Directors' Blog

5 May 2025

A collaboration between researchers Richard Arnold, April Boland, Zoë Brown and Rebecca Priestley and illustrator Hanna Breurkes. Edited by Jonathan Burgess.

It’s 2025, and in Aotearoa New Zealand there are a growing number of people who believe that the Earth is flat.

That’s an extraordinary statement, coming from a technologically advanced society living more than 2,000 years after Greek philosopher Eratosthenes showed the Earth was round. Most Greek scholars of his time believed that the Earth was a sphere – they observed that ships’ hulls disappeared over the horizon before their masts, and saw the curved shadow of the Earth on the Moon during lunar eclipses – but Eratosthenes proved the Earth’s surface was curved and determined its size. To do this, he made observations of the lengths of shadows cast by the sun at two points a known distance apart on the river Nile and used simple mathematics to demonstrate the circumference of the globe Earth.

Observation is the most fundamental scientific activity and all human beings are observers – it’s how we make sense of our lives and the world. So why, in a country where scientists have been found to be very highly trusted, do some people stop trusting the science derived from observations?

Some people distrust scientific consensus if it challenges their own observations. Our 2021 interview with the mayor of Westland showed he relied only on his own observations, rather than the advice of the international climate science community, in judging whether or not the climate was changing. “Every year I’ve taken a photo on the first of May off my veranda at home,” he said. “Every year, the snow arrives two or three days before, or on the day, and it hasn’t changed in 20 years. I don’t think I’ve had a year that it hasn’t been the same. Some years, you know, a bit more snow than others, but they’re observations that I make personally.” [1]

Our interviews with a small community of high country sheep farmers showed they know their land well, and are expert observers of the weather and interpreters of weather forecasts. They have to be, their livelihoods depend on it. But they mistakenly lump weather forecasts and climate projections together. Because national weather forecasts can’t accurately forecast the weather in their own valleys very far ahead, they distrusted projections for future climate, asking whether “anyone is qualified to work that out”?

Similarly, people we interviewed who believed in a flat Earth relied on their own local observations – for example, that large bodies of water look flat – and they rejected the geometrical proof of curvature by Eratosthenes, or photographs of the globe Earth taken from space, or even the nature of gravity. In one of a series of interviews with flat Earth believers, the interviewee said, “the water’s surface is flat, it will always find its level. So, to me, it makes a lot more sense that [the Earth is] a ‘flat’ thing, than a ball spinning 1600 kilometers around at the circumference, not throwing any water off anywhere, because there’s this other magical force all pulling it inwards at the same time [gravity].” [2]

We’re very good at observing our surroundings – we each know our own valley very well. The trouble is, we can’t easily see the next valley, or the wider landscape. But science sees more than we can see as individuals. Because it’s an activity carried out by thousands of people, science can see far beyond our individual valleys, it can draw conclusions based on far more data than one individual could ever collect, and can see changes over periods longer than single lifetimes.

Like the ancient parable of the blind men and the elephant – in which the man who feels the trunk of the elephant believes he has encountered a giant snake, and the man who encounters a leg says the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk, and so on – we can find out so much more about the world if we work collectively than if we only rely on individual observations.

Some flat Earth believers told us that their disbelief in a round Earth was motivated by religion, but for others it came from a conviction that there is a widespread conspiracy to deceive and control people. They felt so alienated from science that they questioned some fundamental principles that we take for granted, such as gravity. For others a distrust of climate science is motivated by a dislike of policies that follow from accepting it; not everyone wants to swap their car for a bicycle or change to a plant-based diet. And some farmers don’t want to have to introduce what they see as costly changes to farming practices.

How did we get here? The method that Eratosthenes used for calculating the circumference of the Earth over two thousand years ago is still taught in schools, as is the chemistry of the greenhouse effect. Most of the farmers we spoke to had university qualifications – they knew about science. And we’ve interviewed flat Earth believers with strong instincts about the scientific method, about careful testing and experimenting.

So good science education and communication aren’t enough on their own.

When a stranger comes to your valley with news of the outside world, trust is not automatic – especially if they’re bringing bad news, or telling you to change your life. As scientists, we are often seen as strangers. So before we focus too much on communicating the science that we think is important, we need to start building trust with different communities living in different valleys. Because the challenges that we face are bigger than our own valleys.

