Strategy & performance
Hon. Dr Wayne Mapp visits the glasshouses at our Lincoln site.
Our purpose is to drive innovation in New Zealand’s management of terrestrial biodiversity and land resources in order to both protect and enhance the terrestrial environment and grow New Zealand’s prosperity. This aligns with the Government’s priorities for economic growth with responsible environmental management.
In the face of global economic recession, a primary strategic goal for 2009/10 was to strengthen our financial resilience by deepening and extending our customer relationships. Our principal non–Foundation customers are the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), the Department of Conservation (DOC), the Animal Health Board (AHB), the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and local government, with much of our work supporting the development of public policy and better management of natural resources. We met regularly with these customers (across strategic and operational levels) to maximise the value of our work for them. We developed our relationships with sector organisations such as BusinessNZ and DairyNZ to find profitable technologies and services to reduce negative environmental impacts, increase operational efficiency and meet the expectations of consumers. In that regard, Enviro–Mark® and carboNZeroCertTM certifications continued to provide services that meet international standards for verifying organisations’ environmental performance.
As part of our strategy to offer integrated solutions and diversify our revenue base, we continued our efforts to develop broader relationships with the primary and mining sectors, which face increasing public scrutiny of their environmental performance. Good stewardship of soil, land, water and biodiversity resources is essential to land–users’ ability to increase production, continue their social ‘licence–to–operate’ and retain market access. With regard to our goals to support Māori economic development, we extended our relationships with iwi, especially with respect to research on the co–management and governance of natural resources and in providing Māori with tools to improve access to information describing the attributes of the land they own.
To achieve our goal of improved science foresight and easier accessibility to our science data and new knowledge, this year we put a special focus on using new communication media such as video technology, social media and customised newsletters to increase the relevance, uptake, impact and value of our science. To stay at the forefront of the latest science and technology developments and to meet the changing future needs of our shareholders and customers, we are intimately connected with world–leading science groups. Advanced information and communication technology (ICT) is a key part of this, especially for global projects. Accordingly over the past twelve months we have continued to invest in building our internationally recognised environmental informatics capabilities. Similarly, advanced ICT systems support the development of integrated modelling capability that enables New Zealand to respond more confidently, and from a ´whole–of–system´ perspective, to environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity decline.
Finally, in light of the advice we provide to our clients and end–users, it is very important that we continue to challenge ourselves to improve our own organisational sustainability and to align to international best practice. Details of our policies, initiatives and progress are available via our website.