Global Change and New Zealand Biosecurity

Crucial New Zealand biosecurity stakeholders, such as the Ministries for Primary Industries, the Environment, Business Innovation and Employment, the Department of Conservation; industry and Māori are rightly concerned about how well border biosecurity systems will perform under future trade patterns, climate change, population mobility, and a range of other global trends.

Better Border Biosecurity (B3) is a 15-year-long collaboration joining these key stakeholders with scientists from Crown Research Institutes, universities, and international experts to provide the science behind protecting our plants from invasive weeds, pests, and pathogens. B3 work is underway in several areas to strengthen New Zealand’s borders under current conditions. But the inevitable climate warming, and other impacts related to rapid global change, ignited the collaboration to initiate a project focused on understanding “global megatrends”, those most likely to impact on New Zealand’s biosecurity system, and recommendations on best response to this inevitable but ultimately unpredictable future.

This report concludes there is a need for cross-sector and cross-disciplinary research to address the biosecurity implications of global megatrends, including climate change.

Presentation at Forest Biosecurity Committee meeting, 24 August 2023, Wellington, New Zealand.