Progress report for
Moana New Zealand Sustainability Strategy
Achievement at a glance
Moana New Zealand released its refreshed Sustainability Strategy, named Hononga Tūturu, in August 2021. Hononga Tūturu fully elaborates Moana’s purpose and values as a Māori owned business and how these inform our sustainability agenda, known in te reo Māori (the Māori language) as kaitiakitanga (guardianship).In Hononga Tūturu, Moana prioritised Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6, 12, 13, 14 and 17. Within these SDGs, we are specifically focussing on minimising the use of freshwater (SDG6), plastic and packaging (SDG12), climate change response (SDG13), lightening our harvest and farming (SDG14), and improving our engagement (SDG17). In addition, Moana has also conducted integrated reporting for the past six years, including a full materiality assessment with our stakeholders every two years and interim materiality analyses.
Highlights include:
• A GHG footprint time series to inform achieving our target of Carbon Neutral by 2040.
• A climate change investment abatement analysis to inform new technology choices.
• Our Harvest Footprint Project, which maps where and when Moana will and will not fish in the future.
• Entirely transforming our tio (oyster) farming.
• Committing to the 6 Rs, including fully understanding our use of plastics throughout the business.
• In December 2021, we released our first fully online Integrated Report ar.moana.co.nz.
Staff engagement reflects our sustainability journey, and all managers and people leaders have sustainability key performance indicators in place. Our rewards programme, He Koha, incentivises all staff to participate in our sustainability journey and contribute towards our Carbon Neutral target.
Challenges faced in implementation
Moana has faced several challenges in our sustainability journey thus far, which we have attributed to the characteristics of our business and industry and technological limitations.The challenges we faced due to the characteristics of our business were largely caused by the geographical spread and variation in capabilities and work type. In terms of geographical spread, we have offices across the entire North Island of Aotearoa, making it challenging to collect data. Another difficulty in collecting data stemmed from the variation in capabilities across our offices. For example, the limited internet access in the Chatham’s added an additional layer of difficulty in collecting data.
The scope of data we needed to collect due to the variation in work type across our offices also made data collection difficult. For example, the type of work undertaken in Nelson (the oyster hatchery) differs significantly from the type of work conducted in Mt Wellington, Auckland (corporate and finfish). A nuanced understanding of the different environments was required to make meaningful changes, which drew out the data collection phase.
Lack of transparency and technological limitations within the seafood industry also created difficulties. We found that the seafood industry lacks transparency in terms of sustainability, making it difficult to benchmark our organisation’s sustainability measures and outcomes with others. We also found that seafood sector sustainability measurement tools, such as GHG analysis, are relatively immature compared to other industries’ tools. This relative immaturity made it difficult to input and analyse data.
We also faced difficulty in building our own sustainability dashboard and when looking for more sustainable alternatives in packaging and transport. This potentially points to limitations in sustainability measurement tools and alternatives currently available. We hope these will continue to improve with time, in turn making it more accessible to pursue a more sustainable path.
Next Steps
Over the next year, we will continue to progress with our sustainability strategy, Hononga Tūturu (real connection). Below are the initiatives that we will be focussing on.We will continue to work towards minimising our use of freshwater (SDG6) by first understanding what water monitoring tools and programmes are currently in place and where gaps exist to reduce our freshwater use. We also seek to increase our rainwater harvest, using our Nelson hatchery as a case study.
This year we will be setting plastic and packaging reduction targets (SDG12), and also conduct a study to understand the scale and impact of lost gear. Following on from that, we aim to reduce the amount of fishing gear that is lost to the oceans and discarded in landfills.
This year we will look to finalise the dashboard we created in line with climate change response (SDG13) and goal of being carbon neutral by 2040. This dashboard includes real-time measurement of greenhouse gas emissions and is a place to record events and initiatives which impact our emissions (positively or negatively). We will also seek to understand how we might integrate electric vehicles across the business and to create and implement waste guidelines.
A significant focus for us this year will be our Harvest Footprint Project (SDG14). We have successfully created the back end of this project and will use it to understand policy positions, to communicate better with the public and government about caring for the marine environment and to utilise it to shape our fishing practices. In line with SDG14, we also conducted a catchment report on the Whangaroa Harbour and will socialise the findings of that report with the community and proceed with its recommendations to revitalise the harbour. We have already begun marine environmental monitoring around our farm, one of the recommendations.
Engagement (SDG17) continues to be a focus for Moana. In line with this goal, we will seek to maximise our community sponsorships opportunities across the business, to positively impact the communities we operate in.
Beneficiaries
As a large, 100% iwi-owned organisation, Moana has a number of beneficiaries. Our primary beneficiaries are our iwi shareholders who receive a yearly dividend from Moana to fund their social endeavours. However, it’s important to us that we provide value beyond a dividend, as such, we seek to work alongside and support Māori where possible. We also consider our employees to be beneficiaries and seek to support our staff in their day to day lives as well as in their careers. This forms an important aspect of Hononga Tūturu, as we not only look at what sustainability initiatives the company takes on but also how can we learn from these and adapt them for our staff to apply in their own homes. Moana owns no fishing vessels and instead utilises a selection of contract fishers, who are beneficiaries of Moana. These fishers receive benefits from Moana’s sustainability strategy, Hononga Tūturu, as we need our fishers to operate as sustainably as possible in order for Moana to achieve our SDGs. Therefore, the work that we take on to achieve our SDGs indirectly and directly benefits the fishers. The communities that Moana operates in are beneficiaries as we seek to achieve our SDGs we work in spaces and places beyond our operations, e.g. the whole of the Whangaroa Harbour. In doing so, we work to improve the area (in terms of sustainability) and we also educate the community as we do so.
Actions
During Covid19, we positively impacted our iwi shareholders by partnering with Māori-owned fishers, RMD Marine and Ngāti Ranginui Fisheries to provide remote Māori communities with ika (fish). We also supported a network of not-for-profit Māori organisations, One Whānau at a Time, Food Rescue and Ngāti Hine Toa a Muriwai Māori Women’s Welfare League which supported kaumatua and kuia throughout Northland with cooked meals. We supported our employees with special sickness leave, rapid-antigen-testing kits, ready-to-eat meals and grocery deliveries.In Hononga Tūturu, we are creating benefit for Māori by privileging mātauranga Māori (Māori science) in incorporating it into our Harvest Footprint Project, in turn elevating the perception and role of mātauranga Māori in sustainability and science spaces.
In terms of sustainability, our employees receive benefits as we educate our staff about our sustainability initiatives so they are able to lead more environmentally friendly lives. For example, as a part of our commitment to the 6Rs, we created a booklet for all staff that explains the 6Rs with examples of how to implement them in day-to-day living.
Our contract harvesters receive a fair payments from Moana and our fishers participate in our Responsible Fishers Programme. This programme, created and hosted by Moana, keeps fishers updated with the latest technology, education and standards in the industry.
We seek to understand and improve the natural environments that we operate in, benefitting communities that also value these environments, for example, participating in the Whangaroa Harbour catchment report. We sought to understand the health of the harbour and the impacts of land-based activities on the harbour, to make appropriate recommendations to change land-based activities and enhance the mauri (life force) of the harbour. The harbour is important to businesses, communities and individuals, so improving the health of the harbour benefits all of the above.
Moana New Zealand is conducting it's own environmental monitoring with a third party provider of the state of the marine environment around our oyster farms to monitor any changes since the transformation project began.