of Maryland, Baltimore County, ecologist Erle Ellis, a lead author on the PNAS study, puts it, Within the pristine myth, these people dont have agency, and thats pretty important to the whole concept of that myth. Once you start thinking of these people as actors and as shaping nature, it means that anything you do to them changes nature.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 18th century and then spread to other parts of Europe and to the U.S., radically shifted conceptions of humans and the natural world. New jobs in industry moved populations away from rural areas and into cities. Meanwhile, factories created rapid economic growth that commodified natural resources, leading to pollution and resource depletion.

British colonists in Australia in the 18th century encountered landscapes that had been cultivated by Aboriginal peoples in ways they did not fully understand. Felix Cesare/Getty Images

In reaction, thinkers in both Europe and the U.S. began to romanticize the concept of wilderness as untouched by humanity and its destructive influence. Writers and artists, such as Henry David Thoreau and George Catlin, depicted American landscapes either without humans or featuring Indigenous communities who had minimal to no impact on their environment.

As Denevan pointed out in his formative paper on the pristine myth, people in the United States in the mid-18th and 19th centuries, in particular, were observing a landscape in which Indigenous communities had been dramatically depopulated. Colonization brought genocide, ethnic cleansing, and pathogens to the Americas. Though estimates vary, one study determined that Indigenous peoples in the Americas lost at least 65 percent and as much as 90 percent of their populations by around 1600. To some European and Euro-American explorers and pioneers in the United States, certain spaces truly appeared to be people-free wilderness.

In the years since, Western societies have tended to tell just two stories about healthy, species-rich ecosystems. In one, humans are destroyers, fated to overharvest resources and tip nature into chaos. In the other, Indigenous peoples receive from the land and change little in return.

But there was always evidence running counter to these narratives. In Australia, for example, colonists viewed the landscape with puzzlement, describing it as looking cultivated, like a park found on one of Britains private estates. At the same time, some colonists disparaged Aboriginal fire management, likely without realizing that this practice had nurtured the environment they encountered.

Learn more, from our archives: How Early Humans Shaped the World With Fire

Similarly, prior to colonization, intentional Indigenous burning practices shaped the prairies that Bryant rode through in 1832. By amplifying a natural cycle, intentional fires stimulated plant growth and kept colonizing tree species at bay, boosting diversity and allowing expanses of fire-adapted grasses to thrive.

On both North American coasts, tribes used fire to encourage the growth of food trees, like nut-bearing oak and chestnut, which created the wide-open forests that dazzled Europeans when they arrived. Today a direct line can be drawn from the loss of cultural burning practices in Australia and the American West to the wildfires that, exacerbated by climate change, have scorched both regions in recent years.

Around the world, human influence is visible in wilderness nearly everywhere. Even the vast Amazon rainforestwhat many non-Native people may see as the premier example of unpeopled wildernessbears enduring evidence of human intervention.

In a 2017 study, researchers found that tree species with food and cultural value, like the Brazil nut and cocoa tree, were hyperdominant across the Amazon Basin: about five times more common than they would expect from chance alone. These trees were often found far from their native range and were most abundant around archaeological sites that predated the 16th century, suggesting that humans shaped the makeup of the forest visible today.

In addition, satellite imagery combined with ground surveys has revealed the traces of bustling civilizations in parts of the Amazon. Though scientists once believed the Amazon Basin held as few as 12 million people, more recent models that factor in the particular soils created by human occupation suggest at least 810 million people could have lived in the region.

Ellis explains that studies debunking the pristine myth began with research in the Americas, but havent stopped there. It just kept spreading, he said. People kept looking, they would ask, Is there a human influence in these places? And you find it.

The PNAS study Ellis co-authored, for example, underscores how global these patterns are. For that analysis, he and his colleagues integrated data from geographical, archaeological, and conservation science with the most up-to-date computer model available to map human populations and land use.

The model spit out maps of Earth categorized by anthrome, that is, patterns in the ways humans have interacted with and altered ecosystems. By 10,000 B.C., their results suggest, there was relatively little wild, uninhabited land left in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the Caribbean. At most, only 17 percent of Earths lands showed no evidence of human habitation or use, a number the authors believe is likely an overestimate.

The model also suggests that by 10,000 B.C., 77 percent of current key biodiversity areasthe rainforests and woodlands, grasslands, reefs, and marshes that today are refugia for important specieswere located in cultured anthromes, where small human populations intensively used less than 20 percent of the land.

Further, this approach suggests that, around 1500, this connection between human cultivation and biodiversity started to fall apart. This shift coincides with the period in which European colonization kicked off in earnest.

If many wild places are actually a product of human intervention, what does that mean for conserving such spaces?

The myth of pristine wilderness has long influenced discussions of protecting and preserving nature. The assumption that human activity is harmful or at best neutral for the environment is prominent within conservation and shapes environmental policy.

This thinking informs public opposition to Indigenous management, and has led to laws that bar Indigenous peoples from living and hunting within national parks and other forms of protected land. (See, for example, the Blackfeet Nation in Glacier National Park.) Such rules largely ignore the varied ways that humans can interact with nature.

