Te Tirohanga o Ngā Tohu: Taranaki Climate Resilience Tool Development – report

Project

• The project was funded by The Deep South National Science Challenge whose mission was: to anticipate, adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate.
• This project aims to contribute to the Deep South National Science Challenge mission and the needs of our iwi research partners by developing a climate change tool based on iwi priorities, values and environmental tohu (signs), specific to three northern Taranaki iwi: Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Maru. The tool will support iwi to prioritise and plan for climate related impacts in vulnerable habitats.

Objectives

This project aims to develop a climate change tool based on iwi priorities, values and environmental tohu identified by Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Maru by undertaking the following actions.

1. Summarising Māori ways of caring for their local taiao (environment).
2. Identifying local environmental tohu with hapū/iwi.
3. Developing a kaupapa Māori tool that supports understanding the local environment and tohu, under a changing climate.
4. Illustrating how process-based modelling alongside a kaupapa Māori based tool can help inform biodiversity management, under a changing climate.

Methods

This project embraces the methodology of Kaupapa Māori because it is led by Māori researchers in partnership with local iwi, is underpinned by Māori philosophy and principles, centres the validity and legitimacy of a Māori world view, and seeks to produce useful and transformative research.

The study design was co-developed with our iwi partners, and used wānanga as our research method. We held two wānanga with our iwi partners, and their iwi members, to address the key research aims/objectives.