[1] Westland mayor Bruce Smith, quoted in Rebecca Priestley, End Times (Te Herenga Waka University Press, Wellington, 2023), p.140.
[2] April Boland, ‘Don’t push me, I’m close to the edge: Flat Earth adherence in Aotearoa New Zealand’, PhD thesis (in progress), School of Science in Society, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

Richard Arnold, April Boland, Zoë Brown and Rebecca Priestley are exploring how individuals and communities in Aotearoa New Zealand engage with, and trust (or mis-trust), science and scientists as part of the Science, statistics and the media project at Te Pūnaha Matatini.

Hanna Breurkes is a designer and illustrator who works with Toi Āria: Design for Public Good. She is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. You can see more of her work at hannabreurkes.nz.

23 April 2025

A collaboration between science system researcher Brittany Bennenbroek and illustrator Jean Donaldson. Edited by Jonathan Burgess.

Deep in the heart of Aotearoa, a mighty kauri forest once stood. These ancient trees represented the pursuit of knowledge, their towering trunks standing firm against the winds of uncertainty.

They were first planted in 1926 when the government recognised that a more coordinated approach to research was essential for national development. Those who tended this land believed in cultivating strong, enduring trees that would stand the test of time, their knowledge and resources serving future generations.

This was the era of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), which was established to coordinate and support scientific research. Over the decades, the DSIR grew into a powerhouse of discovery, employing thousands of scientists across fields like climate science, geology, marine research, and agriculture. It played a crucial role in wartime innovation and later provided research that supported industries and environmental management.

The DSIR was carefully cultivated, with scientists given increasing autonomy, allowing deep-rooted knowledge to flourish. Over time, these trees grew strong, their canopy stretching wide, sheltering diverse fields of research.

As the years passed by, the forest changed hands many times, with each new group of owners bringing with them their own vision and priorities, transforming the landscape of research funding.

In the late 1980s, the political winds shifted dramatically. The DSIR was instructed to adopt a “user-pays” approach to research, and before long, all research funding was made contestable. This meant that trees could no longer be planted for their potential; they would need to compete for space and resources, and every tree would need to prove its worth.

The old, slow-growing trees, those that might one day yield the most profound discoveries, were no longer seen as a priority. The shift marked a move away from collective stewardship toward a more transactional model, where steady growth and deep roots gave way to efficiency and return on investment.

In 1992, the government restructured the system entirely. The DSIR was disestablished, and the land cleared for a new kind of tree. Fast-growing and commercially valuable, pine trees promised quick returns, aligning with an era driven by immediate economic benefits. The Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) were established, dividing the forest into zones aligned with key industries like agriculture, forestry, and environmental science.

Unlike the DSIR, which was largely government-funded, the CRIs were designed as government-owned companies and operated under a contestable funding model that aimed to encourage competition, accountability, and commercialisation. As a result, they often prioritised projects that had immediate practical applications. It marked a significant shift – from long-term discovery-led research to a fragmented system driven by shorter-term economic priorities.

As time passed, the limitations of the pine forest became apparent. While fast to grow, these trees were shallow-rooted and vulnerable, especially when storms rolled in. Unlike old-growth forests that absorb impact and offer protection, the pine forest proved far less resilient. A forest optimised for quick economic returns may look productive, but it can leave the landscape exposed when conditions change.

Seeking to bridge the fragmented system and bring greater collaboration to the research landscape, in 2014, the government established ten National Science Challenges. These were designed to address Aotearoa’s most significant science-related issues and opportunities, and unite researchers across CRIs, universities and other organisations. Through these partnerships, new shoots began to regrow a more connected forest, linking people, knowledge, and purpose.

In 2024, the National Science Challenges came to an end, and the forest became restless. Now, in 2025, things have shifted again. The pine trees are being cleared, ready for a new kind of forest to take root: the Public Research Organisations (PROs).

We stand at a crossroads, and what this forest may become is still uncertain. We have an opportunity to grow a rich and resilient ecosystem – diverse by design, rooted in care, curiosity, and collaboration. A forest shaped by partnership across disciplines, institutions, and communities, capable of bearing different kinds of fruit. One where long-term sustainability is prioritised alongside innovation, and where the seeds we sow today will support future generations, withstand the storms to come, and lead to research that delivers lasting, real-world impact.

Read more about key policy events that have shaped research, science and innovation in Aotearoa New Zealand

Brittany Bennenbroek completed an internship with Te Pūnaha Matatini’s Kindness in Science project as part of her Master of Science in Society study at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.

