The latest state of the environment report is issuing a warning about the risks human activity and environmental decline are having on mātauranga Māori and customary Māori practices.
Dr Dan Hikuroa (Nō Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato Tainui) is a senior lecturer in Māori studies at the University of Auckland and was one of the mātauranga advisors, who helped craft the report.
The Environment Aotearoa 2022 report, shows how human activity is damaging the climate including air freshwater land and marine quality and found degradation across most areas.
"The degradation of water quality of forest of oceans of land and soil these are at the very heart of Māori Identity, so if those things are at risk then our very identity is at risk". Hikuroa told Te Ao Tapatahi.
“It’s one of the fundamental impacts in the report."
Hikuroa said Māori were directly connected to the land and "it’s a part of the mātauranga Māori to do things on the land that connect us with our grandparents, our cousins, aunties and uncles and soon we lose the knowledge of that practice”.
First holistic view
“if we lose that knowledge, then we lose the knowledge of how the environment is changing. It’s one of those practical ways where the change is felt at the whanau and hapu level.”
The last report was made three years ago and Hikuroa says that it’s tricky to answer whether there have been notable improvements or declines but said that “overall, it’s not good. We have declines in overall fronts although, in some places, we have an improved quality but in other areas, it’s worsening”.
“We are getting communities and even farmers trying to restore wetlands but overall we are losing wetlands, so in the report, it’s hard to find good stories”.
Hikuroa said that the report is a first of its kind in monitoring the land taking into consideration a holistic Māori framework while collating data. The different whetu and the other different aspects of the environment are the fundamental differences in this year’s report”.
“The world view of interconnectedness is not unique to Māori. many New Zealanders feel that same connectedness as well and we thought that it was a different way to form up and shape the information that we report on."
Some of the key areas that Hikuroa said some of the key areas that need to be addressed are our “water quality and the loss of soils”.
Hikuroa said Aotearoa was in this situation because of “a legacy of decisions” that have affected us from 150 years ago and that now is the time where “we need to make those hard discussions together around what we want our future to look like”.