Ideas Blog

Matt Boyd, Sam Ragnarsson, Simon Terry, Ben Payne, Nick Wilson

TLDR/Summary

• In the wake of a global catastrophe that severely disrupted liquid fuel trade, New Zealand would face significant challenges in sustaining food production.
• The nation consumes over 3.7 billion litres of diesel annually but has only 21-days’ supply onshore at any time. Even with rationing, agriculture would struggle to maintain food production in an extended fuel supply crisis.
• Pivoting to crops with higher per-hectare food energy yields, like wheat or potatoes, could be more fuel-efficient and help NZ survive a catastrophe. Wheat’s frost resistance could be beneficial in a volcanic or nuclear winter.
• Our new analysis (paywalled, preprint available here) published in the international journal Risk Analysis, shows that local biofuel production of 5 million litres a year could sustain the minimum food production required to feed the population if resources are strategically deployed in anticipation.
• One feasible feedstock for biodiesel, canola, is already grown and has previously been refined for biodiesel in NZ.
• Recent discussions and studies emphasise the need for a comprehensive fuel and food security plan in New Zealand.

Introduction

A global catastrophe would likely disrupt trade in liquid fuels. A severe catastrophe such as a nuclear war could disrupt supplies for many years or indefinitely. Countries dependent on imported oil products might struggle to sustain industrial agriculture due to their reliance on diesel. Island nations importing 100% of refined fuels, where stored diesel would be quickly exhausted, are particularly vulnerable.

Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) consumes over 3.7 billion litres of diesel per year, with onshore stored holdings of approximately 213 million litres, just 21 day’s supply. Agriculture consumes 295 million litres (before including agriculture-related road transport). With other competing essential demands on diesel, rationing alone will not allow current reserves to sustain food production through a lengthy catastrophe.

New Zealand may find that continuing production of dairy products that would ordinarily be exported may not be optimal in a global catastrophe where shipping of milk solids is not possible and dairy production consumes a lot of liquid fuel.

Increasing production of very high per-hectare (ha) food energy crops such as wheat or potatoes, would allow more efficient use of limited liquid fuel. Additionally, wheat is frost resistant, which might help in any volcanic or nuclear winter scenario.

One possible strategy is to attain a minimum level of fuel self-sufficiency through the sustainable local production and refining of biofuels, including biodiesel and renewable diesel.

In a new paper, just published in the international peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis, we analyse the merits of expanding canola production as a biodiesel feedstock, coupled with a pivot to more efficient crops. We deduce the minimum land and liquid fuel requirements to sustain minimum industrial agriculture and feed the NZ population.

Key Findings

Farming a smaller land area would require less liquid fuel. Therefore, we identified crops with high food calories per unit of land (wheat, potatoes) and compared these with NZ’s largest food product by volume (milk), while ensuring that minimum dietary energy and protein requirements are met.

We found that the entire NZ population can be fed using 117,000 hectares of land and 5 million litres of liquid fuel a year if farming and transporting only wheat, as one example. Whereas 84,000 hectares and 12 million litres are required if relying only on potatoes. This compares to 640,000 hectares and 39 million litres if producing milk instead.

The liquid fuel required could be produced from canola oil, requiring 4,400 hectares of canola crop if producing wheat, 10,000 hectares for potatoes, and 32,000 hectares for milk.

If focusing on wheat, the land required for canola is only approximately 1 percent of currently grain cropped land in NZ. Canola also has the advantage of being frost resistant and therefore resilient in a nuclear winter.

Scenario 1: No trade, climate unchanged

Figure 1: Land area required for selected crops to feed the entire NZ population after a catastrophe ending liquid fuel imports but not changing the climate, and corresponding land area needed for biofuel feedstock

Scenario 2: No trade and severe nuclear winter

We also analysed the context of a nuclear winter where soot from nuclear explosions dims sunlight resulting in reduced crop yields. In a worst-case nuclear winter scenario (150 Tg soot in the stratosphere), minimum land area and canola crops as in Figure 2 would be needed.

Figure 2: Land area required for selected crops to feed the entire NZ population in a severe nuclear winter scenario, and corresponding land area needed for biofuel feedstock (assuming 150 Tg soot in the stratosphere and 100km average crop transport distance).

The main lessons are threefold:

1. If a global catastrophe cuts liquid fuel supply then the ability to scale-up more efficient sources of food could extend the time that stored diesel supplies last
2. The ability to scale-up production of biofuel feedstock such as canola could provide a sustainable supply of locally produced fuel in such circumstances…
3. …if sufficient seed, and other inputs, and biofuel refining capacity has been anticipated in advance.

We analysed a post-catastrophe scenario, where many of the typical arguments against the production of biofuel crops do not apply. For example:

• In the context of a global catastrophe the feedstock would not displace food production, this or something similar would be necessary in New Zealand’s circumstances to allow food production (fuel for tractors etc).
• Our analysis does not require any new land to be cleared, merely judicious planting of existing agricultural land.
• Water and fertiliser use is basically unchanged because the land to be used is already cultivated.
• Considerations of carbon savings and lifecycle emissions are not the priority when whole populations may be at risk of starving.

Ensuring canola cultivation for food in normal times, along with sufficient biodiesel refining capacity, would allow for rapid scale-up of biofuel production in crisis times. This is a possible bridging solution for the next decades until widespread electrification of agriculture.

Current NZ Context

New Zealand is a remote island nation completely dependent on imports of liquid fuel for its agricultural production. There has been discussion in recent years about ideal volumes of onshore fuel holdings. However, despite much debate around new statutory requirements, there has been very little movement in actual holdings. Our 2023 report Aotearoa NZ, Global Catastrophe, and Resilience Options: Overcoming Vulnerability to Nuclear War and other Extreme Risks included the following table:

Original source: Terry, S (2023). Reimagining fuel resilience, and how to get it. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/reimagining-fuel-resilience-and-how-to-get-it  

In preparing our 2023 report we surveyed and interviewed a wide range of experts. They described NZ’s reliance on oil refineries in the Northern Hemisphere such as in Singapore and South Korea and that these refineries in turn depend on producers such as Saudi Arabia. In a global conflict or crisis supply agreements could easily be reneged.

Interviewees recommended a revised NZ National Fuel Plan that details preparation for an extended no-fuel scenario. There is a need to calculate how much fuel is required, by whom, and for what, according to a population-level hierarchy of needs. There has been very limited planning for this so far.

Biofuels are clearly one possible part of the resilience response and a mechanism to stimulate local biofuel production would assist resilience. A mechanism that assisted biofuel production could provide biodiesel and potentially bunker fuel for shipping and the fishing industry; and appropriate biofuel for the military including the army, navy, and air force. The United States Navy has a biofuel mix strategy, and many OECD countries already have biofuel mandates.

A biofuel blend mandate was considered for NZ, but in a “policy bonfire” in February 2023, then Prime Minister Hipkins announced that the biofuels obligation would be discontinued. However, the coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First recognises the nation’s lack of fuel supply resilience and states that the government will undertake the following:

1. Commission a study into New Zealand’s fuel security requirements.
2. Investigate the reopening of Marsden Point Refinery. This includes establishing a Fuel Security Plan to safeguard our transport and logistics systems and emergency services from any international or domestic disruption.
3. Plan for transitional low carbon fuels, including the infrastructure needed to increase the use of methanol and hydrogen to achieve sovereign fuel resilience.
4. Ensure that climate change policies are aligned and do not undermine national energy security.
5. Facilitate the development and efficiency of ports and strengthen international supply networks

Resources Minister Shane Jones has expressed concern about fuel security, stating that, “I feel it’s really important that we situate that what’s driving us is the resilience of our economy and the resilience of our nation” (Newsroom, 8 Feb 2024).

Fuel security should collectively concern the Ministers for Energy, Transport, Primary Industries, Civil Defence, Defence, and Climate Change. Climate emissions reductions and improved energy resilience are so interdependent that the respective plans for these should be developed side-by-side.

In fact, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment wrote to the Minister for Energy in December 2022, supporting the development of a whole-of-system Energy Strategy.

The above indicates government is now serious about security and that attention will next turn to what action is required. New initiatives are particularly salient given recent findings in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle that NZ’s National Emergency Management Agency is ‘not currently fit for purpose’.

