RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO
7
TWO UNIVERSITY of Waikato researchers
are leading a project examining freshwater
food gathering areas and how best to manage
them through the use of both science and
mātauranga Māori.
Deputy Director of the University’s Te
Kotahi Research Institute, Maui Hudson, and
Associate Professor Kevin Collier from the
School of Science lead the study,
Ngā Tohu o
te Taiao: Sustaining and Enhancing Wai Māori
and Mahinga Kai.
The first step to identify
knowledge gaps and study locations.
The research project – developed out
of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and
Employment’s new ‘sandpit’ process for
identifying research and collaborative research
teams – will consider what role mahinga kai,
referred to in the Waikato-Tainui rohe as
hauanga kai, could have in representing the
state of our fresh water resources, how using
mātauranga Māori alongside Western science
could enhance the credibility and acceptability
of limits set on using those resources and the
best way to communicate research results from
hapū level to a national level.
Mr Hudson says they
are working closely with the
Waikato-Tainui College of
Research and Development
which is advising on local
knowledge of hauanga kai. The
project also brings together
people form Massey University,
NIWA,
Manaaki Whenua
Landcare Research and the
Waikato Regional Council.
While the ultimate result
would be cleaner water, Dr
Collier says that won’t happen
with the study.
Water study gets flowing
Old ideas could
provide a fresh
take on water
“It’s the process of how people can work
together to make use of different knowledge
from science and mātauranga Māori to inform
limit-setting around hauanga kai that we’re
interested in,” he says.
The main study area in the first year of
the project will be on the lower Waikato
River where there are lakes, wetlands, rivers,
streams and estuaries that provide a variety of
contrasting habitats and species.
Mr Hudson says the increase in co-
governance models for waterways, including
the Waikato River, has seen an increased need
for the inclusion of both Western science and
mātauranga Māori in the process of setting
achievable objectives and enduring outcomes
for freshwater management.
“We expect over time there will be
more instances of co-management and we
aim to show how mātauranga Māori and
science can be used together to inform those
decision-makers.”
Dr Collier says the process which will
come out of the study will be able to be used
as a template for studies on other waterways.
WATER RESEARCH MAKES SPLASH IN WELLINGTON
WHATUNGARONGARO te tangata, toitū
te whenua (as people disappear, so the
land remains).
This whakatauki reminds us that humans are
only on this earth for a brief moment of time yet
the land remains forever.
It’s a view which speaks of sustainability
and protecting the earth and an example, Linda
Te Aho says, of “some very old and very wise
thinking” which remains relevant as we seek to
develop fresh ways of thinking about fresh water.
Mrs Te Aho, a senior lecturer at Waikato
University’s Faculty of Law, says there are many
good examples of fresh thinking about fresh
water but they are often overlooked.
Waitangi Tribunal reports, such asWAI262 –
known as the Flora and Fauna Claim – contain
a “wealth of information that I don’t think we
make enough use of”.
She says it’s telling that the earliest
Waitangi Tribunal reports dealt with water.
“The Whanganui River Tribunal Report
in 1999 explained that rivers were
conceptualised as whole and indivisible
entities, not separated into banks, beds, waters,
non-tidal, tidal, navigable and non-navigable.
Those
distinctions
were
unilaterally
imposed and were foreign and meaningless
to Māori.”
MrsTeAho (Ngāti Korokī Kahukura,Waikato-
Tainui) says the appropriate recognition of Māori
rights and interests in fresh water has been in
the too hard basket for too long and “we need
to tackle those things as a matter of critical
importance”.
The WAI262 report had noted the Resource
Management Act contained “some really strong
thinking…but much of its potential remains
disappointingly unrealised”.
Despite the slow progress, Mrs Te Aho says
“a number of what I’ve called pragmatic and
conciliatory settlements have been arrived at”.
“I also want to acknowledge that there have
been a lot of good things that have happened,
such as the normalising of reo and tikanga in
legislation, in environmental court judgements,
in policy documents such as Mauri, water as
taonga, the concept of kaitiakitanga and more
recently this new phrase,
Te Mana OTeWai.
”
Mrs Te Aho says organisations such as the
Land and Water Forum, the Iwi Leaders Focus
Group on fresh water and the New Zealand
Māori Council have made positive contributions
to the debate and New Zealand should use a
combination of new and old thinking to find a
sustainable solution.
“My hope for the future is that we make the
most of the strong and wise thinking that already
exists and combine that with new and fresh
approaches to implementing that thinking.“
Maybe we should pay farmers not to pollute
CO-MANAGEMENT: Maui Hudson, left, andAssociate Professor
KevinCollier are combining M
ā
ori andWestern knowledge.
PROVIDING incentives to farmers not to pollute
could be more effective than fining them when
they do, a leading economist says.
Waikato Management School Professor
Les Oxley says one way of tackling fresh
water pollution would be to create a set of
incentives that encouraged people not to
pollute waterways.
“Let me be a little more radical and say
rather than simply punish the farmers for
polluting, let’s consider paying them not
to. We would still retain the fundamental
environmental law principle of 'polluter pays' if
they do pollute, but let’s give them an incentive
not to do the things we don’t want them to do.”
Professor
Oxley
says
economists
understand incentives and how to achieve
certain actions by encouraging people to do
things that we want them to do.
Economists try to find solutions where
there are few losers, and in the area of fresh
water, he says agriculture should not have
to bear all of the costs when the benefits are
widespread. Water would differ from other
commodities such as petrol or electricity,
he says.
“Because these things have a price you
pay when you want more, and you can identify
what your preference for these things is by how
much you’re prepared to pay for it.”With water,
it is effectively a free resource for many people
(aside from a fixed annual
charge), and they can use
as much as they want.
“Not
surprisingly,
people’s use of water
reflects the price that they
are actually facing when
they want more, in this
case, zero. Where's the incentive to economise
on water use here?
“Telling people to do the right thing doesn’t
necessarily always work. ‘Thou shalt not’ is a
phrase New Zealanders hate to hear. ‘Thou
shall’, because it is in your interests, is much
more likely to be the basis of a solution that we
really want to achieve,” he says.
“In the water market, understanding why
we have supply constraints, understanding
the effects of urbanisation, understanding the
costs of infrastructure on that supply, and its
interaction with those living in the cities, with
those working on the land, with those creating
output for us to share, those interactions
are markets.
“If it’s profitable for them [farmers] not to
pollute and we made it even more profitable
by giving them a subsidy, then that solution
is both radical and different but the reality is
it’s incentive-compatible with what we want
farmers to do,” he says.
At the University of Waikato, the possibilities are endless.
Your future starts here
Study at the University of Waikato. Our next study intake starts in July.
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For a full list of degrees and courses on offer at the University of Waikato starting
this July, visit
waikato.ac.nz/go/july
or talk to us on
0800 WAIKATO
.
