Devil is in the details

Mafalda: It should be redone, to see if it gets better.
Felipe: Agree.
Dad: Hey, what are you playing at?
Mafalda: Nothing man! We were talking about Humanity!


IEM is a means to get the best outcome possible whene nvironmental issues and resources are involved; to get this, there are toolsand techniques to make sure the IEM approach is being followed and, somehow, those reflect into the normative and laws [Ton Bührs (2009). Environmental Integration: our Common Challenge, SUNNY Press, Albany, chapter 1, pp. 7-39.]. In this entry I will talk about some of the requirements in New Zealand to present a project with environmental impact to be approved, and also about a topic quite close to Lincoln University as Lake Ellesmere. Recently I was able to visit the area during a field trip and see a bit closer the problems that the fifth most extensive lake in New Zealand has.

If you have a look at the Resource Management Act Fourth Schedule, and the online version from Malborough District Council which can be found here, there is a curious difference in the language employed for every requisite; if you read carefully, the only compulsory requisite is taking into account the customary rights (1A, matters, that must be included in an assessment of effects on the environment). Despite this is supposed to be designed to take care of the environment and the effects projects and actions have on it, even a description of the proposal, the potential effects, the appearance of hazardous materials and the discharge of materials are only recommended actions.

I am conscious this is a general guide to all kind of projects, from the smallest that can happen in a backyard to the biggest that can affect an entire region, these directives seem to me too loose to be ableto be considered a good IEM approach. Is it good to have this laxity when asking for requirements?

From an IEM perspective, making such a difference among the compulsivity of customary rights and the electivity for everything else is not a good beginning. To begin with, it makes distinctions among people since the very beginning and give to some the right to ask for something that others could consider as theirs as well. This is a source of conflict and, consequently, it can crash the hopes to bring an entire community together and look for the general and greater good that will benefit everybody as well. Secondly, relegating to an elective level the real care of the environmental impact a project may have, opens a door for careless or biased environmental studies, as there is none obligation that ensures all the aspects of the environmental impact have been taken into account.

I will link that to the field trip to Te Waihora LakeEllesmere I mentioned a few lines above. As a foreigner, I have to recognizethis was my first visit to a marae and let me see in the first person these community members in their own field. And I say community members instead of Maori people because not all of them were Maori, but all of them felt the Lake as their own and their responsibility. Actually, the fusion between ethnicities in this marae and in this community is an example of coexistence that this prevalence of customary rights could break if it’s forced; it is remarkable the accomplishment for both the Maori and non-Maori blood lines and connections in all their genealogy and histories, and how these people feel both of them as an enrichment for who they are. The important thing for those people is their Lake, their community and neighbors, their environment; uses in the marae were contemplated by both ethnicities, history and traditions were known by people from different origins and the environmental, social and economic issues around the lake were analyzed and recognized without blaming anybody guilty. These people have grown up there and that is what makes them feeling the problem of Lake Ellesmere as theirs.

In such a situation, which I doubt being unique for this case, old customary rights which would leave people in or out a circle couldbring nothing more that disrupt and loss.

An integrated approach to those issues focusing on the affected people instead of their provenance is an opportunity for a new beginning that shouldn’t be dismissed. To get a real and integrated approach for environmental management, the present and future environment, in its wider definition as a triple-bottom lined environment, should be more important than the past one. Past cannot be changed, but is people’s decision to change the future. This is where the focus of environmental management should be and it is the law and policymakers’ responsibility to develop the tools which this could happen with. IEM is about building trust, closing wounds and approaching views. The moment this gets forgotten, the environment and the community suffer and lose. Preventing this early mistake is a renewed point for the success of the process and a hope for the future.