''We want to inspire people to get out there and enjoy what New Zealand has to offer. This country is amazing – everything is so close and accessible.''

From milk and merino to wine and tourism, a new book talks about how New Zealanders are transforming how we make a living off our land.

The New Biological Economy is the second book that has come out of a project funded by the Marsden Fund in 2009. The first book Biological Economies: Experimentation and the politics of agri-food frontiers (Routledge Hardback 2016, paperback 2018) had a more academic focus but this one is written for a public audience.

It poses some key questions:

• Do dairy and tourism have a sustainable future?
• Can the primary industries keep growing without destroying the natural world?
• Does the future of New Zealand lie in high tech or in the innovations of a land-based economy?

It explores how high-volume, low value-add industries in New Zealand can continue to grow – and do so sustainably.

"We can do it with merino, we can do it with meat - and to a certain extent we can probably do it with dairy and with tourism as well," co-author and associate investigator Professor Eric Pawson told Kathryn Ryan of RNZ's Nine to Noon.

Co-author and co-principal investigator Professor Richard Le Heron FRSNZ told Nine to Noon that lessons can be learned from the Māori economy.

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A Scion-led study is applying a New Zealand lens to the worldwide ecological impact of plastics by examining the extent of microplastics pollution of Auckland waterways and coastlines.

A long-awaited Supreme Court judgment says rough sawn slabs of indigenous timber and lightly carved logs are not “finished” items and their export is illegal writes Farah Hancock for Newsroom.

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