Jean Donaldson is a designer and illustrator who works with Toi Āria: Design for Public Good. She is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. You can see more of her work at https://jeanmanudesign.com/.

10 March 2025

A collaboration between network scientist Dion O’Neale, modeller and analyst Emily Harvey, and illustrator Hanna Breurkes. Edited by Jonathan Burgess.

One day in 1967, strange letters began arriving in letterboxes in Omaha, Nebraska. The letters had the name of a stockbroker in Boston, Massachusetts and instructions to send them on to a friend or acquaintance who might get the letter one step closer to that stockbroker.

This was part of a series of experiments by sociologist Stanley Milgram to explore how connected America was. Each time an envelope was passed on, the name of the new participant was recorded. Milgram found that it took only an average of six transfers between people for the message to navigate its way across the country between two complete strangers.

This finding gave us the well-known concept that a random pair of people in the world are separated by only six degrees of separation.

We now know that social networks have interesting structural features that are different from people being simply connected at random. These structural features have consequences for how things might spread on the network, whether that be information – like fake news or hilarious cat gifs – or communicable disease such as COVID-19 or HIV.

One of the many interesting structural features in social networks is known as a “heavy-tailed degree distribution”. Degree is network scientist speak for the number of connections that a node in the network has. In this case, each node is a person, and the degree is the number of friends each person has in a social network.

Facebook is a very countable example of a “friendship” network with explicit connections. The degree distribution is when you count up the number of people in a network who each have a certain number of connections. You might find that in a particular network ten people each have three connections, six people have four connections, five people have nine connections, and so on – until you reach that one person who seems to know almost everybody.

When we put the numbers from this degree distribution on a chart we find that the chart continues far out to the right – with a small but significant number of people having a large number of connections – we say that the degree distribution is heavy-tailed. These charts end up looking a little bit like the back half of a brontosaurus.

If a social network has a heavy-tailed degree distribution, it will contain some people who are very highly connected. When something spreading on the network arrives at one of these people, they have a large number of potential people to pass it on to. Highly connected people link up parts of the network that would otherwise be far apart.

The potential for highly connected individuals to spread things showed up in Milgram’s letter passing experiments. In one case, 24 of the letters that made their way from Omaha to Boston were passed to the target person at his home address, with 16 of those coming from the same preceding person. And over half of the letters that reached the target at his office came from only two other people in the preceding hop. The letters had found their way to the same small number of highly connected individuals who were then able to pass them on to their intended location in a single step.

The fact that most people have a connection to someone highly connected is almost an inevitable consequence of how social networks are connected. This is related to the friendship paradox, which says that your friends probably have more friends than you do.

The maths to prove that this is a general feature of most different types of networks can get a bit complicated, but it’s true enough in general that we can use the consequences of the friendship paradox in practical ways to monitor or influence things that might be spreading on a network.

Let’s say you want to detect whether the outbreak of some disease is coming. You could do this by simply selecting people at random, monitoring when they get sick, and watching to see when cases start to climb rapidly. A better choice would be to select some highly-connected individuals and monitor their health, since their larger number of connections means that they are likely to be infected sooner.

We usually don’t know in advance who these highly connected people are going to be. This is where things like the friendship paradox can help us. If we start with a randomly selected set of people and ask them each to name a friend then – on average – those friends are going to be more highly connected than the set of people that we started with. Even without knowing the entire structure of a network, we can use ideas like the friendship paradox to make useful guesses about the local connections around a specific point in the network.

And this isn’t something that’s just true in theory. Network scientists showed in a study involving an influenza outbreak at Harvard College that by picking students at random and then asking those students to name a friend, they were able to detect an influenza outbreak almost two weeks early by monitoring the set of friends instead of the randomly selected individuals.

We can also use this property of network structure to reduce the spread of disease, by targeting highly-connected people for interventions like vaccination. Doing so can slow the spread of disease by meaning that transmission pathways have to be much longer to reach people, giving more time to vaccinate, or otherwise protect others.

When you’re making decisions about something that spreads – whether it’s disease, ideas, money or electricity – considering the structure of the network that it will spread on is important for understanding the outcomes of that spreading process and can help you to make a decision with the best possible information.

Although they are everywhere in our lives, our intuition can fail us when it comes to thinking about networks. Remember – your friends probably have more friends than you do.

Read more about how something spreads across a network

Dion O’Neale co-leads the spreading processes on (multilayer and multiplex) networks project at Te Pūnaha Matatini.

