A LANDSCAPE CODE OF PRACTICE

PERPETUATING FRAGMENTED PRACTICE OR SHAPING (RE)NEW(ED) THINKING? REFLECTIONS ON MFE’S REQUEST FOR QUOTES

ABSTRACT

Landscape policy in New Zealand is at a critical juncture as the Ministry for the Environment requests quotes for the development of a Code of Practice for Landscape. This paper briefly explores the legislative background that sets the context for the Code proposal. It then responds to the Request for Quotes (RFQ) in relation to bicultural understandings of landscape, and to the dual environmental impacts of climate change and increasing tourism. It suggests that the RFQ’s focus on “outstanding natural landscapes” framed to specifically exclude character and cultural aspects indicates that the Code will perpetuate current practice that compartmentalises “nature” and “culture” rather than addressing their confluence.

It is suggested that such an outcome would not only fail to deliver the certainty for stakeholders that the MfE seeks, but may also obstruct innovative approaches to total landscape resilience. Conversely, the Code may present an opportunity for centring Maori worldviews in our understandings of landscape. I argue that this would both contribute to real-world outworkings of the Treaty of Waitangi partnership and provide more genuinely sustainable landscape management in a rapidly changing world.

The narrow framing of the RFQ may lead to a Code of Practice that perpetuates an established norm of New Zealand brand protection, instead of addressing our landscapes, “outstanding” or not, as living taonga (treasures).

 

Introduction

The Ministry for the Environment (MfE)’s recent RFQ to develop a Code of Practice for Landscape calls for the establishment of “a nationally consistent, well-understood and accepted approach to identifying and evaluating, and assessing effects on, landscapes in New Zealand.”1 This presents both opportunity and risk for understandings and stewardship of landscapes in New Zealand. Two challenges are explored here. First, the necessity of taking a bicultural approach to landscape values, and second, of proactively responding to an era of unprecedented environmental change.

The matters discussed in this paper have been analysed in depth and from multiple disciplines both within New Zealand and internationally. However, it appears timely to reflect on these issues in light of the implications of establishing a landscape Code.

1 Ministry for the Environment Manatū Mō Te Taiao (MfE), Request for Quotes: Code of Practice for Landscape – 0772-01-RFQ (Wellington, New Zealand: MfE, 2017): 3

What is landscape? The inextricability of nature and culture

It is clear from the RFQ that the focus of the Code of Practice is to be on “outstanding natural landscapes,”2 which fall within Section 6(b) of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) Matters of National Importance. As the term “landscape” is not defined under the RMA nor the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 (NZCPS), its understanding within a legal framework has been shaped by case law and evolving practice.3 Various Environment Court decisions have established a number of principles, including that a landscape must be both “outstanding” and “natural” to fall within section 6(b).4 While it has been recognised that a cultured natural landscape may still be considered an outstanding natural landscape within a “spectrum of naturalness”, the emphasis is on environments “being uncluttered by structures and/or obvious human influence.”5

The Environment Court decision C180/1999 Wakatipu Environment Society and others v Queenstown Lakes District Council established a framework to assess the significance of such landscapes. Known as the amended Pigeon Bay, or WESI, criteria, they include a range of factors from geological, topographical and ecological components to aesthetic values, legibility, value to tangata whenua and historical associations.6 More recent Environment Court decisions have been cognisant of the WESI criteria’s susceptibility to formulaic application. Decision C103/2009 Maniototo Environmental Society Inc. v Central Otago District Council cautioned against “reducing discussion of any landscape to its elements. There is always a danger of not seeing a landscape for the tussocks.”7 This decision recognised landscapes’ four-dimensionality in time as well as space, and grouped landscape attributes under three interrelated areas including:

• Characteristics of a place, including its natural science, physical qualities, history and use;
• The values of a place, including its “naturalness,” legibility, shared memories and associations, and values to tangata whenua; and
• The perceptions of a place, including views, experiences ad associations of those who may be affected by it.8

While continuing to work under the terminology of Section 6 such decisions signal an evolving understanding of the entanglement of people and place embodied in landscape. They recognise the necessity of analysing landscape significance holistically, and acknowledge that even New Zealand’s most unspoiled environments are shaped by people-place perceptions and interactions. This reflects contemporary views in landscape practice internationally and nationally.9 As stated by the landscape architect Pete Griffiths, “while there are now many understandings of the broad term landscape, it has become clear that it is a cultural construct, a part of culture.”10

