Abstract:
With two pieces of legislation, the Marine Reserves Bill 2002 and the Foreshore
and Seabed Bill 2004, currently making their way through Parliament, the issue
of conservation management is of immediate relevance, This debate in New
Zealand mirrors an international discourse on the conservation crisis and the best
way to address the issues of biodiversity loss and conservation management.
As of yet, however, there has been no detailed examination of the effectiveness
of current co-management projects in New Zealand, nor of the scope for
expansion of co-management opportunities in New Zealand's environmental
legislation. The New Zealand context is unique in that actively promoting comanagement
with iwi is a requirement of the Crown in order to satisfy its
obligations under the. principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Furthermore, comanagement
does solve many of the problems facing conservation managers in
New Zealand, and offers an effective alternative to traditional exclusionary
management. Co-management arrangements should therefore be entered into
with local communities, regardless of ethnic background in order to achieve
conservation goals, rather than simply as a form of race relations settlement
mechanism.
