Indigenous Aspirations and Ecological Integrity: Restoring and Protecting the Health and Wellbeing of an Ancestral River for Future Generations in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

is known throughout the world for its beautiful scenery, but behind those scenes there are many stories of how, over time, human activities have degraded the health and wellbeing of our lands and waterways. The Indigenous Maori have long fought to defend the integrity of natural resources who do not have a voice of their own in the processes of law and policy making. Ecological integrity is an ethical concept that values the state of nature being whole and unimpaired such as might be found in places of wild nature, untouched by human exploitation. This paper seeks to provide a domestic example of the application of the environmental ethic of the indigenous Maori which ensures that humans are kaitiaki (guardians) of their surrounding environment by virtue of shared genealogy, and how this ethic is being applied to restore and protect the health and wellbeing of the Waikato River, New Zealand's longest. This particular river restoration project reflects many of the important aspects of ecological integrity. It serves, too, as a domestic example of the most sophisticated attempt at powersharing to date between Maori and the Crown in relation to natural resources, which may be of interest to other jurisdictions.