This week Post Business launches its new Tuesday columns.
As our weekly Economy columnist Grant Kilby has moved from his Rotorua District Council role to be chief executive at Agrodome, we have taken the opportunity to bring in new faces and new views from new industries.
Scion chief executive Warren Parker starts us
off with his new monthly column (below) on forestry and scientific research in New Zealand. Research and development is becoming an increasingly vital part of rebuilding New Zealand's economy and Warren's experience in this field, both at Scion and Landcare Research, make him a valuable addition to our Tuesday offering to readers.
His column will appear on the first Tuesday of every month. Every third Tuesday, Phocal Communications' Nathan Willis will keep us up-to-date with changes and developments in the information technology and telecommunications fields.
This is a highly technical sector and it can sometimes be difficult for the rest of us to realise the significance new developments or legislative changes will have on us and our businesses. Nathan works with businesses and other organisations around the Bay of Plenty and sees first hand the opportunities and difficulties they face.
Rotorua District Council will maintain a presence on the second and fourth Tuesdays, with a fortnightly slot written by senior managers. We will introduce you to them in due course.
They will be be keeping us all up-to-date with local government topics that affect the business community.
- Julie Taylor, Daily Post business editor
FORESTRY RESEARCH INSIGHT by Warren Parker, chief executive of Scion crown forestry research institute
Balance GM risks with great chances
Where would we be without a multitude of discoveries that improve our daily lives?AFTER extensive hearings and deliberation, the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification concluded in 2001 New Zealand should adopt a precautionary approach, preserving opportunities for future use of genetic modification.
Supported by the Labour-led Government, this has allowed New Zealand research to proceed, under tightly-controlled conditions, into use of genetic modification techniques in pastoral and vegetable plants, dairy cattle and, at Scion, radiata pine.
In June, Northland anti-genetic engineering protesters reportedly danced in the streets at the thought Whangarei District Council might ban local use of genetic engineering.
New York Governor Martin Van Buren wrote to President Andrew Jackson in 1829 about the threat railroads posed to the canal system. He pleaded for the preservation of the latter noting "railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15m/h [24km/h] by engines, in addition to endangering life and limb, snort their way through countryside belching out smoke,
setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children".
Last Friday, a new Chinese-built bullet train completed its 1318km inaugural trip from Beijing to Shanghai in five hours. Travelling at speeds of more than 300km/h, it can provide faster point-to-point travel than a jet aircraft.
Van Buren never considered railroads could add to society, because he looked only at the things that might go wrong.
Researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs overcame the limitations of early steam locomotives to make rail travel one of today's safest and environmentally benign modes of transport for people and freight.
In June, three scientists topped the list of the 100 most trusted New Zealanders, reflecting that scientists work through experimentation, objectivity and independent peer review of their work to advance the frontiers of knowledge. Where would we be without electricity, telephones, genetic modification-produced insulin or a multitude of other discoveries that improve our daily lives?
However, scientific progress is not without issues or fault.
As the Prime Minister's chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman observed in his February 2010 report Climate Change and the Scientific Process:
"Science is a process based on questions leading to partial answers, in turn leading to more questions and more partial answers and so forth.
"In complex systems, this rarely leads to absolute certainty, but much more often to a balance of probabilities. Science-based decisions society has to make will always rely on weighing up the risks of acting versus those of not acting."
Local research into radiata pine is needed to increase our understanding of genetic modification's effects on forest productivity and to answer vital questions about any environmental impacts.
From this information, to be collected across the next eight years, we will be much better placed to weigh-up the benefits and risks of using genetically modified trees on a commercial-scale.
In my view, this exactly follows the Royal Commission's advice - proceed with caution and keep New Zealand's options open.
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