Learn more, from our archives: Stop Calling the Aleutians Pristine

Yet in October 2021, scholars based in Australia and Germany published their examination of case studies from around the world that showed displacing Indigenous people for the sake of wilderness has negatively impacted landscapes. Among the examples, the researchers highlighted traditional swidden farming, in which farmers let their plots lie fallow to regenerate for a few years after cultivation, in the uplands of tropical Asia and New Guinea. Though some critics have framed this method as incompatible with conservation, research suggests this agricultural approach can increase biodiversity and make forests more resilient to climate change.

Not everyone believes that widespread adoption of preindustrial or Indigenous practices would offer a universal solution for managing natures resources, however. Among the critiques is the observation that humans have unquestionably contributed to extinctions throughout history, at many different scales. (That said, humanitys role in past extinctions is complex and controversialas archaeologists studying the disappearance of mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths can attest.)

Another point of contention is whether traditional and Indigenous management practices are truly sustainable for local species, or simply sustainable because they are being used to support relatively small human populations. Given the size of the Homo sapiens population globally today, perhaps it is not realistic to imagine that people can be trusted to preserve nature if some of it isnt set aside.

In Hawaiis Heeia National Estuarine Research Reserve, ecologists and nonprofits are revitalizing the area by applying Indigenous land management approaches that emphasize a reciprocal relationship with the natural world. Kelii Kotubetey

Ellis notes that many of these arguments are motivated by fears that debunking wilderness will lead to a free-for-all, giving people license to denude nature at will. But he believes this debate misses the more fundamental point: A recognition that cultural beliefs, rather than scientific fact, have shaped the entire wilderness concept.

Culture, Ellis adds, is flexible: You simply cant say what a human society can do.

For instance, in Hawaii, Winter is training people to rethink what ecologists term ecosystem services, the resourcesincluding food, fuel, and shelterthat environments provide humans. As manager of the Heeia National Estuarine Research Reserve, he works with nonprofits that are revitalizing Hawaiis traditional moku system of land management, in which humans care for the land holistically on small communities called ahupuaa.

Whether planting seeds, gathering food from the forest, restoring a fishpond, or harvesting from the sea, the mindset of people in the ahupuaa is one of interdependence: that their actions in one place affect all the others in their moku and that the lands health is essential to the communitys healthand vice versa.

If we define ecosystem services through an Indigenous lens, it looks like this reciprocal relationship, Winter says. The overarching theme is to give before you take.

Greening takes a similar position. As part of his doctoral thesis, he is examining how natural resource management plans could be rewritten to include humans as a member of a relationship with the land and its resources. You have these boundaries of how youre supposed to harvest them and live with them, he said. Thats what the Western world has lost with industrialization: that we are a part of this ecosystem.

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Republicans to field more than 100 far-right candidates this year – The Guardian

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More than 100 far-right candidates are running for political office across the country as Republicans this year according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a non-profit that monitors hate groups.

Aside from those expressing extremist rhetoric and far-right views, the ADL has found at least a dozen of the candidates had explicit connections to white supremacists, anti-government extremists and members of the far-right Proud Boys. It includes primary challengers running to the right of some sitting Republicans.

In Arkansass third district Neil Kumar, who the ADL found has written for white supremacist publications, is challenging the incumbent congressman, Steve Womack, who broke with Republicans in voting in favor of creating the January 6 commission to investigate the Capitol attack. The openly racist views of Kumar prompted the Arkansas state Republican party to take the unusual step of declaring him a non-recommended candidate in the upcoming primary.

The wave of far-right candidates includes sitting legislators like the Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers, who has admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia with 11 members currently under federal indictment for seditious conspiracy.

Other militia groups have candidates running or already in local office. The Washington Three Percent militia claims members in dozens of elected offices throughout the Pacific north-west, the Washington Post found, including a mayor, a county commissioner and at least five school board seats.

In Idaho the far-right anti-government activist Ammon Bundy who led an armed standoff against federal agents at Malheur wildlife refuge in 2014 is running for the governors office. Bundys group, the Peoples Rights network, has now increased its national membership to 33,000 members and has at least 398 activists in 39 states, according to a report by Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.

Many far-right candidates have no direct links to violent extremist groups, but do support a range of far-right views. The ADL tracked at least 45 candidates running for office this year that have lent credence in some way to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Many more hold on to Donald Trumps big lie the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

Nationwide there are 207 current elected officials who aided former president Trump in efforts to overturn the 2020, according to data compiled by the Insurrection Index, a project of the voting rights group Public Wise. The index includes senators like Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, who voted against certifying the 2020 election and spread misinformation including suggesting that the January 6 attack was carried out by fake Trump voters.

While many candidates are seeking local or national legislative seats, some are purposely running for bureaucratic offices whose chief responsibility is to certify elections. At least 11 election denying candidates are running for attorney general in 10 states,, according to tracking by the States United Democracy Center, a non-partisan group that monitors election races nationwide.

Fringe political candidates are a part of every US election cycle, but while these 2022 candidates hold far-right views they are also part of a wave within the Republican party that is no longer fringe but increasingly represents a powerful even dominant wing in the party.

