Landcare Research - Manaaki Whenua

Landcare-Research -Manaaki Whenua

Strategy & performance

Native bush

Native bush

Alignment with our partners

Landcare Research’s goals and priorities are strongly aligned with those of our major stakeholders (our Government owners) and clients (the Department of Conservation (DOC), Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), Ministry for the Environment (MfE), Animal Health Board (AHB), regional councils and business sectors) – to meet their strategic and operational needs. Through iwi partnerships, we support Māori economic development plans and the guardianship of their natural assets.

Implementation of the CRI Taskforce recommendations, especially with respect to finalising our core purpose and key science outcomes, involved extensive government and business end–user engagement. This has important implications for us and we have proactively addressed these in our Statement of Corporate Intent 2011–16.

Strategic Initiatives for 2010/11

Financial performance

We said we would: Increase financial resilience to meet shareholders’ expectations and enhance scope for reinvestment

How we performed:

  • We achieved an 8.4% return on equity, which exceeded the target of 7%; and we have identified strategic opportunities for reinvestment in science and infrastructure.
  • Our financial performance is summarised on pages 40– 41, with the full financial statements presented in Part II of our Annual Report.

Our approach

  • Focus on growing the prosperity of New Zealand across the dimensions of economy, society, culture and environment.
  • Be proactive in developing evidence–based solutions to our stakeholders’ present and future challenges.
  • Use an integrative approach to creating solutions that bridge sectors, scientific disciplines, and mātauranga Māori, across both landscapes and timescales.
  • Address complex environmental problems with appropriate techniques, while we are proactive about the evolving role of science in society.
  • Achieve high standards of science excellence and knowledge sharing to cultivate New Zealand’s critical science capability, through careful stewardship of our own capability and knowledge assets.

CRI Taskforce

We said we would: Proactively work with key stakeholders to maximise the opportunities for Landcare Research and New Zealand from the Taskforce’s recommendations

How we performed:

  • Our key stakeholder partners were involved in helping us develop our SCI 2011–16. The independent client survey showed that stakeholders familiar with the CRI Taskforce reforms are unanimous about the proactive way in which we handled this process.
  • We are part of 7 national collaborative research centres and members of 7 national research networks.
  • 41 staff held 133 positions on national and international advisory boards, technical groups and review panels; 11 staff hold 17 directorships or board memberships.

International engagement

We said we would: Build and strengthen international networks to access new ideas, top talent, funding and larger–scale opportunities

How we performed:

  • Of 349 co–authored papers published during the year, 344 had overseas co–authors from 42 countries.
  • 138 papers were presented at overseas conferences.
  • 33% of our staff are from overseas; 25% of scientists recruited this year were from overseas.
  • Significant opportunities were identified through the Global Research Alliance, the EU–funded Knowledge Based Bio–Economy (KBBE) Forum, the Chilean Government’s science agency CONICyT, the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and the New Zealand and China Environmental Cooperation Agreement.

Reinvestment of surpluses

We said we would: Accelerate the creation of national benefit by increasing the competitiveness of Landcare Research’s science and shortening lead times of new knowledge and technologies to market

How we performed:

  • We are working to establish a National Centre for Land Resources to bring together data from within Landcare Research, other science providers and government and industry, and to develop eResearch applications to transform access to and usability of data.
  • The new greenhouse gas research facilities at Lincoln will support research for MAF and MfE to assist New Zealand in meeting its international obligations to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen our position as a leader in such research.
  • We are partners in National e–Science Infrastructure (NeSI), a $48 million investment by government, three universities and two other CRIs to build and operate four interlinked High Performance Computing facilities.

Customers, communication and branding

We said we would: Achieve superior understanding and interaction with our customers and key stakeholders to secure revenue growth targets and maximise national benefit of our RS&T

  • In an independent survey, all of our clients interviewed rated our performance as ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ (2010: 91%); all agreed our staff were highly professional (2010: 95%) and worked effectively with clients (2010: 81%); and all rated the quality of our research as ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ (2010: 95%).
  • We participated in the EnviroLink–organised Regional Council Roadshow to 15 regional councils and territorial authorities.
  • We continued 6–monthly CEO and senior management team meetings with each of our major clients in government to foster greater collaboration and strategic alignment in our work.
  • $11.15m (18% of our revenue) was contracted from government departments, local government and the Animal Health Board; New Zealand private–sector clients contracted $6.16m (10% of our revenue) in research services; we produced 223 contract reports for clients.
  • 69 client staff were on our advisory groups, and 38 staff held 66 positions on stakeholder advisory groups.
  • We were invited to participate in 252 technical meetings with client and stakeholder staff.
  • We worked on collaborative research projects with 195 end–users and stakeholders.
  • We produced 16 different newsletter series (print or online), each specifically focused on the needs of particular client and end–user groups. In the external client survey, several stakeholders commented positively about the tailored newsletters and appreciate the short, sharp and relevant information on our work.
  • We share premises with 119 client and stakeholder staff across 9 of our sites.

