Identifying Cultural Flow Preferences: Kakaunui River Case Study

The course of settlement, development, and economies within nations has long been deeply affected by the availability of water. In a New Zealand context, Maori (the indigenous people) cannot divorce themselves from the challenges associated with setting environmental flows and allocating water. In the last two decades, Maori have become more vocal in seeking greater recognition of their cultural beliefs, values, and practices. Maori, however, face the challenge of conveying to decision makers how environmental flows affect their cultural interests. This paper introduces a cultural flow preference study, which is a tool that has been developed for Maori to assess their opportunities to engage in a range of cultural experiences in a catchment under differing stream flows. The process was applied in the Kakaunui River and enabled Maori to identify their flow preferences, together with the dependencies of a number of cultural values and uses on specific flows at a particular time of year. The results suggested that the current flow regime, which only prescribes a minimum flow, is unsatisfactory. A number of flow-related issues that can only be investigated as part of a collaborative investigation involving biophysical scientists and Maori were identified. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000211. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.