The real danger is not just the wave of extreme candidates, its their embrace, their mainstreaming by the Republican party, said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and the co-author of How Democracies Die. The United States has always had nutty, extremist, authoritarian politicians around the fringe. What is new and really dangerous for democracy is that theyre increasingly running as Republican candidates.

Levitsky added: At first you had a flirtation and tolerance with a handful of extremists at the fringes. Were now seeing an army of extremists embraced by the former president. Theyre marching in and taking over the Republican party at the state and local level.

In Oregon, Daniel Tooze, a prominent associate of the Proud Boys who has participated in street brawls with anti-fascists in Portland, is running for Oregons state legislature in the 40th district. Tooze ran for the same seat in 2020, failing to secure the Republican nomination in the primary, but he received 40% of the Republican vote in the primary. This year Tooze is the only Republican who has filed to run again.

When mainstream parties take onboard figures who deny the legitimacy of elections, refuse to accept electoral defeat, condone or even engage in political violence, you are putting democracy at risk, said Levitsky.

Tooze declined to be interviewed for this article but stated in correspondence: Im just a regular guy.

A review of Toozes campaign website and filing statement show no mention of affiliation with the Proud Boys. Tooze campaign messaging uses the language of mainstream Republican talking points.

The Guardian has previously reported on far-right groups shifting their focus to local communities. Since the Capitol attack members of groups such as the Proud Boys have shown up to local venues including school board meetings to stand alongside mainstream conservatives, especially around issues such as Covid-19 restrictions.

This month Tooze tweeted a video of Thomas Renz, a far-right anti-vaccine influencer, speaking at a panel convened by Senator Johnson that promoted misleading information about Covid-19 and vaccines. The video of Renz went viral in alt-tech platforms but also within mainstream social media. Tooze wrote of the video: Its time to hold the government accountable for what theyve done to the people.

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Bookman: Trump continues to threaten violence against those who stand for rule of law – ncpolicywatch.com

Posted: at 5:40 am

A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Like his buddy Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is a thug willing to use violence to achieve what he cannot achieve by legitimate means. He has shown a willingness to do so in the past, and because he himself has paid no price, he is threatening to do so in the future.

We know all this, because we have witnessed it. In those anxious days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, it had become clear to many of us that Trump saw mob violence as a means to try to keep himself in the White House, in defiance of the eviction notice served upon him by the American people. But at the time, some were not willing to hear what their own ears were telling them, what Trumps own words were communicating.

Hes not that crazy, some people said. He wouldnt dare.

But he was, and he did.

He directed his angry supporters toward the Capitol, where our elected representatives were performing the constitutional rites of a peaceful transfer of power. He watched the resulting violence on television, violence that he himself had inspired, and by all accounts he enjoyed it. Throughout the hours-long riot, with members of Congress fleeing for their lives, he refused pleas to intercede from family members, from top aides and advisers, from members of his own party who were also under siege from the angry mob.

Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are, he told House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had called Trump at the White House to beg him to call off his dogs.

And afterward, when the insurrection had finally been put down, he told the rioters to always remember that day, and that he loved them.

To this day, the only regrets that Trump has expressed about the events of Jan. 6 is that they failed to keep him in office. In a rally last weekend in Texas, he reiterated that regret, complaining that Vice President Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome.

Unfortunately, he didnt exercise that power, Trump whined. He could have overturned the election!

Read that statement carefully, because Trump could not have been more clear about his intentions: Pence did have the right to change the outcome. he could have overturned the election! Believe what your eyes and ears are telling you, what Trump himself is telling you. He was trying everything in his power, and many things not in his power, to end American democracy.

As a consequence of his actions, Trump faces a number of investigations congressional, civil and criminal. And just as he did before Jan. 6, he is threatening violence to try to intimidate those who stand up for the rule of law, who dare to defend the Constitution.

If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt, Trump told the crowd in Texas.

Dont fool yourself: In Trumps mind, and in the minds of his followers, anything wrong or illegal means anything that attempts to hold Trump accountable. And do not listen to those familiar refrains of He wouldnt dare or He isnt that crazy. Because once again, yes, he would and yes, he is. He is basically saying now what he told the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers when asked to condemn political violence: Stand down, and stand by.

Ive long been wary of the investigation launched by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis into Trumps efforts to overturn the election results here in Georgia. My thinking has been that any prosecution of a president on charges this grave ought to take place at the federal level, or if necessary at the state level. I say that because we dont need some spotlight-hungry local district attorney in Oklahoma or Wyoming filing nonsensical criminal charges against a future liberal president, citing Willis as precedent.

However, Ive changed my mind. If that D.A. in Oklahoma or Wyoming has even half the evidence against a future president that Willis can already muster against Trump, then that president, regardless of party, has probably earned prosecution. We cant allow our country, our democracy, our rule of law and our freedom to be threatened without legal consequence or recourse. Any government that is given legitimacy by a vote of the people has not just the right but the absolute obligation to defend itself against those who would try to overthrow it, and Trump, by his own repeated admission, is intent on overthrowing it.

