May 13, 2021
Te mana o te wai puts planners on right course
A Māori environmental planner says planners and engineers have no choice than to get to grips with Māori ideas and aspirations.
Tina Porou spoke to the Water New Zealand Stormwater Conference in Tauranga yesterday about how stormwater can’t be seen in isolation from drinking water and waste water.
She says now the concept of te mana o te wai is in the national policy statement for fresh water, the sector can no longer ignore mātauranga Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
"The horse has bolted. It's in the law. It's in the policy and so now it's a transition for a lot of those participants in the industry to understand what this means for their decision making, for their operationalisation of te mana o te wai in all their business, and I think there is a real willingness to understand and to learn," Ms Porou says.
She says a lot of legacy issues around water were created without input from iwi Māori, so there is now the possibility of transformative change.
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