‘It’s who we are’: eco-nationalism and place in contesting deep-sea oil in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Given near consensus among the scientific community about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, there is pressing concern about how to mobilise enough people to care and demand wider socio-political change. In this article we explore this urgent issue, drawing on recent conflicts over deep-sea oil exploration and drilling in Aotearoa New Zealand. We explore how some activist groups are attempting to mobilise care and concern around deep-sea oil drilling and climate change through the use of narratives that entwine aspects of national identity with the non-human world. We suggest that these activist groups are not concerned about a retreat of the state, but rather, are in direct conflict with the state, and state interventionism, over fossil fuel development trajectories in Aotearoa New Zealand. In drawing upon eco-nationalism, and particularly a way of life related to place, activists have called into question the common sense of business as usual and thereby sought to expand space for ‘ordinary’ Aotearoa New Zealanders to care about climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• Aotearoa New Zealand
• climate change
• eco-nationalism
• oil drilling
• place

Introduction

Capitalist production (and the appropriation of nature) is accomplished not for the fulfilment of needs in general, but for the fulfilment of one particular need: profit. In search of profit, capital stalks the whole earth. It attaches a price tag to everything it sees and from then on it is this price tag which determines the fate of nature. (Smith 1984, pp. 77–78)

Since the British colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand, contestation surrounding nature and the use of the environment¹ has generated heated socio-political contestation (Pawson & Brooking 2013). As a colonial project, grounded in utopian visions of a ‘land of plenty’ and extractive capitalist practices, Aotearoa New Zealand has experienced some of the most dramatic ecological changes of anywhere in the world (Le Heron et al. 1997; Wheen 2013). As O’Brien (2012) notes, since the 1960s these changes have led to significant public debates and contestation over issues ranging from: deforestation, farming, the damming of rivers for hydroelectric power (see Mark et al. 2001; Wheen 2013) and nuclear energy (see Dalby 1993); to hazardous substances and genetically modified organisms (see Rogers-Hayden & Hindmarsh 2002); and most recently, mining and fossil fuel extraction (see Bond et al. 2015). While many of these debates have arguably focused on protecting certain visions of picturesque landscapes and unspoiled natural beauty, best encapsulated by the eco-nationalist slogan, ‘clean, green New Zealand’ (see Ginn 2008), they have also raised questions about how to use and allocate natural resources within a post-colonial context (see Bargh 2007; Wheen 2013).

In this article we explore recent debates surrounding deep-sea oil drilling² and concerns around climate change. We show how activists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and autonomous regional Oil Free groups are contesting New Zealand government and industry exploration and extraction practices to raise questions about pollution threats, consumption and, ultimately, climate change. We focus on how environmental activists are attempting to contest what Smith (1984, p. 78) calls ‘the price tag which determines the fate of nature’. We argue that these activists and autonomous groups are not contesting a retreat of the state in terms of welfare or service provision. Rather, they appear to be in conflict with the current New Zealand government over the ways nature is understood, which is reflected in how national development priorities are framed and maintained. While the current government has furthered an understanding of nature as a resource from which to extract economic growth and maintained a Eurocentric separation between the biophysical world and the effects of human uses of it—those opposing deep-sea oil drilling mobilise a range of alternate understandings of nature, some of which demonstrate a more complex entanglement between human subjectivity and nature. We argue that by drawing on relationships with non-human nature that challenge the binaried socio-natures of dominant models of economic growth, activists are posing alternatives that are generative of an ethic of care that opens up spaces for debate that might be otherwise closed down. This article therefore connects discussions in social movement literature on framing and scaling up social movements (see Benford & Snow 2000; Rootes 2007a; McCurdy 2012; O’Brien 2015) to debates within geography on the non-human (see Whatmore 2002) in relation to climate change activism (see North 2012; Chatterton et al. 2013).

