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Prime minister John Key and his National Party emerged victorious in the election of 2008 against the incumbent Labour Party on promises to revive the struggling economy. In August 2009, his Energy Minister Gerard Brownlee hinted at changes to the Crown Minerals Act, which protected conservation lands from mining. His speech also included possible plans to allow mineral exploration in lands overseen by the Department of Conservation. Public interest in these proposed changes were low.

In 1985, the International Whaling Commission instituted a moratorium on commercial whaling, but in 1986, the Japanese government started a scientific whaling program to study whales. Many observers view the scientific whaling scheme as a way to continue commercial whaling because the whale meat is often sold after the whales are caught for study. 

In February 2012, Greenpeace launched an initiative to stop Royal Dutch Shell’s oil drilling project in the Arctic Ocean. They claimed that Shell was not prepared for a spill, with the nearest port to their drilling location over a thousand nautical miles away. Greenpeace also protested drilling in the Arctic because the region is only accessible as a result of climate change, produced by greenhouse gas emissions that are enabled by Shell and the oil industry. 

In Orakei, Auckland, New Zealand, there is a coastal piece of land that overlooks Waitemata Harbour called Takaparawhau in Māori and Bastion Point in English. Before the colonization of the land by the British Crown, it provided shelter, rich fishing and farming areas for the Ngāti Whātua people, a Māori iwi (tribe). 

On 1 October 2012, residents of Waiheke Island, New Zealand, protested against the installation of two pre-constructed buildings in Wharetana Bay, a historic site over 170 years old that is home to a Maori burial ground. This burial ground makes the bay a site of both archaeological and cultural importance.