However, it is notable that Policy 15 of the NZCPS contains assessment criteria that largely reproduce those of WESI established 10 years prior.11 As a statutory document that must be given affect to by all regional and district policy statements and plans,12 I suggest that the NZCPS embeds a “tick-the-box” mind-set for landscape considerations through New Zealand’s planning framework. It also aligns with geographers Lesley Head and Joachim Regnéll’s finding that, “although research now clearly shows the variety of ways in which culture and nature are closely embedded, to the point of challenging their constitution as separate entities, most Western jurisdictions still attempt to manage them separately.”13 The categorical circumscription of the RFQ to include natural landscapes but specifically exclude “landscape character or cultural landscapes”14 indicates that the NZCPS’s pigeon-holed approach is to be perpetuated in the proposed Code for landscapes.

New Zealand’s comparatively short period of human settlement and it’s continued low and heavily urban population makes it relatively unusual in a global context, where landscapes have been peopled for thousands of years. It has been easy in this country for an idealised mythology of primeval land, a last untouched wilderness to become a cornerstone for our (Pakeha) identity as New Zealanders. Perceptions of these islands’ pristine environment established, and continues to direct, our cultural imagery, and has been highly lucrative as the mainspring of the “100% pure New Zealand” brand internationally.15 I suggest that the narrow framing of the RFQ may lead to a Code of Practice that perpetuates an established norm of New Zealand brand protection, instead of addressing our landscapes, “outstanding” or not, as living taonga (treasures).

2 MfE, Request for Quotes: 6
3 “Defining Landscape,” The Quality Planning Website, accessed 28 January 2017, http://www.qualityplanning.org.nz/index.php/planning-tools/land/landscape/defining-landscape#_ftnref5
4 “What is an ‘Outstanding Natural Feature or Landscape’?” Environment Foundation: Environment Guide, last updated 25 May 2015, http://www.environmentguide.org.nz/issues/landscape/protection-of-landscapes-and-features/what-is-an-outstanding-natural-feature-or/
5 Wakatipu Environmental Society Inc. v Queenstown Lakes District Council EnvC C180/1999, para 89.
This was later upheld by:
Maniototo Environmental Society Inc. v Central Otago District Council EnvC C103/2009, para 204.
See also:
Upper Clutha Tracks Trust v Queenstown Lakes District Council EnvC C432/2010;
Long Bay-Okura Great Park Society Inc. v North Shore City Council EnvC A78/2008.
6 Wakatipu Environmental Society Inc. v Queenstown Lakes District Council EnvC C180/1999, para 80.
7 Maniototo Environmental Society Inc. v Central Otago District Council EnvC C103/2009, para 201.
8 Maniototo Environmental Society Inc. v Central Otago District Council EnvC C103/2009, para 202; see also “Defining Landscape,” The Quality Planning Website
9 See the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) “Connecting Practice” project, https://www.iucn.org/theme/world-heritage/our-work/world-heritage-projects/connecting-nature-and-culture
10 Pete Griffiths, “The Importance of Landscape,” Landscape Foundation 1st Edition, January (2015). http://www.landscape.org.nz/the-importance-of-lanscape.html
11 NZ Department of Conservation, New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 (Wellington, New Zealand: NZ Department of Conservation, 2010): Policy 15
12 Resource Management Act 1991, Part 5, Sections 62, 67, 73.
13 Lesley Head and Joachim Regnéll, "Nature, Culture and Time: Contested Landscapes among Environmental Managers in Skåne, Southern Sweden," in Terra Australis 34: Peopled Landscapes: Archaeological and Biogeographic Approaches to Landscapes, eds. Simon Haberle and Bruno David (Acton, A.C.T., Australia: ANU E Press, 2012), 221-237: 221
14 MfE, Request for Quotes: 3
15 “What we do: 100% Pure New Zealand,” Tourism New Zealand Corporate Website, accessed 28 January 2017, http://www.tourismnewzealand.com/about/what-we-do/campaign-and-activity/

The RFQ’s call to “establish a nationally consistent, well-understood and accepted approach to identifying and evaluating, and assessing effects on, landscapes” is a case in point.

