Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SABER CULTURAL (SAfeguarding Biodiversity and Ecosystem seRvices by integrating CULTURAL values in freshwater management: learning from Māori)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-01-01 bis 2020-12-31
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.
Overview of results:
• Full objectives hierarchies for the two case studies based on community values, approved by the communities through extensive collaboration activities
• Comprehensive collections of available environmental information. For Blueskin estuary, this collection is in form of an access database which is accessible through the Waitati Library. For Lake Wanaka, the collection is in form of an excel database and published in a openly accessible report
• Development of value functions for all attributes and identification of the current status of each attribute
• Implementation of the gathered information in R-scripts to operationalize the objectives hierarchy, including the attributes, value functions and the aggregation of values to analyse the consequences of different management actions and the impact of different weights given to the objectives by key stakeholders on the action ranking
• Development of conceptual social-ecological system models within a Bayesian Belief Network approach for further population with probabilities
From the intensive collaboration in the case studies, four key lessons have been learnt:
• The MCDA-process and its outcomes significantly help visualise and organise community values, identify knowledge gaps and rank action alternatives
• Collaboration with local stakeholders can be uncomplicated, while getting engaged with local decision makers might be more challenging
• Cultural objectives were found to be important to all stakeholders; more important than economic ones but a little less than maintaining a healthy ecosystem
• Māori objectives were identified to be similarly important to all stakeholders when compared with western cultural objectives
Results of SABER CULTURAL can be exploited through science based policy making, i.e. can directly help shaping evidence-based policy in NZ and inform freshwater policies in Europe. This can happen in two ways. Fist, the process taken in SABER CULTURAL is based on true public collaboration and therefore recognizes the democratic drivers behind policy making. This is, for instance, required but rarely executed when developing management plans in the European Union. The process taken in SABER CULTURAL provides the means to directly fill this gap. Second, the integration of people’s cultural preferences in freshwater management provides evidence on how cultural(socio) and ecological freshwater values are linked. This information can be used to revise current freshwater assessment and management to account for, and include, human well-being which is poorly represented in current management strategies in Europe.
Despite there is still much room for improvement, a mixed top-down/bottom-up approach without compromising neither the best available scientific evidence nor cultural beliefs and preferences of the whole community, provides a way forward in freshwater EBM and leads to positive outcomes for freshwater environments and local communities. With SABER CULTURAL I have set an example that the MCDA-framework is capable of operationalizing this endeavor and encourage managers to embrace the challenge of applying it.
SABER CULTURAL entails great innovation capacity for the Otago region and more generally for entire NZ. With my research I have demonstrated how to operationalize the NZ freshwater policy, which could function as a blueprint to be followed to develop freshwater management plans in NZ’s regions. Moreover, outcomes of SABER CULTURAL challenge the top-down driven development of river basin management plans (RBMP) in Europe under the EU Water Framework Directive and inspire working towards more community inclusiveness in future amendments of those plans.