Actions Needed

Firstly, ongoing analysis is needed of the benefits and costs of various strategies. The DPMC’s list of nationally significant risks includes critical infrastructure failure, energy price shock, and major trade disruption, and the former Productivity Commission modelled a $250/barrel oil price shock in their report on Improving Economic Resilience. However, it appears that NZ Government agencies have not formally contemplated the impacts and mitigation measures for resilience to no-fuel scenarios, and where critical global infrastructure is destroyed, not merely disrupted.

To insure against a global catastrophe NZ should:

• Develop a Fuels Resilience Plan that prioritises fuel for emergency and essential services – such as production of food and food transport.
• Determine the optimal mix of food crops to pivot production towards in a crisis, since crops like wheat and potatoes require far less fuel to feed the population than dairy (which consumes 7 times more diesel for the same food energy output as wheat).
• Identify and secure vital strategic national assets in pre-crisis times, such as wheat and canola seed, urban-adjacent cropping land, harvesting and processing infrastructure, and biofuel refining facilities.
• Consider preparatory investments in food system resilience, such as additional biofuel refining capacity and feedstock production.
• Develop a logistics plan for how to deploy these assets optimally within weeks to months should a catastrophe strike and pilot test this plan.
• Develop a National Food Security Plan and National Energy Security Plan that consider these issues in coordinated fashion.
• Conduct this kind of ‘worst case’ analysis across other sectors and services essential to survival.
• Recent analyses for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Toda Peace Institute make the case for this catastrophe resilience work.

Policy needs to strike a balance between the capability to produce fuel in an emergency and optimising food production in normal times. Robust analysis should weigh the expected benefits of catastrophe preparedness and commercial revenues from canola (or other feedstock) products against the removal of it from use as a food. Other nations could also consider this kind of analysis.

See our just published paper Mitigating Imported Fuel Dependency in Agricultural Production: Case study of an island nation’s vulnerability to global catastrophic risks for a fuller discussion of these issues.

NZCat Main Report for 2023 is now available here (PDF, 118 pages).

This report is about nuclear war and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), but it’s much more than that. It raises the issue of global catastrophic risks (GCR) generally, how these may contain most of the risk to NZ, and how a remote island nation can build resilience. This report is a call to action, and an outline of what action could look like.

The report is v1.0, a resource and repository about nuclear war, trade isolation, and other major global risks. It brims with boxed resilience nuggets and examples.

Webinar

Presentation of highlights from the Main Report (30min) & panel discussion (60min): ‘Kōrero on Catastrophe’ – NZCat Webinar (25 Oct 2023).

Next Steps

In 2024, we’d like to talk with people about this work. We know there will be assumptions and misconceptions (ours’ and others’), we will have missed important details, and others’ will miss important details. We support dialogue, a consilience is needed. Our framing of global catastrophe is relevant to everyone. There is content here to support central government, local government, industry, and communities. Reach out, we’re happy to engage, unpack this work, and help identify where/what speaks to your context and sphere of influence. Let’s find the easy wins, the challenges, the steps to take…

Interim project reports

• Hazard Profile for Nuclear War/Winter: ‘Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat): Nuclear War/Winter Hazard Profile’ [link]:
• Multidisciplinary Nuclear War/Winter Workshop (Feb 2023): ‘Workshop on Nuclear War/Winter & NZ: Wellbeing of millions and $1 trillion plus at risk, strategic resilience must become bread & butter NZ policy’ [link]
• Qualitative Survey of Experts: ‘NZ and Global Catastrophe: A picture of vulnerability, a pathway to improved resilience: Analysis Report of Interview Data from the Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat)’ [link]
• Expert Interview Study: ‘NZ and Global Catastrophe: A picture of vulnerability, a pathway to improved resilience: Analysis Report of Interview Data from the Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat)’ [link]

Technical Papers

(peer-reviewed) on Global Catastrophe and Risk Management

• Anticipatory Governance for Preventing and Mitigating Catastrophic and Existential Risks. Policy Quarterly, doi:10.26686/pq.v17i4.7313
• Island refuges for surviving nuclear winter and other abrupt sunlight-reducing catastrophes. Risk Analysis. doi:10.1111/risa.14072
• Food security during nuclear winter: a preliminary agricultural sector analysis for Aotearoa NZ. N Z Med J, 136(1574). PubMed Link.
• Mathematical optimization of frost resistant crop production to ensure food supply during a nuclear winter catastrophe. Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/s41598-023-35354-7
• Mitigating Imported Fuel Dependency in Agricultural Production: Case study of an island nation’s vulnerability to global catastrophic risks, Risk Analysis, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/risa.14297
• Impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815 on islands and relevance to future sunlight-blocking catastrophes. Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30729-2

Through 2023 the NZCat team researched and engaged stakeholders and experts on Aotearoa NZ’s vulnerability and resilience to nuclear war and other global catastrophes.

On 25 October 2023 we held the NZCat Project Webinar, comprising a 30min overview of the work, followed by an insightful in-depth expert panel discussion. Read the short report, or watch it here:

Key Moments

• 00:00 Presentation intro
• 02:38 NZCat methods
• 09:49 Resilience of core sectors
• 20:16 Risk management
• 25:38 Presentation wrap-up
• 28:25 Panel discussion begins

Panellists

• Ben Reid – Founder of Memia; Strategic technology advisor and commentator on emerging tech trends.
• Charlotte Brown (PhD) – Joint Managing Director of Resilient Organisations; Specialist in risk management and decision-making.
• Hamish Gow (PhD) – Sir Graeme Harrison Professorial Chair at Lincoln University; Independent Appointee on the Fonterra Milk Price Panel.
• Lucie Douma – Head of Client Strategy at Farmers Mutual Group (FMG); Former Manager of Covid Recovery at MPI
• Mark Trüdinger – Group Recovery Manager at Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management Group; Leading recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle.
• Matt Boyd (NZCat, Adapt Research)
• Ben Payne (NZCat, Adapt Research)
• Sam Ragnarsson (NZCat, RONGO)

You can download the webinar slide deck here and the NZCat Main Report here.

Audience

The audience was diverse and individuals in attendance were affiliated with organisations including:

• NZ National Emergency Management Agency
• Regional NZ Civil Defence and Emergency Management groups
• NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment
• NZ Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 Lessons Learned
• NZ Productivity Commission
• Disaster Relief Australia
• Agricultural industry organisations
• Global catastrophe think tanks
• NGOs
• Academics

Audience Input

The webinar provoked interesting and important audience input. Here is a transcript of questions/comments on the night (lightly edited for clarity and grammar). NZCat hope that all of these can be addressed in future work.

Q: Great to see the analysis on how to feed the local population and I acknowledge you’ve based this on calorie demand, however it’s critical that we take a human first approach to these sorts of options and in this case, the protein and micronutrient requirements for humans need to be considered alongside calorie. The Riddet Institute have done some good work in this area a few years ago.

Q: Was any attempt to look at future discounting especially in a country with a 3-year political-policy cycle? This is one of the biggest issues in dealing with large future risks and low probability / high impact risks (eg, climate change, overpopulation). While [the NZCat] framework is great, only positive political/communal appetite leads to action.

Q: I think one of the aims of the [NZCat] report is to highlight the need for a long-term plan, that is not bound to political cycles. [However] we can’t simply just wait for the government, [and] also [need to] look towards ourselves and grassroots organisations. In the end, if the public is asking for it strongly enough, the politics might follow.

Q: I’m interested in your thoughts on the benefit of individual organisations or industry groups forming their own risk assessments, going wider than government as participants in this process.

Q: [If there is no diesel, and biofuels are not an option], what could replace biofuels, for food production?

Q: Totally agree with Lucie re biofuels in the US [where lots of corn has been diverted from food] but one of the solutions proposed was to focus on the detritus of food or other crops (e.g. forestry slash, corn stalks…)

Q: Work was done in the 1970s on gasification of extensive immature pine and other plant species as an alternative fuel source. Was that considered as an option?

Q: In a nuclear war scenario, have we considered NZ’s political stance? Eg, it’s possible that a war would be East vs West. If ‘East’ meant China, who could be in a better position to trade with us post-war, should we be cosying up to China to not be lumped into 20th Century political relationships (eg, 5 eyes, UK Commonwealth)?

Q: Wouldn’t the concept of a modern internationally connected capitalist economy largely be redundant in this scenario?

