Tuesday March 8th

Commons, Iwi and Councils Environment Aotearoa 7




Environment Aotearoa 7
Commons, iwi and councils
Some things are not being noticed in the Foreshore and Seabed debate.
One is the idea of a common space on the foreshore and seabed. This is an old concept repackaged and rephrased as something new for iwi and others in Aotearoa and is presented as a solution to other ideas of land and sea ownership and tenure.
The common area in this case is not a plot at the back of the village where people grow cabbages and compare cauliflowers. It is the whole coastline.
Its almost an antiquarian English model where there will be a commons but just as there were departures for the nobility in England, the lords of the manor who might be free to hunt foxes every third Saturday while others may only watch, there will be variations around the coast of the country in regard to customary title. In the main these will be quaint arrangements regarding the collection of shellfish for events and not things that affect recreational use of the foreshore and seabed. We seem to have come a long way to have gone back so far. And for all that the history of enclosures and commons is not all rosy…
The commons always gives a sense of collective identity though and the scale of all this could change the way we think of ourselves.
At this stage it seems that only the arrangements with Ngati Porou will break the ring of the commons around Aotearoa in any significant way. The research of Tracey Whare on the Ngati Porou arrangement with the Crown (Whare, 2010) shows the complexity of the customary marine title and also shows the need to create new arrangements with local councils that is required through the gaining of customary marine title.
Whare says regarding the Bill regarding the Hapu of Ngati Porou;
Given the FSA premise that the public foreshore and seabed is vested in the Crown and that Maori have no right to compensation is this Bill the best that could be achieved? Does the tweaking of existing decision making processes simply mean business as usual? If so, then all the concerns around the FSA continue to be played out in this Bill. Given the Government’s previous negotiation processes, it also sets the precedent for future negotiations with iwi and hapu. With the government’s decision to review the RMA, the FSA and the proposed constitutional review, it remains to be seen what effect those reviews will have on this Bill. If the Bill is enacted its implementation will be closely monitored by all even more so by its supposed beneficiaries.
The Foreshore and Seabed Act: Five years on, where to from here?
Tracey Whare
In
Maori and the environment:Kaitiaki
Edited Selby, Moore and Mulholland
Huia Publishers 2010: 59-75
Tracey Whare also mentions pouwhenua instruments.
Whare seems to suggest that local councils such as that in Gisborne and on the East Coast actually get a lot out of the arrangements with iwi regarding customary title.
It seems as though the arrangement with Ngati Porou will stand regardless of whether the foreshore legislation before parliament at the moment is passed. Whare is referring to the legislation proposed earlier for Ngati Porou itself. There are all sorts of ramifications. One is the way in which redistribution of wealth amongst iwi occurs. The role of councils is not greatly considered in the literature on this topic. A set of readings are given in the bibliography notably Goldsmith and Van Mejl (2003) regarding the local situation and Taylor (1992) and Kymlicka (1995) giving a more general position. In most of the literature there is a central concern with the minority group and the state without a great deal of attention to local and municipal councils.
Should the legislation proceed we will face a commons, the like of which we have not seen in this country and that is a new ball game for environmentalists to be played out and discussed at a later stage. But a commons broken here and there by arrangements between iwi and councils is what we are looking at right now.

Bibliography
Bennett, April 2010 Uncharted Waters- recent settlements as new spaces for enhancing Maori participation in fresh-water management and decision making in Selby, Moore and Mulholland, 2010: 175-184
Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C. (Eds.), 2003. Navigating Social-Ecological Systems, Building Resilience for Complexity and Change.
Cleave, Peter 2009 Takutai, the foreshore and seabed, Second Edition, Campus Press
Feeny, D., Berkes, F., McCay, B.J., Acheson, J.M., 1990. The tragedy of the commons: twenty-two years later. Human Ecology 18 (1), 1–19.
Hingston, Ken 2006 Foreshore and Seabed in Mulholland 2006
Honoré, A.M. 1961 “Ownership.” In Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, edited by A.C. Guest, 107–47. Oxford: Clarendon Press (cited in Goldsmith 2009:327)
James, Colin 2010 in the Dominion Post on Sep 13th
Kawharu, Merata 2010 Environment as a marae locale in Selby, Moore and Mulholland
Kymlicka, W 1995 Multicultural Citizenship: a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, New York, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Macpherson, C.B. 1962 The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. London: Oxford University Press (cited in Goldsmith 2009: 327)
Park, G. (1995) Nga Ururoa (the groves of life)- ecology and history in a New Zealand Landscape, Victoria University Press, Wellington
Tawhai, Veronica W.H. Rawaho, in and out of the environmental engagement loop (Selby, Moore and Mulholland 2010: 77-94)
Taylor, C 1992 Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition”, Princeton, Princeton University Press
Van Meijl, Toon, 2003:260-279 Conflicts of Redistribution in Contemporary Maori Society: Leadership and the Tainui Settlement In Van Meijl and Goldsmith
Van Meijl, Toon and Goldsmith Michael, Postcolonial dilemmas: reappraising justice and identity in New Zealand and Australia , Journal of the Polynesian Society, Volume 112, September 2003, No3
Van Meijl, Toon and Goldsmith, Michael, 2003: 205-218 Introduction: Recognition, Redistribution and Reconciliation in Postcolonial Settler Societies. In Van Meijl and Goldsmith
Whare, Tracey, 2010: 59-75 The Foreshore and Seabed Act: Five years on, where to from here? in Maori and the environment:Kaitiaki Edited Selby, Moore andf Mulholland
Huia Publishers



Written by Peter Cleave,