Our Vision
A world in which everyone lives well, in just and resilient communities, within the boundaries of a liveable planet.
A System in Crisis
Building resilience for households and communities
Across New Zealand, more people are finding it harder to afford the essentials — food, energy, water, housing, insurance, rates. These pressures are real, they are intensifying, and they are not going to self-correct.
The rising cost of living is not a cyclical problem waiting to resolve itself. The systems that supply our food, energy, water and shelter are under increasing strain from ecological breakdown — and that strain shows up directly in household budgets. Rising insurance premiums, higher food prices, costlier infrastructure repairs: these are what ecological breakdown looks like when it reaches everyday life.
The protection of households' and communities' economic wellbeing requires the protection of the life-support system upon which our economy depends. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter’s Planetary Solvency report warns that, on its current trajectory, the world faces possible losses of 25% of global GDP by 2050 — not as a distant projection, but as the compounding cost of damage already under way. The economic assumptions underlying long-term planning — retirement savings, investment, property — were built for a stable climate and stable resource costs. Both are now in question.
In order to protect our people and communities from economic hardship and harm, GoZero is testing approaches to address ecological breakdown, build collective resilience and address broken systems.
Our Mission
Ending overconsumption and overshoot
To end overconsumption and the overshoot of Earth's planetary boundaries, to prevent ecological collapse and human suffering. We work to see sufficiency-first and resilience approaches adopted in policy and practice, at the household, community, business and governmental levels.
Our Structure
Two organisations, one shared mission
GoZero and the GoZero Foundation are independent organisations that work together to deliver the shared vision and mission above. GoZero operates and improves the platform. The GoZero Foundation, which is a registered charitable trust, coordinates the community work through GoZero Teams.
Why "GoZero"
From zero emissions to zero overshoot
GoZero was set up to find ways to accelerate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero. Following the evidence revealed something important: climate change is one symptom of a deeper, systemic crisis affecting most ecological systems. Humanity has now breached seven of the nine ecological planetary boundaries — climate, biodiversity loss, freshwater change, land system change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, and the disruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. The crises this generates — ecological, economic, social — are interconnected. They require wide-boundary, holistic responses.
Focusing narrowly on carbon creates responses that cannot address the root cause of crisis — overconsumption and the overshoot of planetary boundaries. In fact, climate solutions can create increased consumption and other unintended consequences. These costs are being treated as externalities rather than attributed to the solutions themselves. Large-scale electrification and renewable energy require significant extraction of minerals and freshwater, and increase biodiversity loss and pollution. Narrow-boundary approaches can address one symptom while generating others.
Sufficiency is the only approach in the IPCC's framework that can address the overshoot of all planetary boundaries simultaneously. To avoid ecological breakdown, planetary insolvency and the collapse of our economy, we must adapt our systems to reduce the overshoot of planetary boundaries to zero, not just emissions.
What We Do
Live better, live lighter
Sufficiency isn't about going without. It's about securing the essentials that provide genuine wellbeing — and reducing dependency on the complex, expensive, ecologically costly systems that are becoming less reliable. The goal is to live better, by living lighter: substituting local capacity and community resilience for fragile supply chains and volatile resource costs.
GoZero is launching initiatives to operate at four levels where this matters.
The household
Our Sufficiency Savings Tool shows households where they can reduce costs and consumption, one category at a time. It includes a built-in mechanism to direct savings towards strengthening community resilience and action rather than further consumption.
The community
GoZero Teams are small groups — neighbours, colleagues, friends — that are being established to connect regularly to practise sufficiency, map their community's resilience needs, and build the shared capacity to act collectively.
The economy
An important part of adapting to a sufficiency-driven economy is strengthening local businesses, cooperatives and community services. GoZero is working to support the development of community wealth, infrastructure and resilient access to essentials for all, as a foundation for long-term wellbeing.
The systems level
Sufficiency is useful at the household and community levels, but the greatest impacts come at the system-level infrastructure and economic policy choices that are made. GoZero will support community engagement on systems change.
Start Here
See what your household could save
The Sufficiency Savings Tool is free and takes about five minutes. It shows where your household's biggest opportunities are — from insurance to food to transport — and what a Resilience Fund built from those savings could look like.