Background
The Waipaoa Catchment on the East Coast of New Zealand extends over about 250,000 hectares of the central Gisborne region. The catchment includes a number of different landforms, the two most significant of which are steep hill country and fertile flood plains. These account for 92% and 5% respectively of the total land area of the catchment.
The flatlands are intensively farmed, primarily in vegetables and fruit but with a small and increasing area devoted to deer farming and lamb finishing. Maize, sweetcorn and squash are the main vegetable crops and citrus, kiwifruit and grapes are important fruit crops. There have been significant economic challenges in the last decade as regional food processors have closed and as land use changes elsewhere have impacted on the region. The area is also vulnerable to flooding. Subdivision of farming land for life-style blocks and the compaction of superior soils are additional continuing issues for this area.
The hill country is prone to erosion. This has been brought about mainly by the clearance of indigenous forest and the subsequent use of the land for pastoral agriculture. Breeding-cows and ewes are the main livestock types, and farmers breed their own stock replacements. About 40% of the properties are Maori owned. There has been a significant shift from farming to plantation forestry in the last 30 years. In the last decade this trend has accelerated. In the 1960s forestry was sponsored by the government as a soil conservation measure in severely eroding headwater areas. More recently, there has been a growth in new planting by forestry investment syndicates on moderately erodible land closer to Gisborne. Now, some 20% of hill country is planted in exotic forestry (predominantly pinus radiata).
This area around Gisborne may be viewed as a model of the close association (indeed interdependence) between land use, economic activity, population and the availability of social services which characterises much of rural New Zealand. Changes in any one of those activities inevitably impacts significantly (either for good or bad) on the others. Specific effects of the interdependence, such as changes in employment opportunities, rural depopulation, the loss of rural services, change in demographic structure and change in social structures are all evident in the area.
Whether for good or bad, change is inevitable and demands a response. Communities have choices as to their responses. They may either accept change and make the best they can of it, or they may attempt to anticipate the opportunities change may offer and channel it so that the community benefits to the maximum extent. Whichever approach is adopted, sustainability is an issue. This is reinforced by the Resource Management Act. For that reason alone, if for no other most rural communities must consider the concept of sustainability as a central component in managing change.
This paper synthesises two papers prepared by Landcare Research for the Ministry of Agriculture and submitted in August 1997. Those papers examine the Waipaoa Catchment in the Gisborne District (as a pilot or initial case study) through a ‘multistakeholder approach’, in an attempt to begin a process of community response to change and to determine the applicability of the process generally.
Multistakeholder processes have evolved as a means of ensuring wide public participation in decision making, particularly in rural areas. The processes are designed to ensure that all interests within a community have an opportunity to contribute to the its long-term development. Specifically, they offer opportunities to:
- enhance public awareness of environmental, socio-economic and cultural issues and the links between these;
- resolve conflicts within a community and between resource users; and
- ensure that plans developed by central and local government reflect community aspirations.
There are successful examples of multistakeholder approaches to community development in Australia and Canada. In New Zealand, the 1989-1995 Rabbit and Land Management Programme implemented in the South Island used elements of the process. This programme was successful but not completely inclusive from a community viewpoint. The Waipaoa Catchment Project was established to build on such earlier successes and to ‘demonstrate the potential effectiveness of community-based decision making’.
This paper is written quite explicitly for the lay-reader. It focuses on the central core of the work in the original papers. The theoretical frameworks, technical detail of the processes, base data relating to the material, and much of the detail of the work in the area and the decisions reached are in the original papers. These may be borrowed from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s Information Bureau.
Contact for Enquiries
Rural Affairs Coordinator
Sector Performance Policy
MAF Policy
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 4 894 0675
Fax: +64 4 4 894 0745
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