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If wilderness is dead, do wild rivers exist and if so, in what form and in whose construction? This reflective article reviews perspectives on rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand as wild or tamed entities. A historical overview of the socio-cultural and institutional relationships with rivers examines the meanings of rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand through multiple lenses. This includes indigenous Māori knowledge, command-and-control mentalities of a settler society that assert human authority over rivers, the emergence of the environmental movement and associated legislation with a sustainability focus (the Resource Management Act), and recent movement towards co-governance arrangements that incorporate the original intent of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (1840). It is contended that management practices have disconnected society from rivers, and vice versa, creating a sense of environmental loss (solastalgia), especially for Māori. Using rivers in the Greater Wellington Region as examples, prospects to accommodate wild river behaviour in Aotearoa New Zealand are explored. Recognising that re-wilding is no longer a feasible option in most instances, further attempts to tame rivers are also considered to be unrealistic, especially in light of climate change and accentuated flood risk. Reconnecting with indigenous knowledge offers prospects to re-imagine wild rivers in Aotearoa, living generatively with rivers as dynamic and emergent entities.
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Science and evidence form the foundation of decision-making at the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). The EPA has committed to a multi-year mātauranga work programme that focuses on ways of weaving mātauranga, indigenous knowledge, into its decision-making processes. The first step is to develop a deeper understanding of the concepts involved, and their implications for the EPA’s decision-making processes. The aspiration is to weave an understanding of mātauranga into the daily work of the EPA, and to build on Mäori partnerships. The EPA has engaged proactively with Ngā Kaihautū Tikanga Taiao, the EPA’s statutory Māori advisory committee; Te Herenga, the EPA-supported kaitiaki network centred in the regions; and Ngā Parirau o te Mātauranga, the kaumātua group drawn from the Te Herenga network. One of the most critical strands of work of the mātauranga work programme will be to create a mātauranga framework for decision-makers to use to examine the veracity of mātauranga when presented as evidence. This paper explores the EPA’s journey towards being ready to create a mātauranga framework.
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Aotearoa (New Zealand) is undertaking reforms in natural resource management, and there are promising signals that Indigenous perspectives will be included alongside science for decision-making. Any resource management system is underpinned by worldviews, from which values stem and then risk and uncertainty derive. Māori (the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) and Eurocentric notions of risk and uncertainty are fundamentally different because knowledge holders have different worldviews. Eurocentric concepts of risk and uncertainty continue to frame policy, making it challenging for Māori knowledge to shape policy that is relevant for decision-making in Aotearoa. We explore Māori perspectives of risk and uncertainty and literature, identifying common attributes across natural resource management frameworks, and identify issues of risk and uncertainty from the perspective of Māori experts. We conclude that a Māori approach to enhancing natural resources is more aligned to current environmental policy compared with standard approaches for risk assessment and reducing uncertainty.
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- Journal Article (3)