Transforming River Governance: The Co-Governance Arrangements in the Waikato and Waipaˉ Rivers

Abstract

Around the world, many societies are trying to create and apply apparatuses that recognise Indigenous interests in freshwater systems. Such policies and strategies often acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ rights and values they attached to specific waterways, and take the form of new legal agreements which are directed at reconciling diverse worldviews, values, and ways of life within particular environments. In this chapter we review one such arrangement: the co-governance arrangements between the Māori iwi (tribe) Ngāti Maniapoto and the New Zealand (Government) to co-govern and co-manage the Waipā River. We analysis where the new governance arrangements are enabling Ngāti Maniapoto to achieve environmental justice and find substantive faults most notably distributive inequities, lack of participatory parity, and inadequate recognition of Māori governance approaches.

Water Resources Allocation and Agriculture

“…Similarly, in New Zealand, treaty settlement agreements have been signed by the New Zealand Crown and Māori iwi groups that establish a co-governance mechanism which reassert Māori authority over and knowledge about wai (water) and awa (rivers). This system provides formal recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems to establish environmental flow recommendations (Parsons et al, 2021). In the US, as part of their analysis of water releases from Glen Canyon Dam, the US Geological Survey used a multi-criterion structured decision-making approach to consider factors such as preservation of tribal, kiva group and clan history, respect for life, sacred integrity of the river, health of the river as a sentient being, sacred stewardship and education, sustenance, economic opportunity and tribal water rights and supply.…”