Emily Harvey is a researcher on the spreading processes on (multilayer and multiplex) networks project at Te Pūnaha Matatini.

Hanna Breurkes is a designer and illustrator who is passionate about designing to improve wellbeing and is inspired by nature.

17 February 2025

A collaboration between PhD candidate Kristin Wilson and illustrator Jean Donaldson. Edited by Jonathan Burgess.

If you travel south from Aotearoa New Zealand, you will eventually hit the landmass known today as Antarctica.

Antarctica wasn’t always there, at the bottom of the Earth. Over one billion years ago it was in the Northern Hemisphere, hanging out with India, Australia, and Laurentia (early North America). And before that? Well, we can’t trace back that far. But we do know that Antarctica’s oldest rocks are around 3.9 billion years old, meaning Antarctica has been around for most of Earth’s long life.

By 30 million years ago, Antarctica had travelled south and was isolated from all other landmasses, locked over the South Pole. Cooling and freezing followed, creating challenging conditions for Antarctica’s land-based life forms. Trees and vertebrate animals disappeared. Much smaller life forms such as springtails, mites, roundworms, and tardigrades, learned to adapt to the freezing temperatures, lack of running water, and seasons of extreme sunlight and darkness.

More than 99% of Antarctica is now covered by ice. In the ice-free locations, the ancient continent of gravel and rock is still visible. The Dry Valleys – near Ross Island – are the largest ice-free region (~4,500 km2). These deep U-shaped valleys hint at fjords long emptied.

It was not until the 1950s that Antarctica became part of the modern human world, in the lead up to the International Geophysical Year – a global scientific effort undertaken during 1957 and 1958. Research bases were built. Scientific programmes were devised and implemented. Charles Keeling began measuring monthly CO² concentrations in the atmosphere.

After the success of the International Geophysical Year, the twelve nations who had conducted research in Antarctica agreed to continue doing science there, to stop trying to agree who owned which part, and formalised this agreement in the 1959 Antarctic Treaty.

Today, Antarctica is one of Earth’s global commons. Like the high seas, the atmosphere, and outer space, Antarctica isn’t owned by any single sovereign state. The Antarctic Treaty has expanded to include 57 nations (as of 2024), of which 29 nations, who do “substantial research activity” in Antarctica make decisions annually.

Antarctica is governed in the “interests of mankind.” Yes, that includes you.

The stated environmental principles for governance include: peace, science, environmental, ecological, wilderness, aesthetic, and intrinsic values. These values are guides to support the overall goal of “the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic environment and dependent and associated ecosystems.”

Antarctica is a fragile and unique place, so there is cause for concern. In 1996, Warwick Vincent asked a difficult question, “can the scientific value of research activities be clearly justified against unavoidable impacts?”

The need to balance between different environmental principles in Antarctica and the importance of scientific knowledge to humankind is a reoccurring goal since – at least – the adoption of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty in 1991.

What does ‘balance’ mean in reality?

In 1990, Elinor Ostrom cautioned against “relying on metaphors as the foundation for policy advice” as they lead to “results substantially different from those presumed to be likely.”

Complexity science, the field which studies complex phenomena, is interested in real-world puzzles like these.

From the perspective of complex systems, a balance (or an imbalance), is a description of the relationship between two or more things. In mathematical terms, either arithmetic or geometric, it refers to an equality.

Human preoccupations with determining, obtaining, and maintaining equalities appear in many concerns of life – health, economics, law, ethics, spirituality – and can be traced in history through ancient Egypt, classical Greece, the Middle Ages, to today. In Aotearoa New Zealand we recognise equality in the story of Goldilocks and the concept of utu.

In Antarctica, arithmetic logic is found in the linking of scientific and environmental values as scientific gains outweighing environmental impacts, formalised in an impact assessment process structured by increasing levels of environmental impact.

Complex systems are also dynamic systems, so balance takes on an additional meaning, referring to the stability (or instability) of a system overall. Understanding the processes of stability often takes centre stage, articulated through regulation, feedback loops, and emergence.

But what does balance mean in reality for Antarctica? We know that scientific knowledge is important to humankind, but every human activity there has an impact on its environment and ecosystems.

How do we balance Antarctica’s environmental importance to the planet with the importance of scientific knowledge to humankind?

Kristin Wilson has been exploring balance in Antarctica as a PhD candidate on Te Pūnaha Matatini’s Human activity in the McMurdo Dry Valleys – Rescue, knowledge and understanding our role as a vector of change project.

