Staying the Course: How Businesses Can Lead on Nature and Climate Amid Economic Challenges

by David Walsh Chief Executive, NZ Post

At The Circle, we are hearing many more conversations in business about nature + climate, as opposed to “just” climate.  Is that your experience as well?

Yes. It’s interesting, we have a sustainability sub committee of the board and at our last meeting, in fact one of our committee members did raise the question about our thinking on nature. So, it is becoming more apparent.

I also did the Cambridge Institute course some years ago. Nature was a very big part of that conversation as much as the decarbonisation was a few years ago.

Our economy is still in tough shape right now. Do you believe that’s holding back good intentions about restoring nature or fighting climate change?

I do think it's impacting. Businesses at the moment are doing what they need to do to keep themselves afloat. You are hearing in many, many organisations that are really just battening down the hatches as they're getting through this current cycle.

I think though the business also understands that cycles come and go and that that there will be growth ahead - we've just got to get that balance right to make sure through this period we're doing everything we can to keep people employed, our customers satisfied and everything else around it. But it has created a little bit of tension. You know, even within this business, when we're talking about budget allocations and responding to immediate economic conditions. It's natural that a lot of those conversations will be raised.

Can I ask you then, what can we do about that? How can we encourage business and the public sector to stay the course, given that if we don't stay the course, we're in even more trouble down the track?

Yeah, it's that short term [versus] long term, right. What we are doing is trying to get that balance right. We're controlling what we can control, and it is such a complex set of convergence of issues. So we know that we are controlling things like our own fleet change which is one of our commitments. We are also navigating [climate focused change with] our delivery partners, our contract partners.

Roughly 98% of our emissions are transport, half of those emissions are air transport and then land transport is the other half and that's a 50/50 split between line haul, which is trucks going down the country, and then doing deliveries to the last mile.

Part of our initiative is helping our delivery partners convert their van fleet and with the economic environment in play at the moment we look to target those that are able to make a change decision now. That process may happen slower for the next 6 or 12 months but as we start to see things lift economically, we can help reprioritise things a bit quicker.

Our customers are still telling us this is incredibly important, as is the planet and as is everyone who's got an interest in making sure organisations are doing the right thing.

The challenge at the moment is getting the balance right, but knowing what the ultimate goal needs to be.

Thinking about leadership, what do our business leaders need to help them understand the threats we face and how to counter them?  The Aotearoa Circle is trying to help with this with our TNFD training (Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosures). Do you think in general there's enough understanding at that really senior level and at the boardroom level of what the threats are here?

I think it's improving. I think as we were talking about in your first question, clearly in our Sustainability Committee, a director was asking questions about it. So I think the general awareness is lifting. It is lifting, but there's certainly a lot more confidence around the carbon story than the nature story.

You’ve been at the helm of New Zealand Post for seven years now. You know a thing or two about transformation and adaptation. What lessons have you learned that can be applied in a much wider sense to the huge adaptation we have to go through to restore nature and fight climate change?

It's like how you go about problem solving, understanding your strategy and what the elements of your strategy are and why are they important?

We've used the cascading choices model, where you work to get really clear about where you're playing, how you are going to succeed, what is it that you need to be successful?
You can apply that logic to a general strategy or to a specific problem.
Part of that general strategy is recognising New Zealand Post's responsibility and the fact that we generate emissions and impact on the environment, so through that process we've been able to get some clarity about what we're trying to target.

We've been around since 1840, we're still here and there's been plenty of technology disruptions or other disruptions that this business has had to navigate. This is another step in that process for us. The whole world is having to understand that there is something significant to front into, to understand and to respond to, so we've got to be quite clear about what success looks like.

I love that you honour your history, that you’ve been around since 1840. Having that history is important because it really gives people a sense of perspective.

We do talk about it internally because we are being disrupted, but this business was disrupted when the Telegraph systems came in.

And hopefully remembering that history helps you think, look, we've managed before we can do this. So with that in mind, we’ve talked in this conversation about hope and being able to feel like we can do it. Do you believe in your heart that humanity can do this? Can we get through these crises of nature and climate?

I think there's an answer that is as blunt as “we must”, right?

We had some economists talk to us over the last couple of days, and part of what they were presenting to us was the challenge of the carbon story, and they showed us charts that indicated that the carbon boom has not gone backwards yet. But it has flattened. So that's a little bit of good news compared to where we were, but we've got a long way to go.

When you get into Europe and you have the conversations that I have had in this industry, the conversations are very different. They're not talking about if we should, it's how they should. 
I think we've got to believe we can do it. We've got to do more. We've got to move faster, but I think the option of not making headway isn’t an option.

I live in hope.