To make this argument we draw on data collected in three phases. The first involved an analysis of publicly available secondary data, including New Zealand government reports and publicly available online material from organisations/individuals involved with, or having an interest in, deep-sea oil drilling. The second aspect involved a discourse analysis of mainstream media³ reporting focused on deep-sea oil drilling and associated legislative changes in the period 2010–2014. The third aspect involved semi-structured interviews with 16 key informants from Greenpeace, Oil Free Wellington, Oil Free Auckland and Oil Free Otago.⁴ These key informants (referred to as ‘activists’) were all involved in contesting the New Zealand government’s, and oil companies’ actions, in relation to deep-sea oil drilling. The empirical material was analysed using a post-structural coding approach. The different forms of information were used to move between New Zealand government discourses, reporting of how deep-sea oil drilling was framed in mainstream media and, finally, the perspectives of activists themselves.

The remainder of the article is divided into three sections. Section 1 provides the conceptual terrain with which we engage. Section 2 outlines the current government’s broader developmentalist agenda that, we argue, prioritises a resource-based framing of nature and seeks to maintain this understanding through closing down spaces in which alternatives can be posed. Section 3 explores activists and autonomous groups’ responses to government policies and practices, and highlights the contrasting ways nature is articulated that shifts away from human–nature as oppositional, to a more entangled understanding that invokes an ethic of care.

Section 1. The conceptual terrain

As North (2012) notes, although it is generally agreed by the scientific community that climate change is going to have catastrophic effects, the issue does not appear to have mobilised the level of collective action across the world that other pressing socio-political issues have. Chatterton et al. (2013) point out that campaigning on global climate change is difficult. There’s the global complexity and therefore overwhelming extent of the issue that obfuscates the easy identification of any one adversary (see North 2012); the limited ability for local individuals or groups to enact meaningful change; the ways people who advocate for, or change their lifestyles are publicly delegitimised (see Swyngedouw 2009); the ways people ignore, deny or become apathetic in the face of traumatic crisis (see Randall 2005) and, finally, disagreement among those concerned about what action to take. For instance, should activists eschew contentious politics by embracing transition movements and low carbon lifestyle practices? Or, should they advocate for entire socio-economic change that requires radical forms of contestatory politics? These issues are summed up by North (2012, p. 1589) who writes, ‘while there is agreement within the climate change movement that “something should be done” there is less agreement about what form action should take’.

In theorising these difficulties Swyngedouw (2009) has argued that climate change is framed by elites as a ‘post-political’ problem that can be solved by technocrats and experts through content-less terms such as ‘sustainable development’ and ‘responsible decision-making’. He argues that such a discourse closes off the ability for activists and the wider public to engage in more radical critiques of carbon intensive neoliberal capitalism. Writing from social movement literature, Tarrow (1998) would possibly characterise this issue as the inability for social movements to engage in ‘contentious politics’ which involves social movements identifying adversaries, making demands of elites and challenging unequal power relations (see also Melucci 1996). Within such a post-political context described by Swyngedouw, a contentious politics may be quite difficult to articulate; hence, it is possibly unsurprising that the climate change movement has struggled to mobilise large numbers of people. Furthermore, the diffuse nature of climate change presents a challenge to local environmental movements which, as Rootes (2007a, p. 722) argues, are the ‘most persistent and ubiquitous forms of environmental contention’. In the analysis that follows we show how climate change activists are attempting to partially contest the democratic closure that Swyngedouw identifies to create space for ‘anybody to concern himself or herself with common affairs’ (Ross 2011, p. 99) particularly those to do with oil, oceans, beaches and carbon. We examine how closure has been contested through discourses focusing on non-humans and the role they play in identity formation that transcends the local in attempts to mobilise a broad range of people.

Within human geography, and elsewhere, there has been a significant body of work analysing how certain understandings of nature are enrolled to shape environmental debates and legitimise specific political actions (see Swyngedouw 2009; Loftus 2015). Relational geographers such as Whatmore (2002) and Bennett (2010), have advocated understanding non-human ‘things’—that is, those parts of the world Eurocentric thought commonly constructs as nature, or the biophysical world—as political subjects rather than objects. They suggest that a beach or a river should be understood as a collection of things that, when combined with other things such as a particular collection of people, or a pollution threat, can lead to political contestation and change. Rather than seeing nature as apolitical, elements of the non-human biophysical world (e.g. beaches, rivers, oceans, oil) have agency and therefore also have the ability to change the world in diverse ways and contribute to shaping political debates and material decisions. Sundberg (2014) has critiqued the way more-than-human theorists such as Whatmore and Bennett have framed their arguments as ‘new’ when complex understandings of more than human agency as a politicising force exist and are evident in daily life within many Indigenous communities (see also De la Cadena 2010; Blaser 2014; Hunt 2014). Within Aotearoa New Zealand, there is an important body of work on Māori understandings of the biophysical world that explore the multiple and complex intersections of humans, the biophysical world, agency and nature politics (see for instance Coombes 2007; Tipa 2009; Bargh 2011; Thomas 2015). This literature demonstrates that, while an attentiveness to relational agency is important, critical attention must be given to colonialisms that creep into such analysis.