Jean Donaldson is a designer and illustrator who works with Toi Āria: Design for Public Good. She is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. You can see more of her work at https://jeanmanudesign.com/.

A collaboration between health geographer Jesse Whitehead and illustrator Hanna Breurkes. Edited by Jonathan Burgess.

22 January 2025

“Dad, when are you going to die?”

I slowly open my groggy eyes to see my six-year-old daughter staring at me with a look of concern on her face. It’s 6am on a Monday morning, and I’m not ready for this.

But it is kind of my job. And not just as a parent who is supposed to somehow have an answer to all life’s impossible questions.

As a demographer and health geographer, it’s my job to think about how environments impact our health. I like maps, and use data to understand more about people and place – and how environments impact our health.

We can’t live forever, and none of us know when we’ll die. But some of us will live longer, healthier lives than others.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, health inequities are stark, persistent, and avoidable. These inequities, defined as unfair and preventable differences in health outcomes, challenge our perception of Aotearoa as a fair society. The social determinants of health – factors like housing, employment, education, and access to health services – play a significant role in these disparities.

For instance, the average life expectancy for pākeha men in Aotearoa is about 81 years, while for Māori men, it’s 73 years. This gap has widened since 2014. People living in the poorest areas of Aotearoa have a life expectancy nine years lower than those in wealthier areas.

A 1998 report from the National Health Committee clearly linked poverty to ill health, noting that the financially worst-off have the highest rates of illness and early death. Despite the passage of time, these findings remain relevant. Recent data reveals that young people under 30 living in remote areas are up to three times more likely to die than their urban counterparts.

We only found this out in 2023. What’s changed in rural Aotearoa? It turns out that health outcomes haven’t changed, but the way we look at data about people and place has. Historically, definitions of rurality in Aotearoa grouped small towns together with large urban centres based on their urban form – basically having streets, footpaths and suburbs – and lifestyle blocks on the edges of cities were considered rural. This led to misleading health research outcomes.

Under the leadership of Professor Gary Nixon, we developed a new classification system for rurality that better reflects health realities. This new system revealed that previous classifications underestimated rural health outcomes, particularly for preventable deaths.

Definitions were masking inequalities.

The conditions in which we are born, grow, work, live, and age create health differences. Rural populations in New Zealand tend to be older and poorer, with lower incomes, fewer formal qualifications, and less access to technology. These conditions are worse for Māori, especially in remote areas where 73% live in high-deprivation zones.

Poor access to health services further exacerbates these disparities. Rural communities consistently highlight access as a key issue, and the government aims to improve this through its rural health strategy.

The Covid-19 pandemic provided a stark example of how access to services impacts health outcomes. During the vaccine rollout, urban areas had numerous vaccination centres, while rural areas were often left with few options.

In the most vaccinated suburbs in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown, the longest drive time to a vaccination centre was just five minutes. In Murupara, labelled the nations “slowest town”, the median age was 29 years – meaning that people had only just become eligible for the vaccine – and the nearest clinic was almost an hour’s drive away.

This led to significant disparities in vaccination rates, highlighting the need for a more equitable approach to health service delivery.

Looking ahead, Aotearoa faces significant demographic changes. By the 2050s, one quarter of the population could be over 65, with the number of people over 85 doubling. This ageing population will stretch health resources, with older individuals already occupying a significant portion of hospital beds. At the same time, the Māori population is young and growing, with a median age of just 27. Balancing the needs of these two demographic groups will be a major challenge.

Climate change adds another layer of complexity, bringing new health challenges such as extreme heat and more frequent severe weather events. Cyclone Gabrielle, for example, caused $14 billion in damage and significant disruption to health services. Building resilient and equitable health systems that can withstand these challenges is crucial.

Addressing health inequities in New Zealand requires a multifaceted approach. We need to improve living conditions, ensure fair access to health services, and prepare for future demographic and environmental changes.

These are complicated, intersecting and interrelated issues that nobody has a simple solution to. But research can play a part. If we can better understand the complex nuance of these problems, we can work together to create better solutions.

“Daaaadd! When are you going to die!??”

Ahh, that’s right – it’s Monday morning. How do I explain all that to a six year old?

“Well darling, nobody knows exactly when they’ll die. But if we work together to create a fairer society, we can all live longer healthier lives.”

Jesse Whitehead is principal investigator with Te Pūnaha Matatini, who focuses on impact and equity through health geography and demography.

