Was this our fault – or Mother Nature?

Immediately after Cyclone Gabrielle, I travelled to Hawke’s Bay to see the damage for myself. Nothing prepared me for it. 

Across the Esk and Dartmoor Valleys hillsides looked as though a giant claw had torn through them, taking whole stands of plantation forest and – in many places – native bush with them. Grass-covered hills had also collapsed under the force of the rain. Rivers had become torrents of silt, logs and woody debris. Communities were devastated. 

As a director of Matariki Forests, I found myself asking two blunt but profoundly important questions. 

Was this our fault, or was it Mother Nature? 

And if this was the new Mother Nature – if extreme weather events of this scale were to become more frequent – how should we respond? 

Those questions fundamentally changed my thinking about nature governance. 

They shifted my focus from asking whether we had complied with yesterday’s standards to something more demanding: 

How do we become better? 

Over the following months, our board spent considerable time discussing what continuous improvement should look like. Could harvesting practices evolve? Could contractor incentives be improved? Could greater mechanisation reduce risk? Could catchment planning be refined? What operational changes might make our forests more resilient to an increasingly volatile climate? 

None of those discussions assumed there was a simple answer. Forestry will always involve uncertainty. Trees are grown over decades. Harvesting occurs on steep and often difficult terrain, and the act of harvesting creates a period of heightened vulnerability before replanted saplings take root. Extreme weather will continue to test even the best-managed forests. 

Those discussions convinced me that nature governance is not about striving for perfection. It is about stewardship. It is about continually asking how we can improve in light of new science, new technology, new experience and changing community expectations. And perhaps, more crucially and controversially, the primary focus should be about learning the lessons, dispersing them quickly and widely – including to our industry peers – rather than on apportioning blame. 

Perhaps this is a question to be put to regulators and legislators: does society benefit more from parties being encouraged to be open, sharing lessons widely and speedily through a “just culture” approach, rather than act defensively and confidentially in individual siloes because they are seeking to minimise blame and penalties? 

The question – “How do we become better?” – began to intrigue me beyond forestry. I started asking myself something more personal: How do I know I am doing a good job as a non-executive director? 

After almost 20 years serving on boards across forestry, ports, airports, electricity distribution, listed companies and local government finance, that question has never felt more relevant. 

When I joined my first boards, governance looked quite different. Most boards had an audit and risk committee and perhaps a remuneration committee and not much else. Strategy, financial performance and capital allocation dominated the agenda. 

Today’s boardroom is far more sophisticated – and considerably more complex and more compliance driven. 

Many boards now have committees covering people, performance and culture, health and safety, sustainability, treasury, regulation, technology and cybersecurity. Directors are expected to understand organisational culture, climate risk, biodiversity, stakeholder engagement, artificial intelligence, cyber resilience and an expanding range of regulatory obligations. 

I welcome that evolution. It reflects society’s broader expectations of corporate stewardship. 

Over the same two decades, directors’ responsibilities have expanded across multiple legislative and regulatory frameworks. Health and safety law, financial markets regulation, climate-related disclosures, environmental law and now nature governance have all become more demanding and added new dimensions to the role of the non-executive director. 

Each development has generally been introduced for sound public policy reasons. Viewed individually, most are entirely understandable. 

Yet collectively they raise a broader question. 

Have we developed a coherent framework that helps directors understand what society now expects of a good non-executive director? 

Nature governance has become the test case for me. It has reinforced my belief that good governance is not measured by the absence of risk or by perfect outcomes. It is measured by whether boards ask the right questions, challenge constructively, learn continuously and ensure their organisations become better over time. 

Perhaps that is ultimately the lesson nature governance has to teach us: not just about forestry, but about what it means to be a good director in New Zealand today.

Philip Cory-Wright CFInstD is a director of Matariki Forests, New Zealand’s third-largest forestry company. He is also a director of Powerco and Obsidian Capital Limited NZ, and chair of New Plymouth Airport (Papa Rererangi i Puketapu).