Ma¯ ori conservation lessons
Scientists say the best way to protect forests and fight climate change is to give indigenous people expanded land rights, writes Laura Goodall.
In the Ma¯ oriland Hub in O¯ taki, north of Wellington, an exhibition details how bad climate change will get for locals in the Ka¯ piti Horowhenua region, where the frequency of heavy rainfall, flooding, erosion and landslides is already on the rise.
It includes a striking set of maps that draw on Ma¯ ori knowledge systems of whakapapa (genealogy), hı¯koi (walking) and ko¯ rero tuku iho (ancestral knowledge) in combination with scientific data and intuitive design, to show what the local landscape will look like 30 and 100 years from now.
It’s part of a Massey University project co-led by Professor Huhana Smith (Nga¯ ti Tukorehe, Nga¯ ti Raukawa ki Te Tonga) that aims to combine knowledge from Ma¯ ori researchers, architects, artists and scientists.
Huhana explains that climate change is not being communicated in a way that relates to the Ma¯ ori communities who are most at risk from its impacts. This has a knock-on effect on national vulnerability, so her project seeks to forge a new way of sharing knowledge about climate change, based on ‘‘ma¯ tauranga’’.
In the Western tradition, science (from the Latin word for knowledge) is a systematic body of knowledge built on our observations of the world, constantly tested and refined and used to make all kinds of decisions.
Ma¯ tauranga is the body of traditional and contemporary knowledge about the world – both physical and spiritual – held by Ma¯ ori. It is also the process by which information is observed, tested, interpreted, built upon and handed down. It is inseparable from Ma¯ ori culture, values and beliefs. Ma¯ ori consider themselves part of nature and within it, and ma¯ tauranga reflects this.
This knowledge was developed over millennia and brought here hundreds of years ago by Polynesian explorers, with successive generations of Ma¯ ori continually adding to it. Because it dates so far back, ma¯ tauranga can reveal things about Aotearoa – including what its climate was like before Europeans arrived – that science alone cannot.
Around the world, scientists are increasingly looking to work with indigenous communities on climate change initiatives. A large-scale report that sought to quantify the contribution of indigenous forest guardians in 37 tropical countries concluded that the cheapest and most efficient way to protect forests and sequester carbon was to protect or expand the land rights of indigenous people.
At last year’s Asia-Pacific Climate Change conference in Manila, speakers from Indonesia, Vanuatu, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and the Philippines discussed the merits of coupling data with the kind of knowledge held by indigenous communities to develop policies that are ‘‘local to global’’.
SCIENCE MEETS MA¯ TAURANGA
In New Zealand, Niwa, Lincoln University, Massey University, and Landcare Research have all added ma¯ tauranga strands to their work, and the government’s Deep South Challenge, which will allocate more ma¯ tauranga funding in July, currently has eight Maori-led projects on the go. Together these represent the largest ever Ma¯ ori-led research into climate change.
Dr Jane Richardson, Massey University’s Sustainability Project Manager and Research Portfolio Co-ordinator at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, says that ma¯ tauranga has broadened her mind. ‘‘At first I found this project challenging as I had to learn how to adopt a more unstructured, multidisciplinary way of thinking,’’ she says.
‘‘As a scientist, I’m trained to think in a very structured, linear way with quite rigid planning and methodology. But the greater fluidity of ma¯ tauranga creates space for ideas and answers to emerge.’’
Climate scientist Professor Martin Manning at Victoria University recalls the