In what follows we examine an instance where non-humans are enrolled in environmental debates to illustrate how activists attempt to mobilise people to care about and contest more dominant framings of human–nature binaries and capitalist extraction narratives. In order to do so, the next section contextualises these binaried government and industry narratives, and highlights how they are maintained through discursive and direct governance strategies.

Section 2. Recent government development approaches

In 2008, the National led government in Aotearoa New Zealand turned its attention to furthering a developmentalist agenda in relation to mineral exploration. The agenda was evident through both policy documents (New Zealand Government 2012), actions such as the government’s terrestrial stocktake of mineral wealth and attempts to alter legislation to facilitate mining for minerals in the conservation estate,⁵ and media statements by the then Minister of Energy and Resources that likened our mineral wealth to Australia (see Stuff 2009; Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment 2011). Further discourses were articulated that highlighted balance between adverse environmental effects and benefits (Stuff 2009; Kidson 2010), and the economic benefits that would accrue to New Zealanders by opening up mining frontiers (Brown 2010; Neal 2010). A significant part of this broader agenda involved opening up the exclusive economic zone to tenders for the exploration of oil and gas. Although deep-sea exploration has been pursued by both centre left and centre right governments over the last two decades, in 2012 the current National led government implemented the Petroleum Action Plan which has enabled the release of annual Block Offers of increasing acreage for competitive tender.⁶ Table 1 provides a summary of the kinds of discourses articulated by government and industry through mainstream media, demonstrating the more dominant understanding of nature as a resource characterised by a form of ‘pragmatic realism’.

Table 1. Summary of key narratives used by government and supporters presented in mainstream media.

Discourses	Representative example quote(s)	No. of items/total no.^1
Vital for economic development.	‘Oil and gas exploration could contribute significantly to our economy’. (Donnell & Cheng 2011)	149/351
Best practice will ensure environmental risks are minimised and managed. Emphasis on ‘balance and efficiency’.	‘The companies active in New Zealand already operate to the highest standards when it comes to safety and environmental protection and the regulatory regime is well on its way to matching that commitment’. (Dominion Post 2011)	116/351
Research to ascertain the extent of assets.	‘The immediate focus is on increasing exploration activity and on improving the knowledge of our petroleum basins’. (Kay 2011)	95/351
Oil and gas sector is currently under-developed.	‘For too long now we have not made the most of the wealth hidden in our hills, under the ground, and in our oceans. It is a priority of this Government to responsibly develop those resources’. (Kay 2011)	40/351

¹This column indicates the relative significance of the identified discourse. A total of 351 individual media items were identified and analysed using keyword searches through Index New Zealand.

Government documents and associated mainstream media reporting emphasise being a good steward of New Zealand’s collective natural resources, ensuring continued economic productivity and growth in a competitive international market, and calls for ‘balance’ and ‘efficiency’ in environmental decision-making. Such pragmatic realism is supported by managerial promises of robust environmental standards and health and safety procedures to mitigate the risk of pollution and threats to human life. While firmly establishing nature as a resource, this framing also serves two purposes. First, it emphasises the idea that deep-sea oil drilling is a ‘common sense’ project to help New Zealand gain greater energy independence and wealth. And, second, this production of a common sense paves the way for delegitimising any dissent or alternative articulations that frame nature in other ways. Consequently, as alternative framings did emerge, the proponents (including the government) of deep-sea drilling sought to maintain the broader discourses that had been established and used to close down spaces of dissent.