Veteran journalist Jay Bookman is a commentator for the Georgia Recorder which first published this essay.

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New Zealand to reopen borders as support for Jacinda Ardern wanes – Financial Times

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  1. New Zealand to reopen borders as support for Jacinda Ardern wanes  Financial Times
  2. Jacinda Ardern announces new plan to open NZ to the world  ABC News
  3. PM Jacinda Ardern on reopening the border: 'It's a constant balance but one I think we've got right'  RNZ
  4. Covid New Zealand: Jacinda Ardern reveals the EXACT dates when Kiwis can return home from Australia  Daily Mail
  5. Christopher Luxon says Jacinda Ardern should resign if she backs down on COVID-19 border reopening dates  Newshub
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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PM Jacinda Ardern on the borders, Omicron and her wedding – New Zealand Herald

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February 4 2022Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is this morning visiting Auckland's newest vaccination centre on the city's waterfront to promote boosters.

It has been a tough start to the year for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but after the rain came a shaft of sun with the announcement the borders would start to reopen.

She spoke to the Weekend Herald after that announcement about that decision, as well as the drubbing she has faced in international media, the polls, the cancellation of her wedding, MIQ and what lies ahead in the Omicron response.

Jacinda Ardern's year began with Omicron arriving and she put the country into the red setting of the new traffic light. She cancelled her own wedding to Clarke Gayford, and became the first MP known to have to isolate under the new rules, after a flight attendant on her flight tested positive.

Ardern said that call to isolate had come on what was supposed to be her wedding day.

"In fact, I got the phone call about 30 minutes before I was scheduled to walk down the aisle."

She laughs.

"There was quite a discussion between Chris [Hipkins] and Grant [Robertson] about which one of them would have broken the news to me."

"It just, it's life. That's all I can say."

She and Gayford had already decided not to have the wedding if they moved to the red level.

"There are lots of reasons why waiting was better."

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They are yet to set a new date.

As well as the Omicron outbreak here, there was a flood of negative coverage in the international media about the Government's response to it and the ongoing hardships caused by the lack of space in MIQ.

The latter was sparked by pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis' attempts to get back from Afghanistan to have her child at home.

Asked if the flurry of international commentary had an impact on her or New Zealand's international reputation, she said she would address the New Zealand side of that question although the two are linked.

"New Zealand's reputation is never going to be defined by one media cycle, or one story. Our reputation is more than that, and if anything, I can tell you from the engagement I have with people and leaders overseas, they almost always make the comment to me about the standout role New Zealand has had in Covid management. That, I think, will be the legacy of Covid for New Zealand.

"Single media cycles I don't think reflect New Zealand's reputation. I don't think it changes the way people see New Zealand, and the vast majority of people see it very positively."

Bellis' case attracted significant international attention and appeared to bring to a head the ever-growing unhappiness with MIQ.

Some had credited it with forcing the Government's hand on the border reopening although it had said last year it would push that out from the original January timeframe to the end of this month.

Ardern insists the timing of the MIQ announcement was not for political reasons.

"The decisions we are making are always based on the evidence we have. We do not make our decisions based on the polls. That means I will absolutely accept the consequences of those decisions. I stand by them. We are doing it for all the right reasons.

"Of course, if the consequence of that is people feel like there is reprieve and relief then that's good too."

Those decisions were indeed taking a toll in the polls.

Those changed dramatically for Ardern after Delta arrived last August in the latest 1 News Kantar Public Poll, Labour was about 10 points down since the end of the pandemic's first year. Ardern had dropped to 35 per cent as preferred Prime Minister her lowest since 2017.

It was at about the same point that Sir John Key resigned as Prime Minister, saying he wanted to go on a high and that he liked to be liked.

Ardern laughs when this is pointed out. Asked if she thinks it is salvageable, she laughs again:

"Salvageable? That makes it sound as if it is terminal. I accepted a really long time ago, really early on in my career, that the right call isn't always the most popular call. Covid is that writ large. You are constantly having to make decisions that are tough and have a huge impact on people's lives. But as long as you're making them for the right reasons, then onward."

She will, however, be hoping that her announcement on Thursday that MIQ would start to disappear for returning New Zealanders and other travellers in stages from February 28 was a circuit breaker. That announcement did have something of a beginning of the end feeling to it, a sense of relief.

It marked the scale down of the MIQ system that Ardern herself said had caused the most "heartache" of any element of the Covid response for New Zealand.

But she also points out that MIQ had helped avert the bigger heartache of the death rates experienced in other countries.

MIQ had also become a big political headache for the Government and for Ardern herself. Asked if she hoped this week's announcement would be a turning point on the siege she has been under, she said it was "a massive milestone".

"I've been thinking about this moment for a long time. I remember the moment we closed the borders, thinking about the point at which we would be able to welcome people back. Even back then I used to feel quite emotional about it.

"I reflect on my own circumstances, and one of the reasons Kiwis have been such comfortable travellers, and comfortable with having periods of our lives where we have lived abroad is because we've had the ability to come home whenever we needed to. For that to have been on pause has been such a shift in our psyche. So this is a really important moment."

