SABER CULTURAL · SAfeguarding Biodiversity and Ecosystem seRvices by integrating CULTURAL values in freshwater management: learning from Māori

SAfeguarding Biodiversity and Ecosystem seRvices by integrating CULTURAL values in freshwater management: learning from Māori

Fresh waters remain one of the most seriously threatened ecosystems on the planet and managing them in a way to reach good ecological and human health and wellbeing will be one of the great challenges of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Inadequate success of decade-long attempts to restore aquatic biodiversity questions the effectiveness of common top-down driven approaches focusing on ecological and socio-economic objectives alone. Approaches based on public engagement that take into account cultural values and knowledge of local communities are a way forward to enhance environmental management through concurrently strengthening people’s wellbeing. Little guidance on the integration of such plural values is provided in respective directives, which leaves the challenge to the water managers to overcome. An approach advocated to help with value integration is Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM). With SABER CULTURAL I explored a values framework based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) theory, to tackle a major challenge in freshwater EBM: including cultural values that build a conceptual link between natural resources/biodiversity and local knowledge. More specifically, I tested how to practically quantify and integrate western and indigenous cultural values with ecological and socio-economic ones and how to consider trade-offs and compromises in the development of EBM plans for two case study systems in New Zealand (NZ). NZ’s national freshwater policy is based on the Maori concept te Mana o te Wai, providing optimal means to implement SABER CULTURAL. The MCDA-framework successfully achieved to weave together western and indigenous cultural values with western science-based ecological and socioeconomic values in a co-developed freshwater management plan with buy-in from the community. Clearly stating values as objectives and structuring them allowed identifying potential management strategies that target current system deficits, and ranking alternatives based on the objective assessment of their performance against all objectives combined with the subjective preferences of the diverse stakeholders. Values-based approaches such as MCDA are a way forward to develop inclusive freshwater co-management in NZ and elsewhere.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union