“Na whenua, na Tuhoe. Ko D.o.C. te partner”—Prospects for Comanagement of Te Urewera National Park

The contested environmental governance of Maori-owned native forests in South Island, Aotearoa/New Zealand

“…a conservation ethos imposed onto indigenous communities by dominant Western-based moral philosophies about 'correct' nature conservation. Coombes and Hill (2005) similarly argue from a New Zealand perspective that policy frameworks involving indigenous people are often based on the assumption that indigenous people and conservation managers strive for the same 'biocentric' objectives, even though resource use is often more central to indigenous self-determination than altruistic conservation. Holt (2005) and Krech (2005) note that there is often an underlying assumption that Western conservationists hold the unrealistic expectation that indigenous people will inevitably preserve land ceded to them in the same state in which they received it.…”

“…regulation of native forest management within Maori communities) and focus on native forest preservation as a baseline with which to assess Maori forest management practices (see below). As Gibbs (2005) notes, New Zealand is a particularly appropriate setting as Maori governance, forest management, and land rights issues have come to the fore over the past decades (see also Coombes and Hill, 2005;Wilson and Memon, 2005;NZMAF, 2009). Although struggles of the Maori over land and resources have been well documented since the colonial era, little work has explored the spatial intricacies of these struggles in relation to environmental governance processes involving property rights, globalisation and exogenous/endogenous regulation mechanisms for Maori native forest management.…”

“…In an idealised vision, such 'new' environmental governance structures may be associated with changing attitudes of newly empowered stakeholders vis-à-vis their own position in native forest management processes (Smith and Wishnie, 2000;Coombes and Hill, 2005), and with changing societal attitudes towards destructive forest management practices (e.g. through clearfelling) in forests owned or managed by indigenous communities (Hunn et al, 2003;Ostrom and Nagendra, 2006).…”

Co-Governance and Local Empowerment? Conservation Partnership Frameworks and Marine Protection at Mimiwhangata, New Zealand

“…As Coombes and Hill (2005) make clear, in postcolonial societies contemporary exercises in conservation co-governance take place within historical and political conditions of eroded indigenous rights, competition over remaining lands and resources, and widespread mistrust. Unless innovations in conservation governance respond to this legacy, ''it is unlikely that collaborative structures will be perceived as equitable'' (Coombes and Hill 2005, 137).…”

Defining biocultural approaches to conservation

“…The challenge comes when these local priorities, goals, and institutions are in conflict with priorities, goals, and institutions at other spatial and institutional levels [55], or when collaboration across institutional levels is hindered by poor relations among stakeholders (e.g., via historical grievances over land tenure [56]). Successful adoption of a nested governance models will require all stakeholder groups to willingly share power, maintain strong working relations based on trust, accountability, and open communication, and participate in deliberative processes that work through conflict and promote social learning [6,29,36].…”