In 2010, activities at sea gained widespread international and national media attention, particularly in light of what we suggest were three moments that resulted in many New Zealanders becoming more sensitised to the risks of deep-sea oil drilling. In April 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. Following this disaster, in mid-2010, the New Zealand government granted Brazilian-owned company Petrobras a 5 year oil and gas exploration permit for the Raukumara Basin (at depths similar to the Gulf of Mexico platform) off the east coast of the North Island. Then, in October 2011, the Rena disaster, off the coast of Tauranga, spilled heavy oil and debris from shipping containers along popular beaches in the North Island. These examples highlighted both the environmental risks of marine activities and the difficulties of effectively responding to disasters when they occurred.

Within this context, Petrobras’ exploration permit was contested. In April 2011, local iwi, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, with support from Greenpeace, protested against Petrobras’ seismic surveying of the Basin, and successfully disrupted the company’s activities. Following complaints from Petrobras, the New Zealand police arrested Elvis Teddy, the skipper of a local fishing boat on the 23 April 2011 (Peace Movement Aotearoa/Scoop 2011). Police used New Zealand navy support to undertake the arrest, stating that Teddy was arrested for ‘a blatant breach of safety’ (Hill 2011). Petrobras subsequently withdrew from the region in December 2012—noting that there was not enough oil and gas to justify further exploration (One News 2012). These events highlighted the absence of legislation that could be used to deter protestors at sea from interfering with petroleum industry activities. Prior to the arrest, there was much discussion within media and on blogs about what statute and offences the protestors might be charged with, given difficulties establishing jurisdiction in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ).⁷ While there were a number of existing statutes that related to various activities in the EEZ (Ministry for the Environment 2015), what was missing was a clear regulatory framework providing the necessary certainty that investors and government desired (see New Zealand Government 2012, p. 5). In addition, documents released to the main opposition party, Labour, show a series of meetings between government ministers and oil industry representatives, who sought a more ‘robust’ government response to protest action (see Oil Free Wellington/Scoop 2013; New Zealand Herald 2013). To address the regulatory lacuna, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 was drafted and came into force on the 28 June 2013. Significantly, under the Act the Environmental Protection Authority set regulations that meant oil and gas exploration permits could be processed on a non-notified basis, thereby limiting the opportunity for public engagement on where and when exploration could occur. In addition, the Crown Minerals Act was amended (popularly dubbed ‘the Anadarko Amendment’) to criminalise protest at sea when protestors got within 500 m of an industry vessel and imposed hefty fines for those convicted (Green Party/Scoop 2013). As well as these institutional processes that constrained opportunities for formal debate about when, how, where or even if deep-sea drilling should go ahead, various other discourses in the media emerged to consolidate the proponents’ position (see Table 2).

Table 2. Summary of key discourses in response to debate about offshore oil drilling presented in mainstream media.

Discourses of closure	Representative example quote(s)	No of items/ total no.
Opponents are uninformed about the risks.	‘Leaders from New Zealand’s $2.8 billion oil and gas sector say the country needs better education about the value of the sector as a “vocal minority” continue to oppose the industry’. (McNicol 2013)	33/351
Protestors are interfering with legal activities and overstepping their democratic rights.	‘It was disappointing protesters had disrupted the research and Ms Parata urged them to take a calm and reasoned approach towards the company’s rights. “Democracy protects the right to protest but not the the extent of interfering with others’ rights,” she said’. (Otago Daily Times 2011)	21/351
Protesters at sea are a danger to themselves and others.	‘There’s always a risk of something going wrong if somebody walks into a safety zone—it’s like having an unauthorised person walking into a construction site’. (Theunissen 2013)	21/351
Greenies/hippies are hypocrites.	‘The ignorance of these oil protestors never ceases to amaze me. Yet another plot of these people holding plastic banners, wearing life jackets and inflatable rings all made out of the substance they’re protesting against’. (Godfrey 2014)	15/351
Public concern and opposition downplayed. The ‘silent majority’ support government decisions on this issue.	‘Key denied there was a large number of people in New Zealand worried about the safety of deep sea oil drilling’. (Stuff 2013) ‘Most New Zealanders back the Government’s plan to increase exploration for oil, gas and minerals, a Herald DigiPoll survey suggests’. (Bennett 2012)	8/351

Government policy directions and legislative changes have met with varied public discussion, mobilisation and opposition, and in section 3 we outline how some activists and autonomous Oil Free groups have attempted to contest deep-sea oil drilling and the associated legislation. In doing so, we highlight how alternatives to a binaried conception of nature–society productively butt up against the extractive rationalities of the pragmatic realism of the current government.

