Seeking Doctoral Candidates: Incorporating Mātauranga and Science Together in Multi-Criteria Decision Making

We seek a PhD student enthusiastic to forge progress at the nexus of mātauranga with the use of quantitative scientific data in environmental management. The student will work with leaders in Te Arawa Lakes Trust, the University of Waikato and NIWA within a kaupapa built on the foundation of Te Tūāpapa o ngā Wai o Te Arawa. The project aims to create a future in which the process of freshwater decision-making recognises and communicates Te Arawa values while defining and protecting water quality in the Te Arawa Lakes and wider catchments of the region – ki uta ki tai. 

Te mā o te wai e rite ana kia kite I ngā tapuwae ā te koura

The quality of the water is such that you can see the footsteps of the koura

Students should meet the requirements to enter a PhD programme at the University of Waikato in an appropriate discipline.

Consideration of application will begin immediately and continue until an applicant is found or the closing date of February 12.

Contacts: 

Prof Troy Baisden tbaisden@waikato.ac.nz

Nicki Douglas, Manager – Environment nicola@tearawa.iwi.nz

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Project Outline

New Zealand’s frameworks for freshwater management now commonly include co-governance arrangements and a requirement to preserve the values associated with Te Mana o te Wai. Despite a recent burst of research recognising the academic value of mātauranga, we lack sensible pathways for ensuring that localised values and iwi/hapū specific priorities are included in freshwater management decisions. Examples of current pathways include objective frameworks used within existing and proposed National Policy Statements for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) and Trophic Level Index (TLI) used as integrated targets by Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes Strategy Group (RTALSG). These pathways represent an unintegrated series of attributes and a single integrated index lacking consideration of additional attributes, respectively. There is a clear need for multi-criteria decision frameworks that better minimize confusion and costs associated with consultation and collaboration, and create a clear path for the consideration of well-developed mātauranga alongside information systems provided by traditional western science.

We outline a project with three main steps. The first involves the identification of processes for the safe local development at hapū scale of successful measures (represented as indices or attributes) using mātauranga, and chosen to reflect values of importance. The second involves designing processes to include indices or attributes linked to mātauranga within regional policy and management, including the preservation of appropriate iwi/hapū ownership of methodology and information. The third and final step involves developing a methodology that accepts and expands existing approaches used under NPS-FM and RTALSG to include the developed mātauranga-based measures in a multi-criteria decision making framework.

This will contribute to improving freshwater management by providing a framework for appropriately including mātauranga in freshwater decision-making, offering hope of meeting the challenging objectives of full and proper consideration of Te Mana o te Wai in policy, while accelerating the timeframes of decision-making and implementation. The opportunity to support an ongoing maturation of processes in the RTALSG consistent with  Te Tūāpapa o ngā Wai o Te Arawa and set an example in an area with many small iwi authorities presents a valuable challenge. The timing of this project is good for inclusion in research supporting the implementation of changes to policy resulting from the Government’s Essential Freshwater Plan for Action currently under consultation, and signalled plan change development in the Tarawera Lakes Catchments (Plan Change 15) and ongoing implementation of the management of Lake Rotorua (Plan Change 10) and associated issues reaching down to the coast. 

Research Objective

The objective of this project is to develop and streamline a methodology appropriate for the safe development and inclusion of mātauranga in multi-criteria decision at the scales of catchment management and ki uta ki tai, with relevance to the Te Arawa Lakes catchments down to the estuaries and coast of the Bay of Plenty Region, where engaging with the rights and interests of many iwi is an important consideration.

Research Programme

The research programme is designed to run over three years from early 2020 with the following stages.

• Review past use of multi-criteria decisions making frameworks including mātauranga wai or Māori values regarding freshwater, and the development of individual indicators. Key examples of frameworks include the Mauri-o-meter (Morgan, ) and Langhans et al (2018), while our ideal example of an indicator under use is provided by whakaweku for surveys of kōura (Kusabs et al 2018). (August 2020)
• In collaboration with hapū, identify and develop a new mātauranga based measure as an index or attribute suitable for inclusion in freshwater management frameworks (August 2021)
• Describe a proposed process for protecting and safely including the new mātauranga based measure in freshwater management frameworks operating with a principle of multi-criteria decision making that gives explicit consideration to Te Mana o te Wai. (February 2022)
• Run and describe a trial process that adopts multi-criteria decision-making to support regional policy and management at in a ki uta ki tai (mountains-to-the-sea catchment) perspective. Specifically evaluate whether the process achieves the objective of including Te Mana o te Wai while streamlining the consideration of values, particularly where the some values commonly held by Māori and multi-generational farming communities may be strongly correlated yet without a shared social or cultural conceptualisation.

At this stage, the intent is to carry out the first three methodological steps above in kaupapa Māori context embedded in Te Arawa Lakes Trust (as pre-eminent Te Arawa iwi authority and umbrella for considering management of the Te Arawa Lakes across iwi authorities and corporations) and supported by research organisations.

References:

Kusabs IA, Hicks BJ, Quinn JM, Perry WL, Whaanga H 2018. Evaluation of a traditional Māori harvesting method for sampling kōura (freshwater crayfish, Paranephrops planifrons) and toi toi (bully, Gobiomorphus spp.) populations in two New Zealand streams. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 52(4): 603-625.

Langhans SD, Jähnig SC, Schallenberg M 2018. On the use of multicriteria decision analysis to formally integrate community values into ecosystem‐based freshwater management. River Research and Applications 35(10): 1666-1676.

Morgan TKKB 2006. Waiora and cultural identity: Water quality assessment using the Mauri Model. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 3(1): 42-67.