Decision-support tools and the indigenous paradigm

Abstract

Sustainability legislation in New Zealand (NZ) provides an interesting challenge for decision-makers such as planners, architects and engineers. NZ's Action Plan for Sustainable Development requires ‘taking account of the social, economic, environmental and cultural effects of our decisions’. The assessment of sustainability in NZ thus occurs in four dimensions. Internationally, cultural effects are generally considered within the analysis of societal effects. The separate consideration of cultural effects is necessary in NZ to acknowledge the status of the indigenous people, the Tangata Whenua. The requirement for separate consideration of cultural effects was created in NZ's founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Although the addition of a cultural criterion to decisionsupport tools (DSTs) could be considered a viable solution to accommodate the partnership obligations created by the Treaty, the extension of international sustainability DSTs in this way has not worked in practice. The acknowledgement of a specific cultural dimension in the definition of sustainable development seems to accept that NZ's prevalent societal values and beliefs are not representative of its indigenous people. Therefore, in order to incorporate effectively indigenous values and beliefs into sustainability decision-making in NZ, an approach based on indigenous concepts is essential. The indigenous concept of mauri (binding force) has been identified for inclusion in a new DST that provides a culturally consistent measure of sustainability. The NZ context is used to identify and illustrate the requirements of a culturally consistent model for including sustainability in decision-making. A preliminary ranking of the four dimensions of sustainability assessment is presented using an established hierarchy definition process. The result is a methodology for sustainability assessment, developed specifically for the NZ context, but which may also have wider international applications where decision-makers have limited knowledge and understanding of the indigenous people's culture, values and beliefs.