NZ2050
with Rod Oram
B to B 2024
B to B 2023
Tour of NZ 2023
KŌPIKO 2021
Rod Oram
Business journalist Rod Oram contributes weekly to Newsroom and Newstalk ZB. He is a public speaker on deep sustainability, business, economics, and innovation. Rod is a member of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, which brings together people from here and abroad who seek to contribute to global change from Aotearoa.
Rod’s climate journalism has been recognised in the Global 2022 Covering Climate Now Awards. He received an Honourable Mention in the commentary category, with the judges saying: “With humour, crisp writing, and thorough analysis, Oram guides the reader through the many players and agendas behind the climate pledges by corporations.”
In Citigroup’s annual global journalism awards, Rod was the winner in 2019 in the General Business category in the Australia and NZ region for his columns in Newsroom on Fonterra; and he was the NZ Journalist of the year.
In the New Zealand Shareholders’ Association Business Journalism Awards, Rod won the Business Commentary category in 2018 and 2020 for his Newsroom columns.
In 2016, Bridget Williams Books published Rod’s most recent book, Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene, details at bwb.co.nz/books/three-cities
In 2020, Rod contributed a chapter to 100% Pure Future: New Zealand Tourism Renewed, https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/100-pure-future/ another BWB Text.
In 2021, Rod contributed a chapter on land use, agriculture and food to Climate Aotearoa: What’s happening and what we can do about. This collection of essays was edited by Helen Clark, the former NZ Prime Minister and head of the United Nations Development Programme, and published by Allen & Unwin.
Raison D’être
Rod Oram explained in his first column for Newsroom in August 2017 how a trebling of the world’s population since he was born is changing economies, business and the environment. And how it will shape his columns for Newsroom.
Given this is my first column for Newsroom, I should give you an idea of where I’m coming from. Hopefully, we’ll keep company for a long while. I tend to stick around. Two newspapers account for 34 years of my journalism to date.
One fact explains a lot about the issues I focus on. We humans have trebled to 7.5bn since I was born; and we’ll grow by a further 2.5bn or so before our global population starts to plateau around 2050.