A public campaign to try and stop proposed cost cutting in the science sector is underway.
Scientists fear New Zealand is at risk of losing it finest, brightest and top researchers due to Government funding cuts.
The National Insititute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) last month announced 90 jobs were set to go as public services scrambled to meet Government cost-cutting targets.
Government science agency Callaghan Innovation was also proposing a "strategic reset" to focus on projects that make money - which could result in some of its more than 400 employees losing their jobs.
"A whole lot of science jobs are being lost - both in the public sector... but also within Crown research institutes which have not been specifically required to do those cuts, they are still now starting to cut people," Save Science Coalition spokesperson Lucy Stewart told AM.
Dr Stewart claimed the consequences "of losing people this way is... they will, most of them, go overseas because they won't be able to get other jobs here".
In a statement provided to Newshub last month, NIWA chief executive John Morgan said New Zealand's economic challenges were "impacting many public and private organisations" and his institute was not immune.
"Although most positions at NIWA will remain, I acknowledge that this is a very unsettling time for us all.
"However, NIWA must remain viable to continue to provide the scientific advice the country needs.
"In essence, we need to reduce our costs in line with the reduction in revenue NIWA is experiencing."
Morgan reiterated the institute needed to cut costs "without compromising the delivery of NIWA's core purpose as a climate, freshwater and ocean science provider".
Nonetheless, the Save Science Coalition said such cuts would result in New Zealand losing "institutional knowledge".
"We have a science system now where there is nobody... safe, there is nobody whose funding is secure," Dr Stewart said. "It is really hard to be world-leading when every day, you're... getting up and thinking, 'How am I going to secure funding to just keep doing my work?'"
In addition to proposed cuts at NIWA, the Ministry for the Environment asked for voluntary redundancies last month - with "the impact of the savings exercise on our work programme and jobs" to come after this week's Budget, the department's business transformation and services deputy secretary Laura Dixon said.
The cuts were in response to the Coalition's directive to public services to cut costs by between 6.5 and 7.5 percent to help reduce annual Government work spending by $1.5 billion.
Newshub.
