Abstract:
Te Awaroa Voice of the River Across New Zealand, many rivers are unsafe parts of the ecosystem, with serious concerns about declining river health. The ‘bottom line’ regulatory approach of the government’s freshwater reforms requires coordinated commitment across river stakeholders. Despite the talent and commitment of existing groups, the current fragmented approaches are not achieving the scale and rapidity of change needed; it is not enough to rely on government. Te Awaroa is envisaged as a national movement of people taking action to care for their waterways, with a collective goal of achieving 1000 rivers in a state of ora by 2050. The research presented herein poses the hypothesis that rivers will return to ora when stakeholders develop a collective sense of care, and have a suite of locally relevant practices and tools that they can and will use. The project is testing two critical components – 1. Understanding Collective Impact, and drawing inspiration from that to 2. Create a Social Movement of Kiwis connecting with their rivers in two trial catchments. We will present preliminary findings and from those critique the hypothesis and make some suggestions about where the research may lead.