Q: Given that Marsden Point was (deliberately) designed to not (easily) refine Taranaki crude [oil], did a domestic refinery really offer any meaningful fuel resilience?

Q: NZ has ODESC, a Hazard Risk Board, and NEMA as examples of structures that could be expanded to conceptualize, assess, and prepare for major risks. But how is this incentivised and actualised? You have mentioned constitutional change – what sort of constitutional change?

Q: What Charlotte said was really important, about how we communicate risk to politicians and the public. there is too often a hectoring attitude we take. She talked about the need to express adaptability, and a symbiotic approach. I would like to hear more about what that looks like.

Q: Good points on language and the negative perspective Charlotte – I’m just launching a research project on risk communication that will look at the language we use, what sources are trusted, what media are the best – it’s a Resilience Fund project so results should be available to everyone.

Q: We’re already sitting at about a 90% probability of one of: the Alpine Fault earthquake, Hikurangi earthquake and tsunami, or a Taranaki volcanic eruption in the next 50 years. We already face an expanding suite of [locally] catastrophic risks, which is why it is currently a focus of NEMA. Any solutions really need to benefit multiple risks to NZ.

Q: I’ll throw my 2 cents in on Ben’s question – my experience in the CATPLAN is a big ‘NO’ – NZ has so little experience with ‘normal’ disasters (think 2004 tsunami, Europe wildfires this year, etc) that there is little to no ability to think/imagine large disasters.

Q: One example from the CATPLAN (and is still ongoing) is a lack of understanding of how [international non-government organisations] respond, and the role International Humanitarian Law plays in a NZ-centric disaster.

Q: DPMC and National Security don’t really use [coordinated incident management systems (CIMS)], but CIMS certainly can and should be used in conceptualising, planning for, socialising, responding to, and recovering from crises of this nature and scale. A major drawback with current catastrophic planning being led by NEMA is that it isn’t based on any particular hazard scenario. The “all-hazards as no-hazards” paradox at play.

Q: We *should* start to build our own versions of Google and M365 and AWS, etc – our future is long. Much longer than any of these Big Tech companies will be around. We need to think more long-term, and we need to think and invest in resilience – sometimes at the cost of convenience.

Q: I’m advocating ‘low-tech’ solutions for backup systems: UHF radio systems, old style windmills for pumping water, helium balloons above emergency refuges (places to go if displaced), earthquake frequency resonant bells, etc. Things that don’t depend upon our eggs-in-one-basket electronics et al.

Q: Picking up on what Charlotte was saying earlier – the public’s focus on putting food on the table, how can we fund resilience against catastrophic risk? The emergency management system certainly isn’t funded and resourced to do this. It will cost billions. We also need to adapt to climate change and other global environmental risks. How do we tie these all together and manage the collective risks?

Q: Viewing through a lens of ecological / biophysical economics, the breakdown of global supply chains and energy systems is baked in with peak oil fast approaching (if it has not already occurred). Popular alternatives to oil eg, battery electric / lithium ion, do not have the biophysical capacity to replace an oil powered economic system and also embed further reliance on multinational and deeply unsustainable supply chains (e.g. cobalt mines, coal mining for solar panels, etc etc.)

Q: Permaculture is a well thought out system that was designed specifically to be a response to this predicament – do any of the of the speakers have comments on permaculture as a potential solution?

Q: What happened to the report from 35 years ago? 1. The Iron Curtain came down, generating a belief that the spectre of nuclear war and winter had evaporated. 2. The neoliberal revolution swept across the globe and washed away practically all concepts of long-term planning for anything, especially risks, including nuclear risks – more so in Aotearoa but also elsewhere.

Q: You may want to consider the advanced steam technology being developed by Canterbury start up Mackwell & Co. that generates clean energy from biomass. Advanced steam technology is the simplest and most efficient means of converting the sun’s energy into traction… eliminating the need for capital, resource, and energy expensive refining infrastructure.

Q: Agree with Mark on recovery – technically – but here in [Hawkes Bay], recovery has been very limited for example not including reduction resulting in ‘build back’ not ‘build back better’.

Q: ODESC has no statutory basis. Nor does DPMC for that matter. The lack of any real statutory basis for risk, let alone emergency and recovery management at the highest level is convenient for those stakeholders but is a major risk for the nation.

Q: Need to look to resource depletion as a part of this process. Particularly fuel supply and using the 100-year lens. bit.ly/NSENGNZ – have given many presentations on this but agree this is an amazing kōrero!

NZCat Project Team: Matt Boyd, Ben Payne, Simon Terry, Sam Ragnarsson, Nick Wilson

SUMMARY / TLDR

This blog provides brief highlights of the NZCat Interview Study, which consulted diverse experts to estimate the vulnerabilities and resilience options for Aotearoa NZ in the face of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war.

Statistical Forecast: Nuclear catastrophe is a major global risk, forecast to have a 4–10% probability of occurring by 2100 (at the level of killing at least 10% of the global population).

Aotearoa NZ’s Vulnerability: Remote nations like Aotearoa NZ are susceptible to global trade disruptions, even if not direct nuclear targets.

Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat):

• Phase I: Established nuclear war/winter Hazard Profile.
• Phase II: Expert survey to understand impacts and mitigation strategies.
• Phase III (reported here): In depth expert interviews.

Key Findings:

• Agri-Food: Challenges like trade disruption and shortages of commodities; mitigations proposed by the experts included: a National Resilience Framework, a National Food Security Strategy, and localising food distribution.
• Transport & Energy: Dependency on liquid fuel imports and lack of diversification; recommended investments included alternative transport methods and promoting local supply chains.
• ICT & Digital: Vulnerabilities in communications and offshore cloud reliance; experts recommended National Digital Communications Continuity Plan and more local capacity.
• Economy & Finance: Economic instability post-catastrophe and potential breakdown of digital payments; experts suggested strategies included a shift to a more physical cash society and bolstering local circular economies.
• Risk Management: Identified need for better legislation, long-term planning, and investing in resilience.

Implications:

• Complex interdependencies exist across crucial sectors in NZ.
• Basic resilience to severe global perturbations is necessary.
• Inclusion of global catastrophic risks in national risk assessments is vital.

MAIN TEXT

Global Catastrophic Risks

Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) are an array of potential disasters that threaten human civilisation. Such risks include severe pandemics, extreme climate impacts, risks associated with artificial intelligence, massive volcanic eruptions, and the intentional or accidental detonation of nuclear weapons leading to nuclear war.

Individually uncertain, though collectively plausible, the likelihood of a GCR killing 10% of the world’s population by 2100 has been estimated in a 2023 forecasting study to be in the 6–51% range (varying by expert groups).

Nuclear catastrophe ranked as one of the most likely catastrophic risks, carrying a 4–10% chance of killing more than 10% of the global population by 2100.

Nuclear War and the NZCat Resilience Project

The consequences of GCRs, or their cascading interdependencies, could be unbearable. The disruption to global trade likely to follow nuclear war has been studied, and remote nations like Aotearoa NZ appear particularly vulnerable, even if unlikely to be direct targets of nuclear attack. 

The Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat) seeks to identify the significant impacts that a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war might have on Aotearoa NZ and to explore how these impacts could be mitigated.

Phase I of NZCat established a nuclear war/winter Hazard Profile through consultation with expert stakeholders. The Hazard Profile provides information on the global risk of nuclear war and possible high-level impacts on Aotearoa NZ. These impacts include severe loss of connectivity, trade collapse, and the effects of a nuclear winter.

Phase II involved a qualitative Survey of Experts based on the mid-range scenario in the Hazard Profile, with the aim of better understanding these impacts on Aotearoa NZ and to canvas mitigation strategies.

The survey respondents suggested individuals for subsequent interview study, and a snowballing approach identified additional experts across key sectors encompassing agri-food, transport, energy, ICT/digital, economy and society, as well as risk management, planning, and foresight.

The NZCat project then interviewed 18 highly knowledgeable key informants.

This blog outlines the main findings from these interviews. Interested readers should refer to the Full Interview Report and the NZCat Project Page for more information (a Preliminary Interview Report was independently prepared and shows convergence with the main findings).