Hanna is a designer and illustrator who is passionate about designing to improve wellbeing and is inspired by nature.

A collaboration between ecologist Will Godsoe and illustrator Jean Donaldson. Edited by Jonathan Burgess.

9 December 2024

At an undisclosed location on the campus of Lincoln University, on the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, I enter a neglected bike shed whose interior can be charitably described as… punk. The “floor” of asphalt is a mess with leaves. Then again, the shed is surrounded by student dorms, so the old leaf smell is comparatively nice. I unplug my ebike, sneak past the other bikes in the shed, and shove open the heavy corrugated metal door.

I think of my e-bike as a hedge against disasters, big and small. On the one hand using bikes like this is one strategy to mitigate the pollution that causes climate change (i.e. a big disaster). On the other hand biking reminds me to fit exercise in my schedule to reduce my high blood pressure (a potentially personal disaster).

I don’t have to look that far for a reminder of disasters. On my left is the site of the old Hilgendorf Building. In 2009 this concrete University building was named a “brutalist classic”. The 2011 Canterbury earthquake damaged the building so much that it was abandoned. It was a skeleton when I first came to campus in 2014, then a demolition site, then a lake. Ten years later I zoom past its replacement, Waimarie – coated head to foot in solar panels.

I then zip into town along a broad and sealed bike lane following an abandoned railway line. Along the way, I keep an eye out for old friends cycling towards Lincoln. There are a couple of friends that I’d probably lose touch with in the absence of such opportunities. I’m rewarded by a beautiful sunset over the Southern Alps.

When I get to my daughter’s school the parking lot is a massive traffic jam of cars, but we soon saunter past and go down the “southern expressway”: a new bike lane towards town. There is presumably another traffic jam between Riccarton Road and the Riccarton Mall, but I don’t give it a second thought.

It’s Friday, so we stop for pretzels in Punky Brewster, a pub in an old warehouse along the bike trail. My wife meets us and we bike through Hagley Park and past the electric tram to get to a community event in town. At the memorial bridge we spot Mulletman and his unicycle show. Not wanting to miss “the world’s leading expert in follicular entertainment” we park our bikes right next to the show and watch for a few minutes. We are then right in town to look for a family outing, such as dancing at the dance-o-mat or a busker’s festival.

Biking through Ōtautahi gives me a vision of the future. I say this guardedly. These days it seems like visions of the future all concern dystopias – versions of a future where the only things worth talking about are wreck, ruin and the apocalypse. It’s easy to draw a dystopian vision of Christchurch where the recovery from earthquakes is the cherry on top of all the other worries of the world. However, biking through Christchurch (on the right cycleway) can be sunny, socially dreamy and cosy – at most it is apocalypse adjacent.

Instead of a dystopia, biking through Christchurch is closer to what novelists have started to describe as solarpunk. It is a vision of the future where disasters such as those caused by climate change occur, but people find value in building a better future in their aftermath.

This can be on a global scale like in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future, where the pollution causing climate change is arrested using tools ranging from airships to bureaucratic banking reform. Or it can be small-scale like in Susan Kaye Quinn’s Planting the shell bones, in which the main character hides in an old light house and covertly creates new oyster beds with sea shells.

Compared to fictional solarpunk, Ōtautahi’s better future is down to earth, visible and in some cases quite literally concrete. It includes reminders of the need for disaster preparedness, including a litany of broken buildings and carparks from the 2011 earthquake. These are placed side-by-side with the tools to reduce the pollution causing climate change.

There is new technology (such as my ebike), changes in policy that make me free to use that technology safely (thank you bike lane), and nudges to do things I value (stop for sunsets, and an easy trip into town for a show). It’s a future of electric trams winding their way through downtown, and the residential red zone rendered uninhabitable by the earthquakes transitioning to a regenerated green space.

The future is often unimaginable, sometimes hopeful, sometimes big and scary. Taking a bike ride through Ōtautahi reminds us that unimaginable things happen and we need to get on with them in our lives. With any luck we’ve already prepared for them. Some of the unimaginable things will be bad – like the decade-long recovery from the earthquake. Some of them will be great – like biking under cherry trees to get to downtown festivals.

Will Godsoe is a Principal Investigator with Te Pūnaha Matatini who seeks to better forecast how species will respond to climate change and other environmental disturbances.

Jean Donaldson is a designer and illustrator who works with Toi Āria: Design for Public Good. She is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. You can see more of her work at https://jeanmanudesign.com/.