The decision to push play again has always been Ardern's to make caught between the growing cries of those caught overseas, sometimes in very distressing situations, and the significant number still at home who remained fearful of what the travellers would bring back in even after the vaccination rollout.

Ardern said when MIQ first came into being in April 2020, she did not imagine it would be two years before it started to wind down. She also points out that back then, people thought a vaccine would be five years away.

"So things have moved more quickly than we expected, but also taken longer than we expected as well."

She said there was little doubt some things would have been done differently with the benefit of hindsight. However, they could never have had limitless capacity.

"They are hugely resource-intensive. They take thousands of people to run them. Not everyone wants to work in a managed isolation facility, so the idea you could have had limitless capacity and without increasing risk, isn't the case. I think no matter what, we would have had a system with pressure in it."

The original promise had been that the vaccinations would take over as our main form of defence rather than the borders. But vaccination rates did not top 90 per cent until the end of last year, and then Omicron came along and made early boosters more important pushing the planned January border reopening out.

She said the past month had been critical to give people the time needed to brace for Omicron.

Many have voiced scepticism about whether the Government will stick to the dates if Covid-19 throws another curveball.

Bellis is among them, telling the Weekend Herald she was now considering whether to give up her MIQ slot in early March and wait for the March 13 reopening to allow her to isolate at home. She would rather isolate at home, but the MIQ slot is certain and she fears the reopening date is not.

Ardern still has to negotiate through the Omicron outbreak. Masks, rapid antigen tests, disrupted workforces and, perhaps most of all, the natural wariness people have about it.

Although the red setting means businesses can still operate, even Finance Minister Grant Robertson has pointed to the deterrent effect that the fear of getting Covid-19 or having to isolate was having on human behaviour.

Ardern hopes that will pass.

"It's a transition and I think it is a significant one. We have been Covid-free but we have now the privileged position of having been Covid-free for the most dangerous elements of this pandemic. Now we have protection other countries did not get the chance to have and we are meeting a variant that does not pose the same risk as other variants have."

"When you look overseas, it seems to be that deterrent effect lasts for a period of time that isn't necessarily associated with the number of cases. So only time will tell, but what we are seeing overseas is people adapting, as they always do, to the circumstances they find themselves in and making risk assessments."

She is philosophical about being blamed for people's disgruntlement, saying she has long learned to accept she will wear the blame for everything from the weather and sports outcomes to Covid.

The collateral damage of Covid-19 is everywhere: inflation, house prices, her goal of fixing inequality and child poverty are all things she will now face being blamed for.

Asked if it has felt like she has been on a war footing for the past two years, she says "yes, it does".

And now?

"Like I"m still on it."

She won't say when victory might be declared, but this week was "progress".

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Covid-19: ‘Don’t wait’, get ready: Jacinda Ardern says Kiwis need to rely on boosters with MIQ going – Stuff.co.nz

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has warned that the Omicron strain of Covid-19 will take off eventually.

At a new vaccination centre on Aucklands waterfront on Friday, Ardern said there was no time to waste in getting vaccinated, and also urged Kiwis to prepare to self-isolate.

With the winding down of MIQ, and the increasing likelihood of catching Covid-19 in New Zealand, she said people would not be able to rely on quarantine if they needed to isolate.

Home isolation would become the new normal, and she said that could require making a plan about what to do if you live with vulnerable whnau. Ultimately, she stressed the importance of getting booster shots which was the main protection from Covid-19.

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stressed the importance of booster shots while visiting a vaccination site in The Cloud on Aucklands waterfront.

More than 1.4 million people had been boosted by Friday, which was more than a third of the adult population. Ardern said that, with boosters now available to almost everyone, she hoped to see that number rise dramatically over the coming days.

READ MORE:* Covid-19 NZ: Border reopening to begin from late February, to proceed in five stages* Covid-19 Omicron: Border opening and future of MIQ to be revealed* Extra 100,000 Mori become eligible for booster shots on Friday, PM announces

But when Aucklands newest vaccination centre, at The Cloud, opened on Friday morning there were no crowds rushing through the doors.

Over time we expect to see that urgency increase, because hundreds of thousands of people became eligible today, she said.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the border will start re-opening in phases, starting with self-isolation requirements for fully vaccinated citizens returning from Australia on February 27.

Dont wait. Once Omicron really takes off, there isnt that same period of time to get the full benefit of your vaccine. Please, dont delay. Get it today.

The Governments plan to open the border would not be delayed by low booster rates, she said. From late February, citizens in Australia and critical workers would start to be able to self-isolate rather than enter MIQ when they came to New Zealand.

In the future, we have to prepare for a larger number of cases. There will not be the same capacity to provide accommodation that we have in the past, she said, when asked if MIQ would be available for people needing to isolate from vulnerable whnau members.

The Ministry of Health confirmed on Monday that Omicron was the dominant variant present in New Zealand.

The Government then reduced the interval between a second dose and booster shot for people aged of 18, from four to three months. As a result, from Friday 92 per cent of people who had been vaccinated were eligible for their booster shot.