Section 3. Oil Free mobilisations in Aotearoa New Zealand: alternate articulations of nature

The autonomous Oil Free groups mentioned earlier are perhaps the most recent form of climate change activism to emerge in Aotearoa New Zealand, and follow on from a range of NGOs and smaller groups who have been active over the last 30 or so years. At times, these individuals and groups have opposed specific fossil fuel development proposals,⁸ while at other times they have focused on promoting alternative energy sources and practices for a post-oil world (for example, the Transition Towns movement). Different organisations, groups and activists have also adopted different strategies and not necessarily agreed about what actions to take. Some, such as the Save Happy Valley Coalition, undertook direct non-violent actions, such as blockades to challenge the fossil fuel industry and the New Zealand state owned extractive enterprises (see for example New Zealand Herald 2005; O’Brien 2015). Others, such as Generation Zero, have focused on less confrontational actions and made submissions within existing political processes to encourage change (see Moon 2013). Still others, such as Greenpeace, have adopted a mixture of strategies depending on the issue. As such, we understand Aotearoa New Zealand’s climate activism as composed of diverse organisations and networks where ‘activists act independently, coalesce, act together, then disperse again’ (North 2012, p. 1583). This complex milieu—particularly in terms of the presence of networked, multi-scalar actors and a diversity of approaches to social action reflects characterisations of environmental activism and movements by O’Brien (2015) in relation to Aotearoa New Zealand, and Rootes (2007b) more broadly.

Oil Free groups emerged between 2011 and 2012 and the circumstances that led to their emergence differed in each context. For instance, Oil Free Wellington was started by a group of people following the Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa in 2009 (see Willoughby-Martin 2012). The group explicitly adopted a non-hierarchical consensus decision-making approach. In contrast, Oil Free Auckland was started by individuals who had some association with Greenpeace. The groups vary in size and operate independently, but network regularly with Greenpeace, sharing resources, negotiating and discussing strategies, and supporting each other’s local campaigns and actions where agreement is achieved and resourcing possible. So while there were different motivating factors, a common concern across all of the groups was the New Zealand government actions and industry interest in deep-sea oil drilling and climate change more broadly.

A common theme that emerged through interviews was the difficulty of campaigning on climate change. For as one activist said;

[C]limate change needs a paradigm shift. I mean, there is no other way to get out of it without entirely changing the way that we do business globally, and that’s huge. That’s why it’s exciting. It’s also why it’s daunting and it’s also why the anti climate change movement, for want of a better term, is all over the place. (Interviewee 7)

Consequently, rather than focusing on climate change per se, Oil Free groups used a range of strategies to mobilise a sense of care, agency and hope for a post-oil society in the face of government cooperation with the fossil fuel industry, constraints on formal debate and discourses that sought to delegitimise activism (Table 2). In what follows we focus on two specific themes. The first theme explores how activists have drawn on non-human environments and threats to specific places to mobilise care and concern about the risks of deep-sea oil drilling. The second theme explores how activists foregrounded community narratives around ‘average New Zealanders’ to frame this care about the non-human world as part of an existing eco-nationalist New Zealand identity—connected to intrinsic values that transcend both the political right and left, and the dollar value placed on the extraction of fossil fuels.

Non-human environments and threats to place

An early part of the Oil Free campaign sought to engage people in the broader issues through highlighting concrete effects they could connect with, specifically the risks of oil spills to beaches and coastal environments. The broader campaign has been characterised by a diverse range of actions across Aotearoa New Zealand—from a flotilla off the North Island’s west coast that breached exclusion zone rules legislated following Te Whānau-ā-Apanui’s actions (noted above), an ‘Oil Free Future Summit’ in Dunedin, ‘Banners on the Beach’⁹ actions, press releases, disruptions of oil industry meetings, and protests at various city ports and outside oil companies' offices (see for instance O’Neil 2014; 3 News 2014). While these actions have been diverse and often localised, a common thread that ran throughout them involved highlighting the importance of beaches to all New Zealanders. One activist articulated this as being about a particular way of life that is shared by everyone:

So it’s this values based campaigning, and the values have been deemed that New Zealanders want to go to the beach, they want to … have a picnic, they want to catch a fish for dinner, and these are values that all New Zealanders hold dear. It cuts across the left/right spectrum. It doesn’t matter who you are, we all want to go to the beach. (Interviewee 7)

Another activist linked the significance of beaches to the marketing of Aotearoa New Zealand as clean, green and ‘100% Pure’. However, this went deeper than just marketing, and was connected to entrenched cultural identifications: ‘this kind of Kiwi identity, that kind of cultural story that we tell ourselves’ (Interviewee 9).

