August 21, 2013
Mauri-Ometer to help environmental decisions
A new measuring tool was launched today that will help people better understand the effects of environmental disasters like the Rena grounding.
Kepa Morgan from Ngā Pae ō te Maramatanga, the centre for Māori research excellence, developed the mauri-Ometer website out of his work for the Ministry for the Environment’s Rena long term environmental recovery plan.
He says the grounding of the ship on a reef off the Tauranga Harbour entrance had not just economic effects but also affected social and cultural well-being.
In Māori terms that is the mauri or life supporting capacity of an ecosystem, which is not picked up by conventional cost-benefit analysis.
"Mauri being a life-supporting capacity, it means if you kill something, you've exhausted the mauri, so that is quite clear, it's absolute. If you killed someone using a cost-benefit analysis, if you were very rational, if you were going to make $100 million and you were only going to kill 20 people that would be justified. So I think it's a really good thing that we are moving towards a way of making decisions that can take into account the absolute implications of what we are doing," Dr Morgan says.
The mauri-Ometer and its underling Mauri Model Decision Making Framework will allow organisations to get a better understanding of their obligations under given legislative requirements and Treaty of Waitangi considerations.
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