She said the Government was focused on ensuring health services would still be able to provide care when Omicron peaked.

This time of year does have some added benefits in terms of health measures because it does mean people are outside, able to social distance and have better ventilation.

All of that does help with management, she said, when asked if the Government was hoping Omicron cases would peak before winter.

On Friday, 209 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed. The Ministry of Health also said it expected to achieve 90 per cent vaccination for Mori by the end of Friday.

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Covid-19: 'Don't wait', get ready: Jacinda Ardern says Kiwis need to rely on boosters with MIQ going - Stuff.co.nz

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Claire Trevett: Covid 19 Omicron outbreak – can PM Jacinda Ardern put out the fires as she moves on borders, Charlotte Bellis, boosters and rapid…

Posted: at 5:39 am

Millions of rapid antigen tests secured, how the OECD plan to cool the property market and Ukraine boosts its armed forces in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald

OPINION:

It has been a fraught fortnight for the Government, but the Prime Minister emerges from her isolation period now apparently hell bent on extinguishing the flames that are around her.

Top of that list has been the plight of Charlotte Bellis and MIQ, the borders and rapid antigen tests.

On Tuesday, after worldwide coverage about her difficulties getting back to New Zealand to give birth, the Afghanistan-based journalist Charlotte Bellis was granted a slot in MIQ for March.

It came just in time - just before a Government minister had to front in person to the media for the first time since her open letter was published in the Weekend Herald.

On Wednesday, an announcement on boosters is expected. That will almost certainly be a decision to move the gap from four months to three months.

On Thursday comes the announcement of when the borders will now reopen and returning vaccinated New Zealanders can isolate at home rather than in MIQ.

The boosters announcement indicates the border reopening dates may not be far away.

Speeding up the boosters would ensure more people were protected by the time that happened - and follows similar moves overseas.

The appetite within Cabinet for delaying the reopening for much longer is very low.

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The Bellis case was hugely embarrassing for it and was a bit of a catalyst on an issue on which the Government has come under increasing pressure.

Added to that, the bigger the community outbreak gets the more futile MIQ becomes. It becomes much harder to justify using MIQ rather than home isolation to try to slow Omicron's relentless progress. It would be little more than an illusory safety net.

The general view in Cabinet is also that with the boosters, and efforts to prepare people, the Government will have done all it can to keep people safe. It is time to move. Labour's hit in the polls will have helped them reach that conclusion.

Tuesday delivered the news on another area of trouble for the Government: a last-minute scramble had secured it a further 36 million rapid antigen tests, reducing the need to pilfer the stores of private businesses.

That is enough to cover the critical workplaces that the Government needs to keep up and running but not the wider population.

So the great political tidy-up has begun.

The border reopening dates will ease the inevitable questions about what happens to others in a similar situation as Bellis.

The Government was under increasing pressure on the inherent unfairness and increasing redundancy of MIQ. Yes, it has done its job and it did its job very well - in the past tense.

It may still be needed for future variants, to help delay local outbreaks. But two years on, with high vaccination levels and Omicron already in the community, the cost of it on people's lives was outweighing the benefits.

That won't be enough to stop all the criticism.

The Government will also remain under scrutiny over its handling of the Omicron outbreak.

On Tuesday, Grant Robertson called for people to put a bit of faith in what it was asking people to do, noting that the Government had twice before managed to get the country through outbreaks much better off than most countries.

But the Prime Minister's own brush with Covid-19 last week was a stark lesson in how difficult it will be to slow the spread of Omicron without the use of lockdowns, and just how disruptive the isolation regime will be.

By the time the flight attendant on Ardern's flight was tested and got the positive result, almost a week had passed. Anyone that attendant might have infected in that time had been going about their own lives. So the circle of close contacts ripples out.

It highlighted the chilling effect the prospect of isolation will be having on people the red light setting has its freedoms, but before enjoying them people will be weighing up the risk they will have to isolate if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That is why a wider availability of RATs will become critical before too long to allow people to make those decisions on whether to visit a grandparent, and to allow all businesses to keep running.

The Prime Minister will need a few more fire extinguishers before this is over.

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Claire Trevett: Covid 19 Omicron outbreak - can PM Jacinda Ardern put out the fires as she moves on borders, Charlotte Bellis, boosters and rapid...

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Thomas Coughlan: Jacinda Ardern told to isolate on likely wedding day, we wish her well – New Zealand Herald

Posted: at 5:39 am

Politics

29 Jan, 2022 11:22 PM3 minutes to read

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was told to go into isolation on the day she was meant to get married. Photo / Hagen Hopkins-Pool

OPINION:

Saturday might have been the Prime Minister's wedding day - she was meant to get married in late January after all - but instead of walking up the aisle, sometime during the day she received a phone call informing her she was present at an exposure event, and had to go into isolation.

Ardern was not at her wedding on Saturday. She'd wisely made the decision to can it after putting the country under the "red" traffic light setting - critics can point to many failings of this Government, but Ardern does lead from the front and subjects herself to the same restrictions as everyone else (Boris Johnson, take note).