The importance of beaches to ‘who we are’ was both a key narrative of opposition and also a strong mobilising factor, according to activists. Some activists noted that the images of the Rena oil spill in Tauranga, of oil-clogged birds and black beaches, provided the most striking example of the risk posed by deep-sea oil drilling. The discourse analysis of mainstream media reflected these comments to a certain extent. The spill and limited emergency response provoked questions about the government’s ability to ensure that adequate resourcing could be provided if a larger oil spill were to happen from an offshore platform. Activists suggested that it was this proximity and tangibility of a potential spill that was important in cultivating shared opposition:

[The] threat of oil spills is a pretty big deal for people. I think especially after seeing the Rena spill over in Tauranga, people have a much more tangible sense of what that actually means. I went over there with a bunch of volunteers and was involved in the clean up. We talked to the communities there and heard a lot about the impact that they suffered, and just for the whole country it’s much more tangible now than it ever was before. (Interviewee 9)

These kinds of eco-nationalist narratives that appeal to the ‘universal’ value placed on biophysical nature are at times problematic, reflecting colonial, classist and somewhat exclusionary views based on expansive ‘people-less’ land and seascapes (see for instance Willems-Braun 1997; Ginn 2008; Finney 2014; Bond et al. 2015). Yet many activists argued that they provide a useful position from which to articulate opposition. Through foregrounding the significance of the non-human world (e.g. beaches, marine environment) in terms of what it means to ‘all New Zealanders’, we suggest that activists were partially able to, and have continued to, contest the managerialist and resource focused assurances put forward by the New Zealand government and oil companies. By implicating the entangled nature of the non-human (beaches) in relation to an established national identity narrative and embedding the non-human into human existence and wellbeing, the more intrinsic value of the environment is able to be emphasised. This is fundamentally incommensurable with, and therefore challenges, the pragmatic realism of the New Zealand government and oil industry, whereby certain places (such as beaches) should not be risked at all, even if there is money to be made. For as one activist said:

The conversation needs to move to what sort of a society are we? Are we a society that just pursues the almighty dollar regardless of the consequences? Are we prepared to sell our beaches and our way of life, but moreover, the entire planet for the pursuit of short term gains? And that conversation needs to be happening. And it is, but not to a large extent. And when we’ve got people saying, ‘Yeah, actually no, this is just wrong,’ then the legislation doesn’t matter. (Interviewee 7)

Here, the activist suggests that if more people (specifically those with Eurocentric worldviews) start to recognise the entanglement between themselves and nature in terms of wellbeing, lifestyle and identity, then momentum and widespread concern will counter the legislative and discursive closure these groups have experienced. The second strategy, targeting ‘average New Zealanders’ at the local level was another key approach Oil Free groups have used to mobilise concern about this national issue.

‘Average New Zealanders’

As one activist noted, the overall campaign ‘was not about a march down Queen Street’ (Interviewee 9), but rather, as another suggested, about creating ‘social and cultural resistance within your community so when these oil companies choose to set up here commercially, they’re not welcome’ (Interviewee 3). In reflecting on the importance of local opposition, almost all of the activists spoke of how environmental activists (including climate change activists) are generally represented in mainstream media and popular discourse as ‘crazy, lefty hippies’ (see Phelan & Shearer 2009). To counter these kinds of dismissive representational politics, at the time of interviewing, activists argued that emphasising the ‘respectable’ community leaders and ‘average’ New Zealanders who were involved in actions was a useful way to mainstream opposition and build connections with people who wouldn’t normally engage in environmental issues.