Bicultural perspectives

Rather than codifying existing practice, there is an opportunity here to redefine policy settings towards a genuinely bicultural enweaving of Māori and Pakeha landscape values. This is not only a mutual obligation as partners under the Treaty of Waitangi. Māori understandings of place offer (re)new(ed) language for identifying, evaluating and managing “outstanding natural landscapes” at a time when Western discourse has systematically objectified and fragmented our environments. The RFQ’s call to “establish a nationally consistent, well-understood and accepted approach to identifying and evaluating, and assessing effects on, landscapes” is a case in point. It reflects philosopher Carl Te Hira Mika’s assertion that, “Māori (and indeed the West) have long been forced to participate in a project that stresses the clear, unequivocal and detached representation of an object... to think of the world as inanimate, and to dispel any fearful discussions about mythical thinking.”16

Bicultural redefining of landscape may be difficult for Pakeha – of which I am one – to swallow, being encultured in a worldview that frames landscape as object with our self as the subject.17 This view is safe, known and orderable, with “sites of significance to Māori”18 being reduced to a bullet-point in the RMA’s definition of New Zealand’s heritage. Questioning our position may necessitate acknowledging, and wrestling with, divergent and multi-layered realities that are not easily delimited and homogenised as required by the RFQ. But Mika cautions that a continuation of the status quo constrains not only Māori perspectives but Pakeha’s too:

Knowing that a thing can be taken as this or that in advance has preoccupied Western humanity’s orientation towards the world. Just as importantly, it limits the potential of Western thought. With the push to posit a thing as a “thorough” entity in its visibility, according to Heidegger, Western thought lost its ability to reflect in an authentic manner.19

Mika goes on to explain:

(In New Zealand’s formal institutions) Māori notions of things… are reduced to manageable entities. If I am asked to provide evidence about a block of land, I am asked to do something even before I talk about land itself: I am asked to take on a notion of an object as utterly undistracted or uninformed by other objects. I turn to that object with the expectation that it will fulfil its role as an object. Then my attention turns to whenua. I represent whenua on the basis of that assumption of the nature of an object. Whenua as a phenomenon then has no relationship with other entities for that short time… illuminating no more in the world than “land”.20

In light of the work of indigenous researchers like Mika and others,21 I suggest that the very act of constructing a Code of Practice for landscape identification and assessment runs the risk of being yet another concretion of an essentially fluid concept. This is particularly the case when landscape character and cultural landscapes are explicitly excluded. Such an approach in my view presents several interrelated issues.

First, it fails to adequately address what is understood as the spirit of the Treaty,22which embodies a partnership between the Crown and Māori in the creation of a nation state. This must be more than another box to tick. Māori understandings of whenua (land), Papatūānuku (earth mother), whakapapa (genealogy), mauri (life force), tūrangawaewae (a place to stand) and pūtahi (confluence and holism) should not only be central to landscape policy in principle, they offer a paradigm shift where artificial delineations between nature/culture, environment/economy and past/present/future can be reconsidered.

Second, it limits our ability to authentically consider landscape as multi-dimensioned, existing in time as much as space. Understandings of landscapes and peoples’ relationships with them are evolving, with growing consensus that place significance is multi-layered and continually negotiable.23 Codifying existing practice risks obscuring the inextricability of spatial and temporal, geographical and historical aspects that shape the landscape spectrum, and may fail to adequately acknowledge and build capacity for change, both physical and conceptual.

In particular, it is critical that negative associations as well as positive values are acknowledged in the land. Even our most visually “pristine” environments can have painful histories, and Māori conceptions of time as resonant rather than linear mean that reverberations of the past are alive in the present.24 The recent demolition of the Aniwaniwa visitor’s centre at Lake Waikaremoana attests to Nāi Tūhoe’s need for utu (revenge, the need to maintain balance) in what may appear on the surface as simply an outstanding natural landscape.25

Third, a Code may solidify and amplify practical difficulties in institutional performance, where “nature” and “culture” practitioners have different terms of reference and holistically-considered outcomes are lost in formulaic assessments undertaken within a deliberately narrow purview.26 As has been the case with the NZCPS, the proposed Code of Practice for Landscape sets the agenda for sector capability, as councils across the country seek to make assessments in line with the new standard. It therefore risks further embedding practice that compartmentalises and fragments, and constrains innovative responsiveness to dynamic landscape realities.

