Abstract
Freshwater is an essential element of life. Māori alongside other indigenous peoples have an
ancestral connection to this resource that forms an innate part of their culture. Maintaining healthy
quantity and quality within waterways is a representation of the health of all Aotearoa New
Zealand. Under the Resource Management Act 1991, regional councils are responsible for the
management and allocation of freshwater. Increasingly so, New Zealand’s system of
environmental management based on extraction and economic gain is failing the ecological and
human spheres affected by water mismanagement. In recognition of declining freshwater quality
and overallocation in some regions, a major shift to encapsulate a Māori view of the environment
involved the inclusion of Te Mana o Te Wai as the ‘fundamental concept’ of the National Policy
Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) 2020. The objective of this thesis has been to
examine, using case studies, the challenges for implementing an indigenous worldview into the
environmental planning paradigm.
Through key informant interviews and qualitative data analysis, the varied experiences of
partnership when undertaking this directive were explored. As a result of resource dispossession
and historic exclusion of mātauranga Māori methods, tāngata whenua in Otago and Taranaki are
eager to see how Te Mana o te Wai as a concept will cascade into freshwater planning mechanisms.
Yet, scepticism remains over the abilities of regional councils to improve entrenched practices
among resource users who view waterways as expendable assets. These challenges are intensified
by a lack of resourcing within iwi organisations who are tasked with growing responsibilities
without the appropriate funding to do so. Alongside this, regional authorities are working to enact
the entirety of the NPS-FM alongside other new national directives within a strained time frame.
Evidently, the NPS-FM is symptomatic of the increasingly bicultural rhetoric being applied to
freshwater management in Aotearoa New Zealand. As such, indigenous ways of knowing are
being turned to as a way to combat the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and freshwater
decline. As this shift occurs, it is vitally important that those who hold and share this knowledge
are recognized for their expertise in a practical and remunerable way. It is recommended that
successful implementation of Te Mana o te Wai must recognise pathways towards tino
rangatiratanga and improve iwi resourcing to cultivate genuine partnerships between tāngata
whenua and local government in the freshwater management of the future.