Such an approach is not new and Benford & Snow (2000) note that many activists and social movements seek to ‘credentialise’ those involved to mobilise support. Similar to other environmental campaigns in Aotearoa New Zealand, such as Save Manapouri (see Mark et al. 2001; O’Brien 2012), one activist noted that having a variety of ‘respectable’ community members involved in a flotilla event helped people to:

[ … ] see that you don’t have to be a crazy leftie or have a pile of dreadlocks or anything to oppose deep sea oil drilling. You’ve got reverends, professors and ministers and old women … And if you’re an everydayer that wants to say no, that’s fine because these big names … they are also doing it … Because I think that the [emergence of a group supporting gas exploration and extraction] have marginalised a lot of the people in the middle of the ground. You know, they’ve made it, if you say no to deep sea drilling, they think you’re also saying no to economic growth and to jobs … So being able to bring out these enormous huge names in saying no, is a way—our way to counter that. (Interviewee 3)

Activists suggested that encouraging localised actions was also a good way to counter delegitimising responses from government and oil companies. For instance, in relation to ‘Banners on the Beaches’, Prime Minister John Key referred to the numbers of people in attendance as ‘modest’, describing them as a ‘Greenpeace rent-a-crowd’ (cited in Satherley 2013).¹⁰ Such comments clearly attempt to politically minimise the significance of the actions, and also delegitimise those involved by framing them as societal outliers. However, as one activist noted, for her and the local organisers it was an incredibly encouraging event that fostered local connections and the courage to act. She went on to note how ‘approximately 40–50 people around Aotearoa New Zealand volunteered to organise specific local events’. And that at one particular location, ‘[t]here were about 500 people on the beach and for them it [gave] them a huge amount of courage just knowing that all these people were on side and do support and do believe in the same things’ (Interviewee 9).

The ethic of care articulated here is twofold. First, as noted above, it draws together the entangled nature of both the non-human and the human in the constitution of subjectivities. These subjectivities actively contested the current dominance of nature–society binaries, and the colonial, capitalist roots of these binaries. Second, by seeking to normalise the right to say no to the pragmatic realism of the current governance regime, a space is carved out for articulating alternative and more caring human–nature relations. In this sense there is what Benford and Snow (2000) term ‘narrative fidelity’ among the framing, where ‘average New Zealanders’ mobilise at the local level in the very places they value—local beaches. Nevertheless, the discussions above clearly indicate that what is being contested is not just deep-sea oil drilling, but also a systematic and widespread effort to delegitimise the subjectivities of those opposing government and oil industry practices. Campaigning on these kinds of issues is inherently unstable and politically risky for those involved. For as one activist said:

You only need a few people in the community to go ‘drilling sucks, drilling sucks, drilling sucks’ that it creates a tone where people go, ‘actually yeah, drilling sucks’, and change their mind and hopefully shut it down. But it can work the other way too you know. You don’t ever own it. (Interviewee 3)

Activists themselves were very aware of the limitations of the campaign message, particularly the somewhat narrow focus on threats to beaches from oil spills. Many interviewees expressed ambivalence about this focus; for while they saw it as a useful, tangible threat to mobilise public concern, they also felt that it limited the ability to talk about climate change more broadly. Indeed, challenges of shifting between scales—local beaches to global climate—and encouraging a sense of responsibility to more distant others has been highlighted in environmental movement literature (Usher 2013; O’Brien 2015). Some participants also felt that the focus on local beaches was too reactionary, and did little to initiate discussion around energy alternatives or how to move to a post-oil society. As one activist noted, spill modelling from deep-sea drilling in Dunedin actually showed that spilled oil would move towards the Chatham Islands. This activist noted that ‘[a] lot of people were like “oh, ok, sweet” and I was like “Ah NO, no, no!” that’s not what we’re trying to say  … I mean, really economics and climate are the big ones, and as a group [we] have to push that a lot more’ (Interviewee 4). In terms of moving public debate to energy alternatives, one activist noted the difficulties within a society currently dominated by capitalist logics, saying ‘you can’t own the renewables and that’s the problem. So that’s why there is no transition. You can’t make as much money out of renewables as you can make out of fossil fuels’ (Interviewee 2). Such comments partially reflect the inevitable limitations of any campaign, but also speak to those larger complex questions climate activists are negotiating in terms of ‘what form action should take’.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the limitations outlined directly above, we suggest that the Oil Free campaign narrative and actions to date have effectively mobilised some people across Aotearoa New Zealand. While government, industry and supporters have attempted to minimise these direct actions and delegitimise those people who do speak and act, what we observed through media analysis and through talking with activists was the emergence of localised concern that engaged with a national issue. Activists and campaigners have strategically drawn on eco-nationalist identity narratives to contest government and oil companies’ pragmatic abstractions of ‘responsibly’ managed drilling and ‘stewardship’ of New Zealand’s natural resources (see Loftus 2015). To achieve this they have drawn on the inherent value of non-human things (beaches) as intimately imbricated with national subjectivities (‘who we are’ as New Zealanders) as a way to contest the threats posed by deep-sea oil drilling and the managerialist assurances the current government and oil industry emphasise. What this narrative creates is an entry point, the ability for ‘average’ New Zealanders to concern themselves with the issue, thereby cleaving open a space for voice in the partially closed down spaces instituted under the current government’s economic rationality around deep-sea oil drilling.

