Strong relationship at the heart of project’s success
Karen Wilson, team leader science, strategy and investigations, Environment Southland (L) and Maria Bartlett, senior policy advisor, Te Ao Marama.
Maria spent the first half of her career with regional councils and the second half working within Ngāi Tahu. “I have a real passion for improving mana whenua experiences of Resource Management Act (RMA) practice, and strengthening relationships between local authorities and mana whenua,” she says.
Originally from Motueka, Maria says what’s been wonderful about arriving in Southland is finding a thriving relationship. “There are some really positive opportunities for mana whenua because of that, and actually for the region.”
Karen is a groundwater specialist who has been with Environment Southland off and on for the last 20 years, with stints in Central Otago and the United States in between. She says the group was tasked with bringing together the values for freshwater into a single framework that allowed councillors and board members to endorse Southland’s objectives, or goals.
“The National Policy Statement for Freshwater requires councils to follow a particular menu when it comes to delivering freshwater planning and water quality improvements,” Karen says.
In Southland, these requirements are being delivered through the People, Water and Land programme. This is a partnership between Environment Southland and Te Ao Marama – the environmental arm of Ngāi Tahu ki Murihiku.
Within the steps of the national policy statement there is room for each region to determine how it will fulfil the requirements. In Southland, this provided the opportunity to draw on both the community science analysis that had been done, and the iwi work. Overall the primary goal is to ensure hauora; the health and wellbeing of waterbodies, people and land in the region.
Maria explains, “Typically what happens in RMA processes is the environmental science will be sitting on one side and the mana whenua expressions will be sitting on the other, and they run along slightly different tracks never quite meeting. So it’s very difficult for mana whenua to see the outcomes they’re seeking represented [in consent and planning decisions].”
The approach in Southland started with a conversation. Maria: “We knew we had awesome material to work with. We had Environment Southland’s environmental science and a body of work from mana whenua on indicators of health. We said, ‘We should be able to do something with this – not sure this has been quite done this way before.'”
There were several challenges. The first, and possibly largest, was in learning how to talk to each other with their different knowledge bases and different ways of thinking and working.
“We put investment in upfront in understanding each other, getting a common language and always checking back. We drew a lot of pictures to help communicate our thoughts to each other and ultimately by the time we were working with the numbers and describing objectives, all of our foundation work just fed into that process,” Maria says.
Karen says they weren’t sure it could be done at the outset. “We were by no means certain that we would be able to bring the two world views together, but we did.”
Both agree that the strength of the relationship that was already in place from years of partnering between Te Ao Marama and Environment Southland was key.
“Hopefully we’ve done this in a way that honours the work and relationship building that has taken place over many decades, which has allowed us to be in the privileged position to do this work successfully. We were definitely standing on many shoulders to get to this point,” Karen says.
Maria says all the ingredients existed to enable this to happen. “I just remind people all the time how fortunate you all are that it was possible for these threads to come together because of the investment over many years. Southland was uniquely placed to be able to achieve something as special as this.”
More information
The team
As well as Karen and Maria, the core team also included Dr Jane Kitson and Ned Norton. Read more about Jane, and read more about Ned and his role as co-science lead for the programme in our December 2020 issue of Envirosouth.
Hauora
This is Southland’s expression of Te Mana o te Wai. Essentially the word describes the state we want our water to be in – resilient, meaning it can take a few knocks but will be strong enough to bounce back.
Te Mana o te Wai
Te Mana o te Wai is an important concept for how water is managed and utilised in New Zealand. It recognises the fundamental importance of water in that protecting the health of freshwater protects the health and well-being of the wider environment. It is an approach that protects the Mauri (life-force) of the water.
People, Water and Land programme
The People, Water and Land programme is a partnership with Te Ao Marama Inc. (as the environmental arm of Ngāi Tahu ki Murihiku). It is about taking the next steps to improve Southland’s water and land, and takes a ‘mountains to the sea approach: ki uta ki tai’.
Mana whenua
Indigenous people
You can read the full Envirosouth magazine as a PDF online here.