The fact she might have caught the virus while making an effort to appear at Waitangi despite formal celebrations being cancelled is also to her credit. In her first appearance at Waitangi as prime minister, Ardern asked that she continue to be held to account on her return. To her credit, after a year in which the Government's commitment to Te Tiriti has been shaken by a shaky vaccine rollout, she didn't use the cancellation of in-person commemorations as an excuse to shirk returning to Waitangi, even if it was just to record a video.

Her tendency to follow the rules will likely help her; she's a fastidious mask-wearer and is (almost) always seen abiding by whatever public health measures are in place.

That said, Omicron is incredibly infectious and if half of the population is expected to get it at some stage, we should hardly be surprised that our Auckland-resident, frequent-flying Prime Minister is among the first.

For a select few, the possibility of Ardern and the Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, coming down with Covid is a good excuse to brush up on the order of precedence. For everyone else, her infection has no meaning beyond an opportunity to empathise with a hard-working prime minister who might have caught a virus she's been fighting in one form or another for two years.

It's easy to overreact. Ardern is young, healthy and boosted - she'll be fine. Every prime minister gets sick.

If she tests positive, it will cause difficulty for Cabinet and Parliament, Cabinet met virtually last week, so some ministers will have avoided becoming close contacts. However, Ardern had in-person meetings with some ministers, who will be close contacts and have to go into isolation. That difficulty shouldn't be overstated either, Cabinet met virtually in 2020. Everyone knew ministers would get Covid and infect each other before long.

The only meaning one can really attach to this episode is a symbolic one - if the Prime Minister and Governor-General can get Covid, anyone can. There's no outrunning this variant. It might encourage people to get vaccinated and boosted and prepare for a lumpy end to summer.

For most New Zealanders, Covid hasn't been an experience of illness or death. It's been an accumulation of private pains: cancelled weddings, and funerals, tangihanga, held over Zoom. There's a powerful symbolic value in the prime minister sharing in this pain with her own, private story (as private as prime ministers can be).

There's nothing really to do but wait, hope for a negative test, and wish the Prime Minister well if she tests positive. She's certainly earned a sick day (though it's hard to imagine her taking one).

Get used to that feeling - it will become familiar for all of us before too long.

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Steve Braunias: The Secret Diary of Jacinda Ardern – New Zealand Herald

Posted: at 5:38 am

February 3 2022The Government is reopening the border starting with Kiwis coming from Australia from February 27 - with the MIQ system to end for all but "high-risk" unvaccinated travellers.

OPINION:

MONDAY

So if the wedding had gone ahead, about right now we'd be on honeymoon and lying on sun loungers facing the sea. The sun would be frying it like a big blue egg or something like that, the point is that the sun would be high in a clear sky and all you could see was hues of blue, and the shatter of sunlight on water. I might reach for something to drink. Something tempting. Something strong, like rosehip tea. Or, if it's the afternoon, peppermint tea. As the sun goes down, maybe a cup of chamomile. The possibilities are endless. That's what love feels like. That's why they call it happily ever after, because love has no end, love is all you need, all you need is "Excuse me, Prime Minister. The Charlotte Bellis problem. We need to move fast."

TUESDAY

The menu that Peter Gordon had created for the wedding was incredible. I mean he's an artist, a great artist. He plays food like an instrument. He's the Miles Davis of fresh ingredients, or something like that. Jesse Mulligan reviewed Peter's restaurant Homeland and wrote, "I had a lovely piece of monkfish for my main course a fish that often arrives hot and soaking wet due to its density but was just the right amount of moist here, baked with extreme mastery in the oven and served with bok choy, broccolini and mushrooms." I can just imagine sitting down at the wedding feast, and the food arriving, and tucking into a plate of "Excuse me, Prime Minister. MIQ, the borders - we need to move fast."

WEDNESDAY

My heart goes out to Charlotte Bellis, it really does. There she is, a pregnant New Zealander, stranded in Afghanistan Afghanistan! -after failing to secure an MIQ spot. I mean she's not the only one. There are others. The system is imperfect. But put that aside, because you just have to look at her. She's expecting in May. We owe it to her to make it right. I don't know Charlotte, but she needs our help. This isn't about politics. As a journalist, she's impartial, and -"Excuse me, Prime Minister. Charlotte Bellis is giving an interview on Fox."

THURSDAY

MIQ and border announcement. Luxon blusters, "National will hold them to account and ensure they stick to these commitments." Excuse me? Whatever.

FRIDAY

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And Lorde would have sung at the wedding, and Neve acted as the flower girl, and everyone I love would have been there, and Peter Gordon's menu would have been incredible. In that review of Homeland restaurant, Jesse Mulligan wrote, "The heaviest thing I ate was probably the mussels, which came with a pile of quinoa modest enough that you couldn't see it until you dipped your spoon into the spicy coconut broth at the bottom of the bowl." Mussels, quinoa, spicy coconut broth "Excuse me, Prime Minister. Your order of fish and chips has arrived."

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The crisis isn’t around the corner or about to cross the border – it’s already here – Stuff.co.nz

Posted: at 5:38 am

Henry Cooke is Stuffs chief political reporter.