Overview of interviewed experts

Sector/Organisation	Expert’s role
Food/Agriculture
Food and grocery	Senior management role
Farm holding company	Arable Farmer/Managing Director
Government primary industries	Senior scientific role
Agricultural technology	Former Chairman
Public Service	Former senior leader
Energy
Petroleum Supplier	Asset Advisor
Government	Former senior scientific role
Transport
Transport Planning Consultancy	Consultant Engineer
Transport Company	Chief Information Officer
ICT/Digital
Futures & Technology	Consultant
Cloud Provider	Chief Executive
Network Technologies	Business Development Manager
Economy
Economics	Senior academic
Economic Consultancy	Founding Director
Risk & Disaster Management
Local Government	Emergency Management Specialist
Foresight and Futures	Consultant
Urban Planning	Academic
Risk Management	Academic

Findings

Agriculture & Food

Interview participants indicated that the Aotearoa NZ agri-food sector would face substantial challenges following a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war with consequent nuclear winter. These challenges include severe trade disruption (potentially zero-trade in a pessimistic scenario) leading to a shortage of commodities on which agri-food production and supply relies.

These commodities include liquid fuel, agri-chemicals, seed, fertiliser and machinery, and processing equipment. Productive yield would almost certainly fall, perhaps significantly.

“You know, there might be six passes across a paddock of wheat in a season. By the time you, um, you know, direct drill it, You know, spray it. Whatever you need to do with it, and then harvest it [that requires regular fuel supply].” (Interview 5)

Supply chain vulnerabilities could lead to potential livestock oversupply and animal welfare concerns, and there would likely be labour supply uncertainties. Worker absenteeism could be particularly acute.

To address these risks and bolster resilience, strategic measures are essential. These could include the development of a National Resilience Framework, including a Food Security Strategy, as well as localising food distribution to reduce transportation demands, addressing seed storage issues, ensuring animal welfare, and fostering trade continuity with key partners after the fact, particularly Australia. Trade continuity could be nurtured in a strategic and well-planned way prior to an event of such magnitude occurring by ensuring the necessary infrastructure is available.

Major interdependencies were identified among food production, transport, and energy supply, indicating that comprehensive planning and collaboration are vital for mitigating these risks and enhancing preparedness. As one interviewee put it:

“And you know what is enough to feed New Zealand? Um, instead of chasing markets, I guess it would just have to be a whole, uh, New Zealand wide agricultural look at, like, how do we work it so that everyone you know, not over production in one area for no reason. And we’ve got no export facilities, you know, or no reason to export. Um, it would just have to be the whole of New Zealand coming together and trying to grow things in the right area. Basically, that’s the simplest way to do it.”

Transport & Energy

The interviews revealed that Aotearoa NZ’s transport and energy sectors are intimately entwined and vulnerable should a global catastrophe severely impact trade and connectivity. While hydroelectricity offers a strong renewable energy base, dependence on imported liquid fuel and lack of preparation for major crises were seen as amplifying factors for the major challenges triggered by GCRs.

“That’s something that worries me at the moment … [referring to closure of Marsden Point Refinery] we don’t get crude, we don’t get [it] at all anymore. You know if we don’t have diesel. You know, um, it’s pretty simple the alternative, isn’t it? … [It’s the basis] of how we farm at the moment. There’s no way to get back to horse … there’s no machinery to do it that way … all the mechanisation we use is run on diesel.” (Interview 3)

Critical impacts are primarily due to this dependence on liquid fuel imports and an overreliance on diesel powered road trucking with limited transport diversification. Digital infrastructure essential for transport and energy supply could be degraded without backup plans or workarounds having been devised.

One goal would be to create more resilient and self-sufficient domestic transport, simultaneously advantageous for meeting climate emissions reductions and sustainability objectives.

Expert participants suggested that mitigation approaches could involve more balanced investment in alternative transport methods (such as coastal shipping and rail), and transition to alternative fuel transport options like electric rail, electrification of road transport, and exploring hydrogen trucks. There could be improvements in data security and IT infrastructure resilience; promotion of localised supply chains and people-centric accessible urban environments; and plans for a wider range and scale of risks.

Participants also emphasised the need to ensure enduring long-term policy, develop an improved National Fuel Plan (including comprehensive fuel supply chain and contingency planning), and overcome challenges to biofuel production. However, mitigating fuel import dependency will require multi-faceted and phased solutions. Effective crisis preparedness and enduring strategic planning, resilient to political shifts and populism, are crucial.

ICT & Digital

Expert participants across Aotearoa NZ’s digital, ICT, and communications sectors identified critical vulnerabilities, including communications and critical system maintenance challenges in a trade isolation context, as well as heavy reliance on offshore cloud service providers leading to a lack of domestic capacity and capability.

“It’s a lot like the supermarkets. It’s a lot like the overseas banks, but it’s many times worse because it underpins all of those other sectors and the government. … It’s not just one vertical, it’s everything. So what can be done about that? As I say, I think the first thing is, uh, legal recognition of cloud as Critical National Infrastructure. In such that the government now has a, uh is mandated to do something about this and to allow regulations and laws which guarantee a certain level of security in the supply of digital services … And I think the other point that I delineate from that but which follows from the first point, is that they need to ensure that there is a vibrant local digital, economy, including the all those lower levels of cloud providers, uh, down to owning data centres and the cloud services on top, then the systems on top so that we’re not held hostage by overseas interests, which we are at the moment.” (Interview 13)

To address these concerns and enhance resilience, key recommendations include enhanced cross-sector collaboration, legal recognition of cloud computing as Nationally Critical infrastructure (NCI), the implementation of a National Digital Communications Continuity Plan, the establishment of a National Technology Investment Agency, and the appointment of a National Chief Technology Advisor (see table below).

These measures, along with investments in local capacity, rigorous auditing, testing, and a focus on self-reliance and open-source technology, could help safeguard critical systems and ensure resilience, particularly in the face of global catastrophes. Interviews with sector experts further underscored the importance of proactive measures to strengthen resilience, promote local expertise, and bolster industry capacity in safeguarding vital Digital and ICT infrastructure.

Economy & Finance

The economic and financial implications of a major global catastrophe are complex and potentially dire, stemming from trade and infrastructure disruptions. Experts expressed concerns about the severity of economic instability and downturn following an event of such scale and the need for thorough planning and foresight.

“My guess is that they [the Reserve Bank] are prepared for a local event, say, a Wellington earthquake or something like that. […] Right now, you know, think of a localised event, but spread over the whole country, that looks very, very different. Um, and I don’t think they’re prepare[d] for that, they don’t think about that” (Interview 12)

Key challenges include the possible breakdown of payment systems with need to transition to a physical cash society, and limited preparedness for nationwide calamities. While centralised responses have proven effective in certain instances (like responding to COVID-19), experts acknowledged that responses may falter in scenarios marked by substantial digital system disruptions, thereby highlighting the critical dependence of economy and society on functioning ICT.

Digital security and resilience are critically important. Aotearoa NZ needs proactive preparedness for various scales of emergency responses, especially in situations where digital communications and economic transactions are compromised. The proposition of bolstering a circular, locally-focused economy was introduced as a resilience strategy, aligning with the broader theme of self-sufficiency and community-based solutions.

National Plans, Strategies, and Frameworks recommended by sector experts * Legal/Regulatory arrangements > Statutory basis for National Security Arrangements > Clear and appropriate definition of critical infrastructure (that includes essential digital services such as cloud computing or mobile communications, as well as neglected infrastructure such as coastal shipping) > Legal provisions to maintain democracy > Changing procurement rules to encourage local solutions * National Risk Assessment > Publicly facing National Risk Register * National Resilience Framework * National Technology Investment Agency * National Chief Technology Advisor * Pre-disaster strategies > National Risk Strategy > National Energy Security Strategy > National Food Security Strategy > Digital Infrastructure Resilience Strategy > Long-term Supply Chain Strategy * Catastrophe response plans: > National Fuel Plan > Contingency Plan for Major Technological Outage > National Digital Communications Continuity Plan > Reserve Bank Plan for No Digital Payments > Zero-trade Plan > Strategy for Re-establishing Trade with Australia * Long-term recovery strategies * Plan for physical knowledge repositories

Risk Management & Foresight

In addition to sector experts, NZCat interviewed experts in risk management and foresight. Risk experts identified challenges in preparing for catastrophic scenarios, the complexities involved in addressing large-scale risks, and the tensions between central and local coordination.