With an anticipated project timeframe of four months with two brackets of “technical” and “open” workshops to “reflect the collective and collaborative expert views of the profession,”27 it seems probable that the above issues will be very present in the resultant Code. I suggest that such an outcome is no longer tenable in the contemporary New Zealand context, where Māori and Pakeha’s mutual responsibilities for the kaitiakitanga (stewardship) of our environment have been established across a range of disciplines and in legislation.28 Seeking certainty for key stakeholders is also arguably misplaced if this dampens resilience to landscape transformation, as I explore below.

16 Carl Te Hira Mika, ""Thereness": Implications of Heidegger’s “Presence” for Māori," AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 11, no. 1 (01, 2015), 3-13: 3, 5
17Carl Te Hira Mika, "The Ontological and Active Possibilities of 'Papatūānuku': To Nurture or Enframe?" Knowledge Cultures 4 (05; 2017/1, 2016): 58
18Resource Management Act 1991, Part 1, Section 2: Interpretation
19Carl Te Hira Mika, ""Thereness"”: 5
20Carl Te Hira Mika, ""Thereness"”: 6
21See for example:
Pita King, Darrin Hodgetts, Mohi Rua and Tiniwai Te Whetu, "Emplaced Cultural Practices through which Homeless Men can be Māori," in Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, eds. Evelyn J. Peters and Julia Christensen (Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 2016), 363-388
Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Caroline Robinson, Keriata Stuart, Biddy Livesey with Bill Reed, "‘Ensuring the Container is Strong’ – Regenerating Urban Mauri through Wānanga," Landscape Foundation, accessed 24 January 2017, http://www.landscape.org.nz/regenerating-urban-mauri.html
Deidre Brown, “Tūrangawaewae Kore: Nowhere to Stand,” in Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, eds. Evelyn J. Peters and Julia Christensen (Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 2016), 331-362
22 “Differences between the Texts,” Ministry for Culture and Heritage, last updated 20 December 2012, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-Treaty/differences-between-the-texts
23 Robert McClean, Sustainable Management of Historic Heritage Guidelines: Discussion Paper No.3 - Heritage Landscape Values (Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Historic Places Trust Pouhere Taonga, 2007): 5, 6
24Bill McKay, “Resonant Time and Cyclic Architecture: Notions of Time and Architectural History in New Zealand,” in Limits: proceedings from the 21st annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne 2004, eds. H. Edquist and H. Frichot (Melbourne, Australia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2004), 295-300
25 For background to this example, see Sally Blundell, “Centre of Controversy,” NZ Listener, Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2016.
26 Head and Regnéll, "Nature, Culture and Time”: 232
27 MfE, Request for Quotes: 8, 2
28See for example the Resource Management Act 1991, Part 2 Section 7.

Our “outstanding natural landscapes” are a key attraction, and politicians, policy makers, tourism operators and local people are scrambling to respond to the rapid rise in visitor numbers to these areas.

Rapid transformation in a changing world

As presented in a vast range of scientific literature both nationally and internationally, the world is in an era of physical change unprecedented in human history. In-depth analyses of the effects of climate change on New Zealand provide critical information that must shape any proposed methodology for identification and assessment of landscapes.29 Effects that have most obvious potential for directly impacting outstanding natural landscapes include:

• Fire, with longer fire seasons, increased drought frequency and drier and windier conditions resulting in higher frequency and greater spread of fires. Areas well known for their scenic beauty such as coastal Otago, Marlborough and south-eastern Southland are particularly prone;
• Significant changes in the frequency and/or severity of extremes, including dry or wet conditions, temperature differentials and storm events affecting lakes, rivers and streams as well as terrestrial areas;
• Sea level rise, with the probability of at least 0.5m rise by 2100, but possibly up to 2m affecting our coastal environments;
• Reduced seasonal snow cover in alpine regions with associated changes in biodiversity, and glacial melt, with loss of at least one-quarter or Franz Josef glacier mass since 1950.30

At the same time, New Zealand is becoming increasingly popular as an international tourist destination. 2016 saw a record 3.5 million tourists, and projections indicate that this is likely to more than double by 2023 to almost 7 million.31 Our “outstanding natural landscapes” are a key attraction, and politicians, policy makers, tourism operators and local people are scrambling to respond to the rapid rise in visitor numbers to these areas. While presenting new economic opportunities, more people mean increasing physical and experiential impacts on the “wilderness” they come to see.32