The analysis we have presented contributes to environmental movement literature by illustrating the connections between place and action—identifying the specific components of place that are powerful in mobilising people. Deep-sea oil drilling not only threatens beaches; it threatens the very identity narratives that make us ‘who we are’, because ‘who we are’ is intimately intertwined with our non-human world. In this way we would suggest that the narrative contests the ‘price tag’ view of nature and disrupts nature–human binaries that typify Eurocentric neoliberal worldviews. The example also highlights the point that Rootes (2007a, p. 733) makes, whereby ‘[t]he transient, exploitative culture, rooted in exchange values, of globalising capitalism and the culture of rooted, sustainable communities are simply irreconcilable, reflecting two radically opposed conceptions of being-in-the-world’. Building and extending on Rootes’ point, we have argued that this example illustrates how more open-ended local place-based identity narratives can effectively connect through to larger scale concerns. Environmental contestation is never just about the environment, but ultimately about how to live well with other humans and non-humans, and the nature of democracy. The place–identity narratives that activists have articulated, while rooted in the local, also transcend this scale, providing one path to care and act about climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Reuben McDougall for collating and coding media material and to our research participants who generously gave their time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Te Ihowhenua/Department of Geography, University of Otago, and the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.

Notes

1. In writing about nature and the environment, we are referring to the biophysical world, something that is typically thought of in Eurocentric understandings as separate from society, but is actually deeply entwined with and inseparable from humans and vice versa.

2. Our focus is on deep-sea oil and gas exploration, drilling and production. At present this tends to encompass only seismic surveying and exploration drilling, but our data also refer to future extraction and production of both oil and gas from areas primarily in the EEZ around Aotearoa New Zealand. Throughout this article when we state ‘deep-sea oil drilling’ we are refering to all oil and gas exploration, drilling and production activities at sea.

3. The discourse analysis was undertaken for the four major print newspapers in Aotearoa New Zealand (Otago Daily Times, The Press, The Dominion Post, The Herald) and any other items represented on www.stuff.co.nz.

4. While some of the participants may identify as members of other organisations, we spoke to them specifically in relation to their involvement in deep-sea oil drilling.

5. In 2010, the government attempted to lift restrictions on mining certain areas of the conservation estate by amending the Crown Minerals Act 1991. The proposal met with strong opposition and protest from around the country and was withdrawn (see Bond et al. 2015).

6. See www.nzpam.govt.nz for further information.

7. See, for example, posts by Andrew Geddis on www.pundit.co.nz.

8. Such NGOs and groups include Greenpeace, 350. Org, Generation Zero and Coal Action Network. Recent examples of specific developments that have met with opposition campaigns include the Solid Energy Cypress mine on the West Coast and the Marsden B power station extension.

9. Perhaps the largest and most coordinated action was on 23 November 2013, with estimates of between 5000–10,000 people taking part on west coast beaches across the North Island (see Greenpeace/Scoop 2013).

10. John Key's comment about the numbers involved is disputed by others, and activists note that there were somewhere between 5000–10,000 people involved. As one activist said ‘[w]e couldn’t count ‘cause we just couldn’t ‘cause there were like 50 locations, and so we don’t know how many people there were, but heaps' (Interviewee 9).