Environmental technologies

We said we would: Develop and transfer products and services that improve the sustainable use of natural resources and environments and expand economic opportunity

How we performed:

  • The carboNZero programme increased its net revenue by 29% from last year, and signed a licensing agreement with Lloyds Register Quality Assurance Ltd in Australia (the second CEMARS licensing agreement for Australia). From 1 July 2011, the business became a wholly owned subsidiary company with its own CEO and Board of Directors.
  • EcoGene®  flourished with a 72% growth over the previous the year; EcoGene’s Technical Director won the annual ‘Women in science entrepreneur award’ from Pacific Channel.
  • Enviro–Mark membership grew by 8% last year; 31 training workshops, seminars, drop–in sessions and member networking events were provided to members.
  • Our commercial technology pipeline has 8 technologies at the prototype stage (1 of which has patent protection), 11 technologies in developmental stages, and 6 undergoing commercial testing (1 of which has patent protection).
  • Detailed economic case studies are available at: www.landcareresearch.co.nz/publications/casestudies

Systems, workplace and infrastructure

We said we would: Provide a flexible, modern work environment with best practice in organisational sustainability and smart working solutions

How we performed:

  • External audits confirmed retention of our ISO 14001 Environmental Certification, the tertiary (highest) level of the ACC’s Workplace Safety Management Programme, and our carbon–neutrality in accordance with protocols and processes required by the carboNZero programme.
  • All refurbishments and new builds used environmentally friendly materials; our new greenhouse gas research facility used Green Star principles in the absence of Green Star ratings for a building of this nature.
  • We progressed our ICT strategy to enable staff to access our internal networks and systems ‘anywhereanytime’; we participated in the Broadband–enabled Science and Technology Grid (BeSTGRID) to develop New Zealand’s eResearch infrastructure; and worked with the University of Auckland to establish the Tuakiri New Zealand Access Federation, which simplifies access to high performance computing resources.
  • We reduced our GHG emissions by 4% and energy consumption by 8% compared with 2009/10, but international travel increased by 26% and domestic travel by 28%.

People, performance and culture

We said we would: Develop an organisational culture that is adaptive to changing environments, attractive to high achievers and supports high quality and enduring partnerships with key clients and research collaborators

  • The quality of our staff is evidenced by publication of 243 papers in journals with formal peer–review, 9 books edited or co–edited, 24 book chapters, 169 conference papers and abstracts, and well over 150 non–refereed journal articles and popular publications.
  • A review published in Ecological Monographs by three of our staff and nine others was evaluated by the Faculty of 1000 as a must–read new finding and review. This evaluation places the work in the top 2% of published articles in biology and medicine, and this is the second consecutive year in which this group has published a ‘must read’ paper.
  • In their annual review of research, FRST rated progress in four contracts as ‘Gold’ (outstanding).
  • Thomson Reuters’ global survey of scientific impact (citations per paper 2001–2011) ranked us 1st in New Zealand, 3rd in Australasia, and 37th in the world.
  • 210 staff in science teams have postgraduate qualifications; 23 science support and 18 general support staff have postgraduate qualifications.
  • 6 staff hold joint professorial roles with universities; 29 staff hold 36 honorary university positions; and staff supervised 71 PhD and Masters students.
  • 48 staff (including research associates) held 59 positions in professional societies (14 Fellows); 46 of our senior scientists (including research associates) held 96 positions on the editorial board of scientific journals.
  • 11 staff were invited to give keynote or plenary addresses at significant national and international conferences, with costs fully or partly covered; in total, staff made 287 paper and poster–paper presentations at conferences and technical workshops.
  • 19 postdoctoral researchers were hosted, 5 of whom commenced during the year.
  • The third and final cohort completed our in–house yearlong leadership development programme; feedback has again been very positive.
  • 71.5% of our staff participated in the staff engagement survey, which was higher than the CRI benchmark. We scored favourably in health and safety, flexible workplace, sustainability practices and ‘manaaki tangata’ values; the survey also highlighted several areas for improvement.
  • We formed a Joint Graduate School with Auckland University to enhance the science relevance and ‘job readiness’ of biodiversity and biosecurity candidates.