Such changes may exacerbate New Zealand’s tendency to manage particular flora, fauna or features separately in attempts to conserve them. However, as argued by Head and Regnéll in the context of Sweden, such approaches may be counterproductive if specific protective measures occur “at the expense of dynamic and resilient total landscapes.”33 This has been reinforced at the recent International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, which concluded that,

Nature-culture links (are) vital for addressing contemporary conservation challenges… Natural and cultural heritage are closely interconnected in most landscapes and seascapes, and that effective and lasting conservation of such places requires a more effective integration of approaches.34

We would do well to heed this advice. MfE’s proposed Code of Practice for Landscape will shape the next generation of policy through New Zealand’s planning system. It is a question of whether it will entrench existing practice deficiencies, or creatively engage with landscapes’ dynamic and multi-layered realities. I suggest that it is only through the latter that sustainable landscape management is viable.

Reflection

Some may see the two areas covered in this paper, (1) the necessity to take a bicultural approach to landscapes and (2) to actively address our rapidly changing environment, as barely related, the first addressing issues of cultural redress and the second dealing with practical concerns of physical change and visitor numbers. To take such a view however misses the opportunity to not only read these issues together but to enable them to speak into each other. The Māori concept of pūtahi whereby all aspects of space and action areinterconnected and interdependent35 is as essential in responding to rapidly changing environmental and socio-economic conditions as it is to Māori views of whenua.

Codifying existing landscape practice in an attempt to provide certainty for stakeholders may seem compelling. But I suggest that the existing basis for practice may not be a sound starting point for which to consider how that certainty can be provided long term. Engaging with landscapes in their totality as taonga may provide more sustainable approaches to environmental management in a changing world.

29Examples include:
K. Hennessy, B. Fitzharris, B. C. Bates, N. Harvey, S. M. Howden, L. Hughes, J. Salinger, and R. Warrick "Australia and New Zealand. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability." In Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. M. L. Parry, O. F. Canziani, J. P. Palutikof, Van der Linden P. J. and C. E. Hanson (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 507-540;
Richard A. C. Nottage, David S. Wratt, Janet F. Bornman, and Keith Jones, eds. Climate Change Adaptation in New Zealand: Future Scenarios and some Sectoral Perspectives (Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Climate Change Centre, 2010).
30H. G. Pearce, Improved Estimates of the Effect of Climate Change on NZ Fire Danger (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2011): i;
A. Reisinger, B. Mullan, M. Manning, D. Wratt, & R. Nottage, “Global & Local Climate Change Scenarios to Support Adaptation in New Zealand,” in Richard A. C. Nottage, David S. Wratt, Janet F. Bornman, and Keith Jones, eds. Climate Change Adaptation in New Zealand: Future Scenarios and some Sectoral Perspectives (Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Climate Change Centre, 2010);
K. Hennessy et al., "Australia and New Zealand. Climate Change 2007”: 509 – 512.
31 Rebecca Macfie, “Peak Paradise,” NZ Listener, Jan 14 – 20, 2017: 17
32 Macfie, “Peak Paradise”: 20 - 25
33 Head and Regnéll, "Nature, Culture and Time”: 234
34“The 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress calls for Linking Nature and Culture for Sustainable Development,” UNESCO World Heritage Convention, last updated 5 September 2016, http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1563/
35King et al., "Emplaced Cultural Practices”: 370

Reference List

I wish to thank Mark Tamura for his helpful critique of a first draft of this paper.

Blundell, Sally. “Centre of Controversy,” NZ Listener. Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2016. 26-29

Brown, Deidre. “Tūrangawaewae Kore: Nowhere to Stand.” In Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, edited by Evelyn J. Peters and Julia Christensen, 331-362. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 2016

“Defining Landscape.” The Quality Planning Website. Accessed 28 January 2017. http://www.qualityplanning.org.nz/index.php/planning-tools/land/landscape/defining-landscape#_ftnref5

“Differences between the Texts.” Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Last updated 20 December 2012. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-Treaty/differences-between-the-texts

Griffiths, Pete. “The Importance of Landscape.” Landscape Foundation 1st Edition, January (2015). http://www.landscape.org.nz/the-importance-of-lanscape.html

Head, Lesley and Joachim Regnéll. "Nature, Culture and Time: Contested Landscapes among Environmental Managers in Skåne, Southern Sweden." In Terra Australis 34: Peopled Landscapes: Archaeological and Biogeographic Approaches to Landscapes. Edited by Simon Haberle and Bruno David, 221-237. Acton, A.C.T., Australia: ANU E Press, 2012

