Conflicting Innovations: A Problem for Sustainable Development of New Zealand High-Country Grasslands

Abstract

As elsewhere in the world, agencies of local and central government in New Zealand have renewed pressure on high-country pastoral farmers to ensure that their land use is sustainable. However, government policy innovations for conservation have often cut across the path along which farmers were innovating toward sustainable development (Figure 1). Sustained consultation in some parts of the world has revealed that highland people were not short of practical wisdom or ideals of conservation and sustainability. Such deep sharing of understanding and values affected an earlier New Zealand high-country crisis over soil erosion, but it is not yet evident in a current crisis over new policy for conservation of indigenous biodiversity and recreational access. As a result, progress toward sustainable development is retarded, with polarized public debate between stereotypes of public conservation and private economic development. New Zealand needs to find new ways out of this impasse.