Achieving soil health in Aotearoa New Zealand through a pluralistic values-based framework: mauri ora ki te whenua, mauri ora ki te tangata

Abstract

Globally, soil policy and management have been based on a limited understanding of values and perspectives, and mainly dominated by a Western-centric soil science perspective. Further, this understanding has tended to be highly focused on instrumental values—particularly the soil’s productive potential and use. In this paper, we use the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) to analyse how Aotearoa New Zealand’s agricultural productive sectors express their relationship with soil and soil health. Our analysis highlights the multidimensional nature of soil values across society. Importantly, the results are consistent with work undertaken on Indigenous Māori perspectives of soil and soil health. Māori perspectives strongly connect soil to their people and take a holistic or well-being approach to soil. We then present a soil health and well-being framework that can incorporate a plurality of values from people of diverse backgrounds, including landowners, industry, farmers, and Indigenous peoples. We use a bi-cultural model approach—“waka taurua”—to demonstrate how the plurality of values from non-Indigenous and Indigenous groups in Aotearoa New Zealand can be used to shape process, dialogue and understanding, to develop shared goals to maintain and enhance the soil resource, and to achieve soil health and human well-being. There needs to be a shift in how soil policy and management is approached to achieve international calls to manage soils sustainably. Our approach using the NFF indicates that people assign multiple, co-existing values to soil. The resulting dialogue on values enriches our understanding of soils and soil health, and our relationships and connections with nature, improves the way we define threats and risks, and will lead to more targeted actions to achieve desired sustainable outcomes.