Scaling down, scaling up: Development of a framework to understand vulnerability and change potential in the Hauraki, New Zealand

Abstract

In New Zealand, regional councils are responsible for developing and implementing policy, and realising objectives for natural resource management. Across the country, councils face the challenge of creating policies that will ensure the maintenance of ecosystem services, while future-proofing the social, cultural and economic viability of their regions in the face of multiple uncertainties and drivers of change. The Hauraki subregion presents a “perfect storm” of interacting environmental, social and economic challenges. While wetland drainage at the turn of the 20th century transformed the landscape, and provided superior land for dairy farming land and associated livelihoods, this low lying coastal area now faces multiple socio-economic and environmental challenges. The legacy effects – drainage, peat shrinkage and land subsidence, salt water intrusion, and biodiversity loss – are exacerbated by changing land use and land management practices. Climate change and the risk of increasing variability and extremes, as well as social and economic drivers, further complicate the scope for policy-, planning- and adaptation solutions. In addition, there are a wide range of stakeholders in a highly complex social and political environment, including settlement claims by Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, under the Treaty of Waitangi; a Marine Spatial Plan developed with stakeholders from around the wider Hauraki Gulf; and an upcoming review of the Regional Plan and Regional Coastal Plan. The Hauraki is diverse and spatially heterogenous, implying that impacts from different driving forces will be felt in different ways by different communities. In the past, integrated assessments for the purpose of policy development have tended to focus on region- or sub-regional scale modelling of high level scenarios. Such assessments can be a useful tool to understand broad scale issues, but from the outset they often limit the scope for understanding local-level vulnerabilities and innovation potential. In order to develop effective policies, we suggest that vulnerability and innovation potential need to be both considered spatially and understood at different scales. To this end, we propose a framework, developed by Landcare Research together with the Waikato Regional Council (WRC), for an integrated assessment process intended to address the challenges described above and to underpin policy development. We approach the assessment both at the broader scale, through spatial mapping and the development of indices of environmental as well as socio-economic and cultural vulnerability; and at the local scale through the spatial identification of hotspots of vulnerability and local capacity for change, where we are able to explore place-based, adaptive pathways. Based on the premise that change can occur most efficiently, equitably and effectively where the need for such change is recognised across different parts of the community, and where there is a shared vision and direction, we propose that the understanding of vulnerability and innovation potential generated from the development of local-scale, place-based visions that cut across sectors can then be scaled up to help inform broader policy questions and future scenarios.