I am writing this on the day the Hīkoi mō ti Tiriti arrived at Parliament. Here are two reasons we need te Tiriti.
1. Te Tiriti is the foundation of our partnership
At the beginning of the hīkoi, Eru Kapa-Kingi was talking beyond those assembled to the wider nation.
Te Tiriti is actually your friend. It’s what allowed you to make a home here. And the reciprocation is respect for the mana of tangata whenua. So embrace it. And actually, I think Te Tiriti is the cure for a lot of the hardships and inequalities that are felt all across Aotearoa, not just with Māori. So a world where Te Tiriti o Waitangi is alive and well is a world where we are all alive and well.
2. We need it
We are facing a meta-crisis with many facets, not just climate change. Arguably, much of the damage done to the environment is a consequence of extractive colonisation in its evolving forms. But we prioritise the tools of Western science and governance to fix it – how is that working for us? Gustave Speth, former chair of the United Nations Development Programme sums it up beautifully…
I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy… And to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.
Mātauranga Māori is an antidote for the excesses of Western thinking. The UNDP document Cultivating Inner Capacities for Regenerative Food Systems further diagnoses the problem.
Progress is hindered by entrenched power structures that severely limit agency to create change at individual and collective levels. These structures maintain and are themselves maintained by a pervasive cultural narrative of separation. This narrative underpins a dominant paradigm of unfettered economic growth, deprioritizes care in policymaking, depresses stakeholder collaboration, and manifests in a widespread inability to think and act systemically.
Māori tend to have a more connected view of the world. I like that hui are often started with karakia in an acknowledgement of wairua. I like their longer-term view of investments. I also like how mātauranga has been woven into policy documents. Te Mana o Te Wai is a great example. It establishes a hierarchy of obligations by prioritising the health and well-being of water before the second priority of people’s needs and then the third priority—commercial use. This changes the paradigm from an extractive one to one built on respect for the natural world.
The big climate blindspot
The Western diagnosis of the climate crisis focuses on greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Even “enlightened” organisations such as Project Drawdown insist that solutions are based on reducing emissions.
Climate solutions must first and foremost materially reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases and other warming agents – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases, black carbon – in the atmosphere.
We must eliminate the use of fossil fuels as soon as possible for a whole lot of reasons. But looking at just one part of the earth system, the atmosphere is a major blindspot. Plants cool the environment directly through transpirational cooling and their role in climate dynamics, including the biotic pump. The hydrological cycle has a huge impact on the climate. Focussing just on the atmosphere is myopic. Science is still coming to terms with the role of biology in creating rain whereas indigenous peoples have known this for centuries.
There is currently a discursive battle going on about the place of mātauranga in the school science syllabus. If we want to produce scientists who can see wider systems in play and appreciate diverse world view, the inclusion of mātauranga is essential.
Here are some resources supporting a broader set of solutions elsewhere on this website.
Climate Action Tai Tokerau 