OPINION: Since the start of the pandemic, grim predictions have been the one thing you could constantly count on.

The modelled death tolls always had to be taken with a cubic tonne of salt their worst cases generally supposed that governments and populations made no changes to their behaviour as thousands of people around them died but the economic models were supposed to be more predictive.

We were going to see a slump that made 2008 look like a walk in the park, with unemployment hitting double digits or at least peaking well above 6.7 per cent.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Predictions of mass unemployment have not panned out.

Unemployment instead peaked at 5.3 per cent before dropping to 3.2 per cent at the end of last year the lowest rate since 1986, when the series began.

READ MORE:* Inflation: National blames 'dumb' Government spending for rising prices, Government blames globe* Will the Government actually 'do something' about rising house prices this time?* Housing market comes through second lockdown 'with hardly a scratch'* Economists 'might have to concede they overestimated negatives'

House prices were supposed to crash. Instead, they rocketed up as the tool used to combat the anticipated unemployment spike cheap lending was unleashed on the market.

These grim economic predictions were often tied to predicted support for the Government, which was stratospheric in early 2020, dropping completely. As the health concern faded, the election would be about the economy, and that was where National would step in and retake the narrative. Instead, the party had the second-worst defeat in its history.

The grim predictions didnt let up in 2021. The Delta outbreak was going to do more economic damage than it ended up doing. Suicides were going to spike because of the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. The traffic light system was going to result in case numbers exploding over summer, and huge delays for people trying to leave Auckland.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Oppositions generally predict doom and gloom.

Even after a remarkably issue-free summer, new National leader Christopher Luxon was ready to make a strong negative prediction the moment Omicron was found in the community on January 23, saying contact tracing and PCR testing would be overwhelmed within days. They were not.

It is, of course, utterly natural to predict Very Bad Times just around the corner when you are in Opposition. Phil Twyford in 2017 said the housing market had a decent shot of going bust in two years. There was a worrying economic start to 2016, according to Grant Robertson New Zealands growth rate actually beat 2015 and 2017 that year.

These messages do double duty: they critique the government for not doing enough to stop said bad time and tell your supporters that better times (for your party) are also just around the corner. The luxury of Opposition is that, by the time your predictions are proved wrong, the whole country has moved on.

Plus, not all grim predictions are wrong. The Delta outbreak last year did lead to a very long and horrid lockdown. Omicron cases are likely to rise fairly rapidly in coming weeks. And New Zealanders are already experiencing plenty of economic pain just not the economic pain we were told to worry about.

Indeed, the actual economic crisis facing New Zealand is the boring old one thats been around long before the pandemic and against which the vaccine is ineffective: housing.

Monique Ford/Stuff

New Zealands real economic crisis is already here.

The irony is that New Zealands recent surge in house prices has been fuelled by the pandemic response, specifically the decision by the Reserve Bank to pour basically free money into the economy to keep the gears turning. Its done an amazing job at keeping the economy growing and unemployment low both laudable goals but its done so by making comfortably wealthy homeowners feel even richer, so that they are happy to go out and spend money.

Helping this price rise is the implicit guarantee that the Government (and Opposition) see housing as the one class of investment that should not entail any risk. Their worry is natural. Your house isnt actually going to fall down or be confiscated from you if it loses some of the 23 per cent gain in value it's reaped in the last year, but theres a decent chance that it would stop you feeling wealthy enough to buy a coffee every day or start a small business of your own.

Meanwhile, those who gave up on buying a house anyway are hardly better off. Rent rises have never kept pace with house price inflation the market can only bear so much when there isnt a bank offering you $1 million but have been on a steady rise, likely to be exacerbated if interest rates go up seriously this year. This is an economic issue that also kills people: New Zealand has over 1000 annual excess winter deaths, which hit those in rented accommodation hardest.

Housing is the Achilles heel of the broadly progressive economic plan Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern outlined at her speech reannouncing the opening of the borders. Fair Pay Agreements, light rail in Auckland, and generous unemployment insurance would all be massive wins for Labour, but they wont do much to help working people if the only way to obtain economic security is still to be born into it.

The bipartisan zoning reform passed late last year will ameliorate the crisis in the long term. But it really is the long term were talking about here. Labour ministers are still far too scared to say they want house prices to drop at all. But even if house prices stayed absolutely still, it would take decades for incomes to rise enough for them to reach the agreed-upon definition of affordability.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson stumbled around in this area on Tuesday, after a 1News Kantar public poll found that 47 per cent of Kiwis wanted the price of housing to drop a lot, while 29 per cent wanted them to drop a little. Robertson said voters didnt actually want that, not really, but that of course the Government shared the aspiration of New Zealanders that we want more people to own their own home.

The risk for Robertson isnt quite voter revolt not yet. But the Government did just make it far easier for New Zealanders who spent the past two years in the country to think about moving overseas. Cheaper rent and better pay might not have been much of a draw in 2020 or 2021, when it was paired with longer lockdowns, more Covid-19, and no easy way home if you changed your mind. That wont be true for 2022.

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The crisis isn't around the corner or about to cross the border - it's already here - Stuff.co.nz

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