Roadmap to a purer future

We promote our countryside as being pure, but is that the truth? Photo / Thinkstock

Doco clarifies issues hampering green image.

The title of Keeping It Pure, a new six-part doco series about the state of New Zealand's environment starting on Prime tonight, is more than a little misleading.

Improving Our Purity or Pulling Our Socks Up - Pronto would be a great deal more accurate. Because as Stacey Morrison's matter-of-fact narration makes abundantly clear in the opening minutes of the first episode, we're already a long way from the squeaky-green, pristine surroundings we like to imagine we live in.

"Aotearoa, New Zealand is a country of such spectacular natural beauty that few questions were asked when Tourism New Zealand launched the 100% Pure campaign in 1999," Morrison calmly intones over stunning images of local landscapes, accompanied by Tom Ludvigson's wind chimey, new agey score. "After all, compared to most other countries, New Zealand is clean and green.

"But what started out as a tourist campaign has become a measure of NZ's environmental performance, and this performance is coming under increasing scrutiny both at home and abroad, with pollution and degradation of the natural environment damaging the country's reputation."

Some of the environmental degradation this introductory episode points up is a shameful reality check to the slick spin routinely served up about our scenic splendour - the fact the Manawatu River has been internationally identified as one of the filthiest waterways in the Western world, for instance.

Of course an unrelenting finger-wagging presentation of our alarmingly long list of dirty laundry would be a real downer, not to mention a literal turn-off for many viewers. The reason it isn't is due to a number of canny choices by the programme makers.

One of the most important is the way each example of environmental failing is accompanied by inspiring profiles of people rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck into providing a solution to that particular problem with a mixture of ingenuity and good old-fashioned bloodymindedness.

In this way a look at the adverse effect of intensive dairy farming on water quality is matched with interviews with dairy industry members who've taken ownership of the issue and are taking steps to sort it. Similarly, there's an item on how the recognition of the risk that large numbers of tourists pose to Kaikoura prompted the community to take a systematic approach to sustainability that earned it the distinction of becoming the second town in the world to gain Green Globe certification.

In other words, even as Keeping It Pure quietly but insistently dismantles the myth of NZ's clean 'n' green status, it reinforces our cherished self-image as a nation of can-do, number 8 wire innovators. A spoonful of that sugar does help the medicine go down.

The other key choice is eschewing the typical TV trick of presenting two extreme, competing views on any given topic and then suggesting the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. As such, we're mercifully spared the inane babbling of populist self-promoters who happily parade their ignorance under the guise of everyday commonsense and thus help create inertia through confusion.

Instead, by keeping our eyes firmly on objective, scientific evidence in defining the problems we face, and then spotlighting practical, proactive approaches to solving them, the programme makers have done us all an immense service and provided an easy-to-read roadmap to a better future.

Keeping It Pure debuts tonight on Prime at 8.30pm.