Hennessy, K., B. Fitzharris, B. C. Bates, N. Harvey, S. M. Howden, L. Hughes, J. Salinger, and R. Warrick. "Australia and New Zealand. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability." In Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Edited by M. L. Parry, O. F. Canziani, J. P. Palutikof, Van der Linden P. J. and C. E. Hanson, 507-540. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2007

“Historic Heritage.” The Quality Planning Website. Accessed 28 January 2017. http://www.qualityplanning.org.nz/index.php/planning-tools/heritage

King, Pita, Darrin Hodgetts, Mohi Rua and Tiniwai Te Whetu. "Emplaced Cultural Practices through which Homeless Men can be Māori." In Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Edited by Evelyn J. Peters and Julia Christensen, 363-388. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 2016

Macfie, Rebecca. “Peak Paradise.” NZ Listener, Jan 14 – 20, 2017. 16-25

McClean, Robert. Sustainable Management of Historic Heritage Guidelines: Discussion Paper No.3 - Heritage Landscape Values. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Historic Places Trust Pouhere Taonga, 2007

McKay, Bill. “Resonant Time and Cyclic Architecture: Notions of Time and Architectural History in New Zealand.” In Limits: proceedings from the 21st annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne 2004. Edited by H. Edquist and H. Frichot, 295-300. Melbourne, Australia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2004

Mika, Carl Te Hira. "The Ontological and Active Possibilities of 'Papatūānuku': To Nurture or Enframe?" Knowledge Cultures 4 (05; 2017/1, 2016). http://ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=learn&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA458164601&asid=13ce7041353018cb9f47f00a01a33920;

Mika, Carl Te Hira. ""Thereness": Implications of Heidegger’s “Presence” for Māori." AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 11, no. 1 (01, 2015): 3-13

Ministry for the Environment Manatū Mō Te Taiao (MfE). Request for Quotes: Code of Practice for Landscape – 0772-01-RFQ. Wellington, New Zealand: MfE, 2017

Nottage, Richard A. C., David S. Wratt, Janet F. Bornman, and Keith Jones, eds. Climate Change Adaptation in New Zealand: Future Scenarios and some Sectoral Perspectives. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Climate Change Centre, 2010

NZ Department of Conservation. New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010. Wellington, New Zealand: NZ Department of Conservation, 2010

Pearce, H. G. Improved Estimates of the Effect of Climate Change on NZ Fire Danger. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2011

Reisinger, A., B. Mullan, M. Manning, D. Wratt, & R. Nottage. “Global & Local Climate Change Scenarios to Support Adaptation in New Zealand.” In Richard A. C. Nottage, David S. Wratt, Janet F. Bornman, and Keith Jones, eds. Climate Change Adaptation in New Zealand: Future Scenarios and some Sectoral Perspectives. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Climate Change Centre, 2010

“The 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress calls for Linking Nature and Culture for Sustainable Development.” UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Last updated 5 September 2016, http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1563/

Sully, Dean Sully, ed. Decolonising Conservation: Caring for Māori Meeting Houses Outside New Zealand. Walnut Creek, CA, USA: Left Coast Press, 2007

Whaanga-Schollum, Desna, Caroline Robinson, Keriata Stuart, Biddy Livesey with Bill Reed. "‘Ensuring the Container is Strong’ – Regenerating Urban Mauri through Wānanga." Landscape Foundation. Accessed 24 January 2017. http://www.landscape.org.nz/regenerating-urban-mauri.html

“What is an ‘Outstanding Natural Feature or Landscape’?” Environment Foundation: Environment Guide. Last updated 25 May 2015. http://www.environmentguide.org.nz/issues/landscape/protection-of-landscapes-and-features/what-is-an-outstanding-natural-feature-or/

“What we do: 100% Pure New Zealand.” Tourism New Zealand Corporate Website. Accessed 28 January 2017. http://www.tourismnewzealand.com/about/what-we-do/campaign-and-activity/

Environment Court Decisions:

Long Bay-Okura Great Park Society Inc. v North Shore City Council EnvC A78/2008

Maniototo Environmental Society Inc. v Central Otago District Council EnvC C103/2009

Upper Clutha Tracks Trust v Queenstown Lakes District Council EnvC C432/2010

Wakatipu Environmental Society Inc. v Queenstown Lakes District Council EnvC C180/1999.