The experts expressed the need for better government collaboration and improved legislation. Specific concerns focused on the perceived inadequacy of the 2023 Emergency Management Bill. A stronger legal framework was proposed.

“Yeah, that’s a really good question, and I don’t know if there’s an easy answer, but I suspect with this I feel as though the next this iteration of the emergency management bill has brought us forward from the 20-year-old, you know, legislation that we had. So, it’s definitely … heading in the right direction. [But] It’s not fit for purpose for a global catastrophe. No, I don’t think it is.” (Interview 11).

Furthermore, the absence of a statutory foundation for national security arrangements was noted, with these arrangements often reliant on Cabinet decisions. This approach can be problematic, particularly in managing major hazards. Participants also questioned the effectiveness of national security plans and underscored the prevalence of short-term thinking as a systemic weakness.

The potential challenges that Aotearoa NZ might face in the event of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war scenario or other catastrophic events necessitate effective foresight and long-term management. Proposed solutions include longer-term planning, investing in resilience, establishing non-partisan pathways for strategic thinking, and considering the creation of an independent think tank or government organisation for risk strategy. Participants emphasised the importance of resilience beyond specific hazards, the need to develop redundancy, and conduct comprehensive scenario analysis.

Summary

The NZCat interview study has concluded that a nuclear war, resulting in severe trade disruption as well as nuclear winter could have wide-ranging and considerable impacts on Aotearoa NZ, but interview participants identified mitigation options to limit the impact of this catastrophe and other large scale global risks.

The table highlights key messages provided by expert interview participants across sectors.

Agri-Food	Transport, Fuel, Electricity
Impact: Collapse of export markets; Shortage of imported diesel; Supply chain issues for agri-inputs; Workforce uncertainties; Failure of essential technologies; Commercial uncertainty Mitigation: National Resilience Framework; Food Security Strategy; Re-establish regional trade	Impact: Shortage of imported fuels; Failure of road trucking; Insufficiently diverse transport options; Vulnerability to digital outages Mitigation: Preparedness & plans; Local supply chains; Alternative fuel supply; Diversify/electrify transport options; People-centred cities; Resilient electricity networks
Economy	ICT/Digital
Impact: Economic instability & downturn; Failure of digital payments; Impacts amplified by limited preparedness Mitigation: Facilitate a cash economy; Digital resilience to enable government; Circular localised economies	Impact: Failure of communication systems; Disconnection from offshore cloud & suppliers Mitigation: National Digital Communications Continuity Plan; Scenarios, auditing, and testing; Local communications self-reliance; Open-source digital for resilience
Risk Management
Key approaches: * Include global catastrophe in national risk assessment * Multi-layered collaboration * Develop effective emergency management legislation * Preparedness for a broad range of disasters

Implications & Next Steps

This interview study of 18 experts across critical sectors re-iterated the complex interdependencies among sectors and the vulnerabilities of Aotearoa NZ to global catastrophe. Human systems are complex adaptive systems, embedded in complex adaptive ecological systems, and the interconnections, and therefore potential failure points, are ubiquitous and global.

Degradation of functions, whether digital connectivity, fuel or energy supply, agricultural yield, or transport options, could cause severe cascading effects across connected systems and a feedback spiral that degrades all systems.

Concrete solutions were suggested, and these include taking a systematic approach to national risk, with a set of interconnected critical sector strategies and response plans. 

To avoid the risk of industry, sectoral, societal, or global collapse, basic resilience to the most severe perturbations is required. Such resilience likely requires the inclusion of GCRs in national risk assessment activities, coordinated anticipatory governance that transcends traditional silos, as well as investment in resilience strategies, response plans, and critical infrastructure.

Many suggestions for how to achieve this exist, and the NZCat team will present a suggested policy agenda for resilience to nuclear risk and other GCRs in the project’s Main Report due by the end of the year. An NZCat webinar and panel discussion will be streamed for free in October 2023 and will provide an overview of the Hazard Profile, Expert Survey, Interview Study, and a set of technical papers. Links will be provided on this website.

This week Adapt Research’s Matt Boyd had a conversation with journalist Peter Griffin of BusinessDesk. The pair had a wide-ranging discussion about global catastrophic risk and what this means for NZ.

Topics include risks from AI, biothreats, climate change, nuclear or great power war, volcanoes, and the gaps in New Zealand’s risk management system.

Resilience is possible if we can overcome political short-termism, and focus planning and investment to where most of the risk lies.

Link here (starts at 20:45, paywalled, but a free trial option exists with reminders before being billed): https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/podcasts/business-of-tech-podcast-from-runaway-ai-to-nuclear-war

TLDR: Massive volcanic eruptions can impact global climate and severely disrupt global critical infrastructure. These eruptions are more frequent than previously thought, can have more impact than previously thought, and at lower magnitudes than previously thought. New Zealand (NZ) is less likely to suffer direct effects of climate disturbance, but is highly vulnerable to trade disruption. Massive volcanism constitutes a significant global risk, and a nationally significant risk to New Zealand, even if originating elsewhere. A publicly facing National Risk Register would make this clear and encourage mitigation.

New book on Global Risk

A new free book on existential risks to humanity appeared recently. The Era of Global Risk: An introduction to existential risk studies from OpenBook Publishers is edited by SJ Beard, Lord Martin Rees, Catherine Richards, and Clarissa Rios Rojas.

The book surveys familiar existential risks such as ecological breakdown, biological threats including bioengineered pandemics, and risks from advanced artificial intelligence, especially its convergence with risk from nuclear weapons. Many of these threats are hot current topics in global risk management. But the book also includes a very good discussion of natural risks such as volcanic activity and near-Earth objects.

Risk from large magnitude volcanoes

In this blog I focus on volcano risk. NZ is very familiar with the harm volcanoes can cause. On 24 December 1953, 151 people were killed in the Tangiwai railway disaster when a volcanic lahar washed out a rail bridge. On 9 December 2019 another 22 people were killed by an eruption of Whakaari/White Island. There have been several other volcanic fatalities in NZ.

There are clearly risks to NZ from volcanic eruptions occurring within NZ, but there are also risks from volcanic eruptions occurring elsewhere, the effects of which cascade to, potentially severely, impact NZ. Not all these effects are direct threats to life, but indirectly they could cause economic and societal catastrophe.

The fossil record indicates the huge impact that supervolcanism (VEI 8+) has had for life on Earth. Most past global mass extinction events were associated with massive volcanism. The causal process was probably rapid climate cooling or warming (or both) and pervasive marine anoxia. This is because volcanoes can spew sulphur into the atmosphere, reflecting sunlight, and absorbing heat from Earth. Clearly, supervolcanic eruptions could make agriculture difficult in many regions.

Even lesser volcanism (VEI 7+) has been associated with global climate impacts. For example, the Tambora eruption of 1815 brought unseasonal frost and famine to regions of the world including parts of Europe, India, and China.

More frequent than previously thought

The climate impacts of volcanism depend on the amount of sulphur emitted, which does not necessarily align with the magnitude of the eruption. VEI 6 & 7 are capable of climate effects. The chapter on Natural Global Catastrophic Risks mentions the occurrence of 160 explosive eruptions ejecting more sulphur than Tambora 1815, in the last 10,000 years, with evidence of additional large eruptions being frequently discovered.

Considering the totality of geological and historical evidence it is likely that the recurrence interval for VEI 7+ eruptions is about once every 625 years (a 1 in 6 chance this century). The table shows the recurrence period of other magnitude eruptions.

More harmful than previously thought

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are interfering with effect of volcanoes via the Brewer-Dobson circulation (an atmospheric pattern where warm air rises in the tropics and sinks at the poles). The effect of this is that future eruptions the size of Tambora in the tropical regions could cause up to 3.2C global surface cooling. For context, the 1.9C mean global cooling caused by Tambora in 1815 led to summertime frost days in Europe.

Additionally, if large eruptions (even as small as VEI 3+) were to occur at global trade and infrastructure pinch points (eg Luzon Strait or many other places where trade, communications, commerce, etc all converge), the impact on trade, geopolitics, and economies could be severe. This volcano pinch point risk was described in detail in a paper in Nature in 2021. The effects could include widespread food shortages, fuel price rise, disease outbreaks, trade isolation, or conflict.

