What is Sea Change?
Sea Change – Tai Timu Tai Pari is a Stakeholder Working Group charged with designing a marine spatial plan for the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.
It’s a collaborative effort between mana whenua, community, environmental, commercial and recreational organisations, Auckland Council, Waikato Regional Council, DOC, MPI and the Hauraki Gulf Forum. The plan is in its final stages and will be completed by the end of the year.
Its purpose is to set out a path that ensures the Gulf becomes vibrant with life and healthy mauri, is increasingly productive and supports thriving communities. It will recommend actions for restoring the Gulf back to ecological health, identify areas and values that are important and how to protect them, and identify where new activities, such as aquaculture, might be located.
Its scope takes in commercial, customary and recreational fisheries, marine protection, catchment management, infrastructure, accessibility and mãtauranga Mãori. While recommendations are non-statutory, the SWG has worked closely with agency representatives in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington to ensure that central and local government continues to support the collaborative process and the marine spatial plan’s direction.
Raewyn Peart is the policy director of the Environmental Defence Society – a not-for-profit organisation committed to improving environmental outcomes (www.eds.org.nz). She has been a Sea Change member for the last three years.
better insight into commercial fishing. I’ve begun to really understand what these guys do and how they see the world and to realise they’re not the enemy. They work incredibly hard out on the water and they’re as passionate about the Gulf as I am. So I believe we need to find a way to enable commercial fishing to continue sustainably.
The more you understand where people are coming from the better position you’re in to ask them to make change.
The beauty of Sea Change is that it’s given us the chance to look at the Gulf as a whole ecosystem. The plan focuses on restoration by addressing more than a century’s worth of degradation; it gives us a chance to turn things around.
The recommendations will be challenging, as they’re not about supporting business as usual but about providing leadership and robust solutions to long-time issues. B
finish the