New Zealand is more vulnerable to trade disruption

Our previous research showed that islands were less impacted by the climate effects of the 1815 Tambora eruption than continental locations. Although this may not protect islands today in a more interconnected world where a global food shock could cascade to widely impact trade, including food and energy supply.

New Zealand is particularly vulnerable to the effects of trade disruption given its dependence on liquid fuel imports, with only a short term (weeks) onshore reserve. Diesel is necessary for agricultural production, and transport of food and manufactured goods. New Zealand’s digital communications are vulnerable to destruction of undersea cables or overseas cloud infrastructure, and the electricity system is dependent on imported parts for maintenance and is calibrated to our usual levels of sunlight, rainfall, and wind. There are many other ways in which New Zealand society could be strained or break down due to major catastrophes occurring elsewhere. I have blogged on these issues many times previously and won’t cover them again here.

Risk management

The NZ Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and the National Emergency Management Agency work closely in New Zealand on risk from volcanoes within the country. But it is not clear who is tasked with assessing the likelihood and societal and economic consequences of massive volcanism originating elsewhere. We identified a similar apparent gap with respect to the risk to New Zealand from a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war – and this led to our current Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat), where we have profiled the nuclear risk, and are researching strategies for mitigation.

The UK’s publicly facing National Risk Register (2023) now includes global VEI7+ eruption, recognising the dire trade, food, economic, and geopolitical consequences of such an event and the impact this could have on the UK. Norway’s 2014 National Risk Assessment also includes large volcanoes manifesting elsewhere.

If risks are described and understood, civil contingencies can be taken ahead of time to mitigate the impacts on New Zealand (or by other countries in similar circumstances), but only if risk information and advice is provided to Government, businesses, and society. A publicly facing NZ National Risk Register is needed.

Practical steps for mitigation likely include such things as decreasing dependence on imported diesel through electrification or other alternatives, measures to enhance fuel security such as increased storage and biofuel production, diversified trade options, more heterogenous local manufacturing, diversified and less energy intensive agriculture, and frost resistant cropping. Many of these are things that would tend to help us achieve other important goals such as climate change mitigation and resilience to a range of other disasters. Additionally, plans for response specific to significant ‘abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios’ (eg volcanic or nuclear winter) can be prepared ahead of time, and organisations such as the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) specialise in such planning.

It’s time New Zealand compiles a proper catalogue of nationally significant risks that looks beyond those we are familiar with.

This is a link-post to results of a recent survey.

In an election year, there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand political parties to clearly state their policies for ensuring a safe and secure New Zealand in the face of long-term and global catastrophic risks, which plausibly harbour almost all the actual risk to the country.

Do the main parties support a US-style Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act? Or perhaps a systematic national risk assessment? A publicly facing National Risk Register? A Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks? A UK-style National Government Resilience Framework? What is the plan for keeping New Zealanders safe?

A recent survey and blog authored by members of the NZCat team, suggests that most parties may not have even considered these critical national issues.

Read the survey findings here: https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/where-do-parties-stand-long-term-thinking-catastrophic-risks

TLDR/Summary

• The UK has just published a new improved National Risk Register covering 89 major threats, including key global risks like massive (VEI7+) volcanic eruption, emerging infectious disease, and nuclear ‘miscalculation’.
• NZ has just published a National Security Strategy that focuses on 12 ‘core issues’.
• The comprehensive nature of the UK Risk Register highlights the siloed and disconnected nature of NZ’s risk analysis and management environment.
• NZ can learn from the inclusion of critical global catastrophes in the UK National Risk Register – scenarios which potentially contain most of the actual risk
• NZ could use the plans for ‘system reform’ articulated in the National Security Strategy to ensure broad, high-level, coordinated governance of national risks.

Two recent risk assessments

In this post I briefly discuss two recent government publications on risk, these are:

• The United Kingdom’s 2023 National Risk Register (UK NRR)
• The New Zealand Government’s National Security Strategy (NZ NSS)

The UK National Risk Register

On 4 August the UK released its 2023 UK NRR. This document is publicly facing, though aimed at practitioners, businesses and academics, and highlights 89 threats that are detailed in the UK National Security Risk Assessment (a classified work).

The UK NRR comprehensively maps the risks to the UK, including impacts to safety, security, and critical systems at a national level. It was informed by the UK Government Resilience Framework, a House of Lords Inquiry into ‘Risk Assessment and Risk Planning Preparing for Extreme Risks’, and the 2023 UK NRR now presents a risk assessment that looks five years ahead rather than the previous two.

The 2023 version of the UK NRR is a very much improved compared with previous editions. Apparently gone are the days of keeping significant and extreme risks ‘classified’. The Government’s assessment of likelihood and potential consequences across the 89 risks is now published for all to see. This transparency can only aid prevention and resilience work.

Examples of risks contemplated include the failure of all transatlantic communications cables, disruption of global oil trade, and human pandemics.

But for the first time this year, the publicly facing UK NRR includes risks derived from the major classes of ‘global catastrophic risks’ (GCRs). These include:

VEI7+ (very major) volcanic eruption somewhere in the world – The UK NRR states that this hazard could lead to a ‘humanitarian crisis’, ‘major disruptions to supply chain’ and ‘hazardous weather.’ I agree, and my colleagues and I have previously published research detailing how the 1815 Mt Tambora eruption impacted global climate and food supply, noting particularly the impact on island nations like New Zealand.

Emerging infectious disease – A previous iteration of the UK NRR had estimated an emerging infectious disease might kill ‘up to 100’ UK citizens – and then COVID-19 appeared and killed over 200,000. In this edition, the UK NRR now contemplates an emerging disease with a 25% case fatality, it notes the potential need for ‘border measures’, and very widespread contact tracing and isolation potentially of hundreds of thousands of people.

Nuclear miscalculation (nuclear war not involving UK). The UK NRR puts the likelihood of conflict with nuclear weapons at between 5–25% in next 5 years (ie, 1–5% per year). It states the impact of this would likely be ‘significant’ but notes a ‘catastrophic’ impact is possible and that the climate effects of nuclear soot could lead to global famine (no doubt supply chain impacts would be at least as significant as for VEI7+ eruption above).

Global catastrophic risks are important in national risk assessment

Global catastrophes such as those just listed probably contain most of the risk the world faces. Rare but devastating events tend to harm more people that most ‘ordinary’ risks combined. We saw this as the Covid-19 pandemic accounted for 95% of all ‘disaster’ deaths to date in the 21^st Century. All natural hazards combined kill tens of thousands of people per year on average, while Covid-19 has killed many millions. A super volcano or nuclear war could kill even more.

It is good to see some recognition of the importance of GCRs, some of which may well be unbearable, now included in a key national risk assessment. Threats of nuclear war, novel biothreats, and massive volcanic eruptions are plausibly the most serious risks facing the world. Along with climate change impacts (which the UK NRR considers as a ‘chronic’ risk, and so treats differently), and emerging technological risks, such as those possible in the future due to advanced AI, these form a ‘big five’ of risks for humanity.

The NZ National Security Strategy

New Zealand’s new National Security Strategy provides a vision, structure and vocabulary for addressing potential security risks. It includes a newfound focus on anticipation and resilience. The Strategy was preceded by two Cabinet papers in 2022, which I previously critiqued here.

The NZ NSS is a significant improvement on the Cabinet papers. It dispenses with phrases like ‘actively protecting Aotearoa New Zealand from malicious threats to our national security interests, from those who would do us harm’ (which restricted the set of risks to those where (a) there is a malicious actor, and (b) NZ is the intended target. Note that none of the GCRs I highlighted from the UK NRR would fall under this previous definition).

The improved new wording is merely ‘threats that would do us harm’.

I had also criticised the dearth of reference to future generations in the Cabinet papers, so it is great to see that the NZ NSS now mentions that the vision for national security is ‘positive and intergenerational’. 

The Strategy also acknowledges that a ‘more informed’ public means a more resilient society and hopefully this foreshadows the publication of more risk assessment information in NZ over time.

However, risk assessment and mitigation in New Zealand appears too fragmented. The NZ NSS focuses on 12 particular ‘core issues’ that are allegedly the ‘greatest national security threats’, although nowhere is this quantified (and we have argued elsewhere, with quantification, that GCRs are the greatest threats, see our peer-reviewed paper on National Risk Assessments, and our NZ nuclear war hazard profile).

Gaps in NZ’s national approach to risk

In addition to the NZ NSS, New Zealand has the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which does great work, largely focusing on the response to New Zealand-originating natural hazards.

But, there are other risks that don’t appear to fall into the remit of NEMA or the NSS. Some of these are listed on DPMC’s website and collectively known as Nationally Significant Risks. These have been allocated to various agencies, and sometimes there is a link to a work programme. Yet, there are still gaps. For example:

• Which national entity in NZ is tasked with analysing the impact of a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia on New Zealand’s climate, crop yields, agricultural economy, and ability to sustain export food to areas potentially falling into famine due to volcanic winter?  
• Which national entity in NZ is tasked with analysing the impact of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war on global trade, diesel fuel supply to New Zealand and determining how much diesel is needed for agriculture to feed even just New Zealanders, and therefore how much biofuel we need to be capable of producing so we don’t see starvation in New Zealand? (Iceland, another remote island dependent on trade, has been calculating this – yet NZ’s National Fuel Plan doesn’t even mention business as usual quantities for critical customers)

The list of global catastrophes goes on, and each should be taken seriously by New Zealand risk assessments, because such scenarios plausibly contain most of the actual risk. NZ can bear the impact of floods and earthquakes, it has before, many times. But some global catastrophes may simply be unbearable to a trade-dependent island without planning and a focus on resilience.

I’ve blogged about this before and compiled the following diagram to illustrate how key risks are neglected. I’ve suggested how there could be a catch-all for extreme risk such as a Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks (or perhaps a Chief Risk Officer) to ensure all risk is addressed and advise on solutions:

NZ needs a systematic and comprehensive approach to risk

The NZ NSS includes the aim of system reform, and an overarching national intelligence and security agency is apparently ‘not far off’. But this proposal stems from recommendations of the Royal Inquiry into the Christchurch domestic terror attacks in 2019. This Inquiry was not at the time concerning itself with GCRs.

NEMA does great work. The National Security Strategy is a good vision, some other nationally significant risks are listed on DPMC’s website. But until there is a systematic and comprehensive, publicly facing assessment that canvasses the entire breadth of the national risk landscape (GCRs included, as per the UK NRR), then the public cannot easily be sure that the structural arrangements of the NZ Government address the majority of risk to New Zealanders.

What is needed is overarching analysis and governance of all risk to NZ. A comprehensive National Risk Assessment is needed, and it could be disseminated as a publicly facing National Risk Register (the UK NRR shows us how). This register could then be used to start a public discussion about risks, expected harm, investment trade-offs, resilience options, and to crowdsource further solutions.

In isolation, every risk looks important (local natural hazards, national security risks, global catastrophe). But it is only when the full risk landscape is presented at once that we can truly debate how to move forwards.

Broad high-level, independent risk governance

I have previously argued that the relevant overarching governance needs to be divorced from DPMC, and it should be more risk inclusive than even the National Security System and NEMA in combination. The governing entity needs to be anticipatory, central/aggregating, coordinating, apolitical, transparent, adaptive and accountable. It also needs to be well-resourced.

Possible structures include a Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks supporting a bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, or a NZ Chief Risk Officer, responsible for overseeing a National Risk Assessment and Risk Register, NEMA, National Security Risks, Critical Infrastructure and Critical National Strategies and Plans to ensure basic food, energy, transport, and communications can be supplied in case of global catastrophe (indeed this entity should collaborate with their Australian equivalent to ensure the Australia-NZ dyad can cooperate in extreme global risk scenarios).

Overall, the UK is getting on with things and has provided a comprehensive set of risk information to the public (along with impressive new structures such as a new UK Biological Security Strategy. New Zealand’s National Security Strategy and the National Security Long-term Insights Briefing that preceded it both articulate this aim, and the NZ NSS is clear that ‘this is just the beginning’, but it remains to be seen what form risk information and the approach to risk management will ultimately take here in NZ.

The NZCat Team has a vision for a secure New Zealand, resilient to large scale global disruptions and catastrophic risks. We’ve been researching anticipatory governance of risk, the process of effective national risk assessment, and we’ve published peer-reviewed research on specific risks such as pandemics, nuclear war, massive volcanic eruption, and risks from artificial intelligence.

Most recently we developed a NZ Hazard Profile for nuclear war, and conducted a cross-sector survey of this hazard, its likely impacts and mitigation strategies. We are now undertaking an in-depth interview study to consolidate this information before we publish our global catastrophes policy agenda in late 2023.

This background meant that we were very interested when the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet called for submissions on their “Strengthening the resilience of Aotearoa New Zealand’s critical infrastructure system” Discussion Document.

The Discussion Document asks whether and how NZ’s critical infrastructure systems ought to be regulated to ensure resilience in the face of hazards, threats, and megatrends.

We have now made a detailed submission on this document noting that regulation is only one aspect of the systematic development of resilience, and arguing the need for better definitions, a wider net, a more systematic approach to national risk, and more focus on potential global catastrophes.

We encourage anyone else who thinks New Zealand needs to improve resilience to hazards and threats, across sectors such as food, energy, transport, and communications to make your own submission here.

You can read our full submission.

Or you can read the Executive Summary of our submission as follows…

Submission to the New Zealand Government: Strengthening the resilience of Aotearoa New Zealand’s critical infrastructure system

Executive Summary

We applaud the initiative to enhance the resilience of New Zealand’s critical infrastructure. In response to the Discussion Document, we make the following key points (explained in more detail in the full submission below).

1. A distinction needs to be made between ensuring existing critical infrastructure is resilient and investing in infrastructure needed for resilience. NZ needs more of the latter (we give examples below) and this should be legislated.
2. A further distinction needs to be made between infrastructure needed for survival (eg water, agriculture, food transport, heating, etc) and merely critical infrastructure. The current Emergency Management Bill does not yet achieve this.
3. Regulation of survival and critical infrastructures should not stop at requirements for currently existing infrastructure. There are resilience infrastructures NZ currently lacks that would be critical to survival in certain catastrophe situations (eg, domestic biofuel production capacity, coastal shipping, seed stockpiles, etc). New Zealand must foster ‘resilient’ infrastructure and develop ‘resilience’ infrastructure.
4. Any regulatory approach to critical national infrastructure needs to be informed by a properly resourced, systematic, public, and transparent National Risk Assessment that addresses all hazards and all threats to help prioritise risk mitigation activity.
5. All hazards and all threats must mean exactly that (not just familiar or recent hazards such as flooding, earthquakes, or Covid-19) and explicitly include the global catastrophic risks that likely contain most of the risk to NZ. The risks should include catastrophic trade isolation and its impact on critical infrastructure.
6. New Zealand could replicate something like the US Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act 2022 that defines and lists such risks and defines ‘basic needs’.
7. If not the above detailed US-style legislation, there could be a NZ National Risk Assessment and Response Act, requiring government to conduct a regular comprehensive, publicly facing, systematic assessment of national risks, including cross-border global catastrophic risks, and to engage with the public, experts, and other stakeholders, including Australia, on these risks and possible solutions.
8. The National Risk Assessment could be coordinated by a Chief Risk Officer or Parliamentary Commissioner for Extreme Risks tasked with overseeing and advising on the systematic national approach to risk, including regulation (see Figure above).
9. There should be a public discussion, including government, media, and crowdsourcing of possible solutions, that explicitly addresses the trade-off between standard of living and security in the face of catastrophic risk, with clear options on the table for addressing resilience, and funding these investments.
10. People today and in the future deserve equitable protection from risks, so investment in resilience should occur immediately, financed by borrowing, and paid for across the lifetime of the resilient infrastructure by all of those who benefit.
11. The distinction made between ‘survival infrastructure’ and ‘merely critical infrastructure’, should leave government responsible for investing in, and maintaining survival infrastructure where it is not economic for the market to do so.
12. Any ‘minimum standards’ should be informed by analysis of second (and higher) order impacts, for example using a NZ digital twin for plausible risks and using downward counterfactual analysis of previous events.
13. We need to better understand the risks before contemplating minimum standards in the face of those risk conditions. However, minimum standards should include mandatory cooperation among providers/sectors/government and pre-catastrophe simulation/scenario exercises.
14. The Government should be transparently clear with the public about the overarching framework for systematically approaching national risk, and employ a legislative and governance structure that does not omit key risks (ie includes clear responsibilities for addressing such risks as Northern Hemisphere nuclear war, bioweapon pandemic, climate altering volcanic eruption, severe solar storm, and other similar risks, all of which originate overseas, and none of which is a ‘malicious threat to NZ’).

You can read our full submission here.

Matt Boyd, Nick Wilson

Summary/TLDR

• The world remains vulnerable to the persisting risk of pandemics and other biological threats.
• One tool for informing pandemic preparedness is the Global Health Security (GHS) Index, which was created in 2019 to benchmark countries.
• However, analysis early in the Covid-19 pandemic did not show the expected correlation between GHS Index scores and Covid-19 outcomes.
• Just published research now demonstrates that countries’ GHS Index scores do predict Covid-19 outcomes.
• In particular, the GHS Index scores for the ‘risk environment’ category were most predictive, yet this category is not included in other preparedness tools such as the WHO’s Joint External Evaluation.
• Governments can have some confidence in using the GHS Index to help guide pandemic preparedness efforts.
• Governments can also learn from international exemplars such as the UK’s just-released comprehensive Biological Security Strategy. 

The world continues to face biological threats

Major health crises beyond the Covid-19 pandemic are almost certain in the future. The risks include pandemic influenza or a new infectious disease, as well as deliberate biological attacks or accidental release of agents used in biodefence research.  

The world may have learned some lessons from Covid-19, but a recent international scenario exercise indicated there is still work to do. In the fictional scenario, a state-sponsored agricultural attack led to a human pandemic because ongoing cyberattacks undermined the accuracy of data about the outbreak. This interplay between advancing technology and biothreats is concerning. Participants in this exercise agreed that current systems for assessing biological events of unknown origin are not up to the task. Compounding this is the risk that the new WHO treaty on future pandemics is being watered down and the design of future bioweapons could be informed by artificial intelligence.

The Global Health Security Index

The GHS Index is a comprehensive, criteria-based assessment of health security capabilities across 195 countries. It encompasses six categories relevant to health security and biological threats: Prevent, Detect, Respond, Health System, International Commitments, and Risk Environment.

However, during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, research indicated that countries with the highest preparedness capacities paradoxically experienced the greatest levels of Covid-19 burden.¹ For example, one study suggested that the higher the GHS Index score, the worse the impact of Covid-19 (see Figure).²

This finding was surprising given that analyses of pre-Covid-19 communicable disease data had found that the GHS Index was a valid predictor of mortality. For example, our own independent validation analysis of the GHS Index 2019, found that the proportion of deaths from communicable diseases decreased 4.8% for each 10-point rise in GHS Index.³

One possible reason for the perplexing GHS Index vs Covid-19 findings could be that more developed countries with high GHS Index values had provided better quality data, which biased analysis.⁴

New research on the GHS Index

A paper just published in the journal BMJ Global Health, presents an updated analysis of Covid-19 mortality for 183 countries, against GHS Index scores.⁵ Importantly, this analysis used data accounting for excess deaths (not just those formally attributed to Covid-19), throughout the pandemic (not just at the beginning) and accounted for the different age structures of countries’ populations. The analysis used data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) modelling database and compared it to results derived from data that relied more heavily on country-reported deaths.

Results from this new analysis showed that country GHS Index scores were negatively associated with excess Covid-19 deaths (or more precisely age-specific cumulative mortality ratios) meaning that better preparedness predicted fewer deaths (see Figure, from Ledemsa et al⁵).

In particular, the ‘Response’ score and ‘Risk environment’ score appear to have the greatest correlation with reduced Covid-19 mortality (see the Table below and also Figure 2, from Ledemsa et al⁵).

This finding is counter to earlier claims that better GHS Index scores correlated with worse Covid-19 outcomes and provides some additional support for the use of the GHS Index as a metric of pandemic preparedness.

Of note were the strong results for the ‘Risk environment’ category, which assesses the socioeconomic, political, regulatory, and ecological factors that increase vulnerability to outbreaks. Notably this score includes government effectiveness and public confidence in government, as well as the level of inequality and social exclusion.

In the new analysis by Ledesma et al, ‘Health system’ score was the only category that was not clearly correlated with reduced excess mortality. However, when the authors adjusted for countries’ income and Covid-19 mitigation strategies (using the Oxford Stringency Index) the expected relationship was found.

‘Commitments to international norms’ and the ‘Risk environment’ are factors not considered by many other measures of pandemic preparedness (such as the WHO’s Joint External Evaluation process), yet both correlated with excess Covid-19 deaths.

The results using the IHME database were not replicated using WHO and The Economist excess mortality models (except for the ‘Risk environment’ category). The authors hypothesise that this is because the WHO and Economist models have a higher correlation with reported Covid-19 mortality and are not fully accounting for excess deaths. Underreporting of Covid-19 deaths is a particular problem, with surveillance studies suggesting actual Covid-19 deaths are ten times greater in some regions.⁶

What this means for NZ

We have previously described our country’s (NZ’s) rather suboptimal GHS Index score prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.^{7 8} We also described how this score had improved in the 2021 version of the GHS Index, with NZ lifting its ranking to become 13^th in the world at 62.5/100, thanks to many of the capabilities developed during the pandemic.⁹

NZ should continue to optimise government effectiveness, strive to achieve equitable approaches with strong Māori leadership, and address sociological factors important in pandemic outcomes. This new research emphasises the need for central planning, effective decision-making mechanisms, and continued focus on issues of social cohesion and trust. Trust and cohesion are already looming vulnerabilities for NZ and in a pandemic context they are life and death.

The NZ Government should also advocate for newly recommended international approaches such as a UN Joint Assessment Mechanism for outbreaks of unknown origin, as well as a Response Coordination Unit. It should also identify and develop solutions to the highest priority cyber-biosecurity vulnerabilities and invest in stronger biothreat intelligence capabilities.

The latter feature strongly in the UK’s new Biological Threat Strategy, which includes a responsible Minister, a ‘Biothreats radar’, a 100-days vaccine action plan, and a Biological Security Task Force (responsible for exercising capabilities). 

Understanding the drivers of future biological harms can help us take effective actions to both prevent future pandemics and minimise harms if they cannot be avoided.

References

1. Haider N, Yavlinsky A, Chang YM, et al. The Global Health Security index and Joint External Evaluation score for health preparedness are not correlated with countries’ COVID-19 detection response time and mortality outcome. Epidemiol Infect 2020;148:e210. doi: 10.1017/s0950268820002046 [published Online First: 2020/09/08]
2. Aitken T, Chin KL, Liew D, et al. Rethinking pandemic preparation: Global Health Security Index (GHSI) is predictive of COVID-19 burden, but in the opposite direction. J Infect 2020;81(2):318-56. doi: 10.1016/j.jinf.2020.05.001 [published Online First: 2020/05/22]
3. Boyd M, Wilson N, Nelson C. Validation analysis of global health security index (GHSI) scores 2019. BMJ Glob Health 2020;5:e003276.
4. Markovic S, Salom I, Rodic A, et al. Analyzing the GHSI puzzle of whether highly developed countries fared worse in COVID-19. Scientific Reports 2022;12(1):17711. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-22578-2
5. Ledesma JR, Isaac CR, Dowell SF, et al. Evaluation of the Global Health Security Index as a predictor of COVID-19 excess mortality standardised for under-reporting and age structure. BMJ Global Health 2023;8(7):e012203. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012203
6. Gill CJ, Mwananyanda L, MacLeod WB, et al. What is the prevalence of COVID-19 detection by PCR among deceased individuals in Lusaka, Zambia? A postmortem surveillance study. BMJ Open 2022;12(12):e066763. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-066763
7. Boyd M, Baker M, Wilson N. New Zealand’s poor pandemic preparedness according to the Global Health Security Index. Public Health Expert (Blog) 2019;(10 November). https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/new-zealands-poor-pandemic-preparedness-according-global-health-security-index
8. Boyd M, Baker MG, Nelson C, et al. The 2019 Global Health Security Index (GHSI) and its implications for New Zealand and Pacific regional health security. New Zealand Medical Journal 2020(1516):83-6.
9. Boyd M, Baker MG, Nelson C, et al. The 2021 Global Health Security (GHS) Index: Aotearoa New Zealand’s improving capacity to manage biological threats must now be consolidated. New Zealand Medical Journal 2022;135(1560):89-98.