Ethnic Chinese participation in long-term visions for collaborative freshwater planning in Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand

Highly visible participatory processes (PPs) directed at multi-use/user issues, as distinct from single or sectoral issues, in marine spaces are generally regarded internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ) as a phenomenon of the twenty first century. In ANZ, single and multi-use/user PPs have originated in a context of regulatory and governance reforms featuring retreating governmental guidance. In the ANZ setting, the governmental institutions embracing marine spaces are four-fold: those of central government, regional and local authorities, Maori entities and a series of recent initiatives focusing on resolving issues in multi-use/user marine spaces. The contemporary ANZ marine scene is quite unique with its co-existence of Maori and European worldviews, knowledge and modes of governing. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore the wider social and collective work of PPs in complex historically and geographically trajectories of power relations. It is also a highly politicised field of emerging interactions.

Many ethnic groups traditionally value familism, which emphasises interdependence and the extended family unit. However, Aotearoa New Zealand's health system remains largely individual-oriented, with the implementation of family-centred care remaining inconsistent. This is known to have negative effects on Māori healthcare experiences and outcomes. Our research, exploring the experiences of ethnic Chinese using mental health services in Aotearoa New Zealand, indicated that this could also be a barrier for ethnic Chinese, who have similarly strong cultural links to familism, accessing mental health care. To balance the cultural importance of family involvement with the protection of individual patient autonomy, we propose a moderate Confucian familist approach, encouraging family involvement and participation in individual patients' care, with patients' consent. The approach acknowledges individual patients as interconnected members of a wider family unit, emphasising their reciprocal, mutual responsibility in maintaining a well-functioning, harmonious family. We highlight Whānau Ora as a potential exemplar for a culturally grounded, family-centred approach to mental health care which could be feasibly implemented and deliver positive outcomes. Parallels between Māori and ethnic Chinese cultural views around whānau, community, and collectivism suggest a Kaupapa Māori approach could also be beneficial to Aotearoa New Zealand's ethnic Chinese populations. However, ethnic Chinese lack the specific legal obligations empowering the implementation of interventions such as Whānau Ora. This is an obstacle which remains to be addressed before mental health services which are sensitive to the needs of ethnic Chinese or of other ethnicities can be effectively implemented.

New Zealanders have long-standing and multifaceted relationships with coasts, including recreation activities in, on and by the water. Leisure scholarship to date has paid little attention to outdoor recreation in New Zealand's fast-growing Asian migrant communities, whose involvement in coastal recreation is relatively low. This study explores Auckland's Chinese communities’ relationship with coastal blue spaces (i.e. the ocean/sea, beach and harbour) through their recreation activities, and the potential impacts on their experiences of cultural identity, belonging and wellbeing. Interviews were conducted with Chinese immigrants and community sport organisations’ representatives to understand the factors that enable and constrain Chinese immigrants’ outdoor blue space recreation practices. Applying Bourdieu's concepts, we identified that Chinese communities’ relationships to coastal blue spaces are impacted by their ‘blue space’ related habitus and cultural capital. Findings also suggest that when facing habitus-field mismatch, participants reject norms and expectations in the field, actively disrupting and challenging them.

PROTOCOL: Participation, inclusion, transparency and accountability (PITA) to improve public services in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

There is widespread and growing support and requirement for researchers and larger organisations to collaborate with communities. This ensures that social, educational, or health programmes are relevant and acceptable and address the needs of groups that experience inequity. There is limited research about the processes and approaches that impact successful collaboration. The aim of this study was to identify the best‐practice processes used to develop and sustain collaborative partnerships between community members and formal organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using a qualitative case study methodology and guidance from our community advisory group, we selected three effective collaborations with groups that experienced inequity in Aotearoa New Zealand. We examined these by reviewing their publicly available documents and conducting focus group discussions and interviews with key stakeholders. We coded and analysed transcriptions thematically to develop case study summaries of findings and then conducted cross‐case analysis to identify themes inherent in the data. Seven themes emerged from the data: (1) work together under Te Tiriti to ensure that collaborations are built on the articles of this founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand; (2) start before the beginning by forming strong relationships with diverse and representative community members; (3) walk the talk by using critically reflexive processes built on shared values and equal power relations; (4) use pencils not pens to implement ensuring an iterative project process; (5) recognise all contributions and especially the value of lived experience and local knowledge; (6) journey at a pace that allows all to participate; and (7) listen twice, talk once to give priority to hearing quieter voices. These seven practices can be utilised by other collaborative initiatives to increase genuine and power‐shared participation. These participatory processes can make sure that collaborative projects respect local knowledge, indigenous culture, and respond iteratively to community needs.

Broad-scale, multi-governance level, participatory water management processes intended to aid collective decision making and learning are rarely initiated, designed, implemented, and managed by one person. These processes mostly emerge from some form of collective planning and organization activities because of the stakes, time, and budgets involved in their implementation. Despite the potential importance of these collective processes for managing complex water-related social-ecological systems, little research focusing on the project teams that design and organize participatory water management processes has ever been undertaken. We have begun to fill this gap by introducing and outlining the concept of a co-engineering process and examining how it impacts the processes and outcomes of participatory water management. We used a hybrid form of intervention research in two broad-scale, multi-governance level, participatory water management processes in Australia and Bulgaria to build insights into these coengineering processes. We examined how divergent objectives and conflict in the project teams were negotiated, and the impacts of this co-engineering on the participatory water management processes. These investigations showed: (1) that language barriers may aid, rather than hinder, the process of stakeholder appropriation, collective learning and skills transferal related to the design and implementation of participatory water management processes; and (2) that diversity in co-engineering groups, if managed positively through collaborative work and integrative negotiations, can present opportunities and not just challenges for achieving a range of desired outcomes for participatory water management processes. A number of areas for future research on co-engineering participatory water management processes are also highlighted.

Environmental ethnography is discussed here from involvement with a local government authority in Aotearoa New Zealand focused on soil, water and land management. Climate change and environmental degradation are making such local government work more difficult and expensive. As costs trend upwards and new rules are applied, community challenges to local authorities increase. Environmental ethnography identifies constraints on the organisational ability to meet infrastructural needs to produce environmental solutions locally. Some constraints are internal (organisational), some are local (community beliefs and attitudes), but the most significant constraints are external to local agencies. In ethnographic terms, working with local and national environmental authorities is a process of learning from staff, scientists, and administrators. Māori and Pākehā communities’ efforts to manage their local destinies provide insights into pressures on local government organisations. Landowners’ expectations and politicised discourses of climate denial or deferral also constrain day-to-day local authority work. Three intersections of local authority organisations' actions and local communities’ responses emerge from reflecting on this ethnographic learning, each shaping what local authorities can achieve. First, the social is not another set of insights; rather, the social is in the science. Second, in Aotearoa New Zealand the familiar nature-society binary is usefully disturbed by mātauranga Māori understandings of people and the environment. Third, changing modern productivist attitudes towards the environment is more than local—it is national and global—yet people’s responses are also intensely local. Environmental ethnography helps illuminate such tensions that create organisational and community dilemmas for local government authorities.

Introduction:In Germany, more than 3.3 million people in need of long-term care are receiving home care. Although not all of them use professional home care providers, their services are essential especially to those who need skilled nursing care and medical-technical assistance in addition to everyday support–such as approximately 30,000 people who receive home mechanical ventilation. Little is known about the disaster resilience of home care infrastructures and ways to strengthen them. A research consortium called AUPIK, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2020-2023, sought to close this gap.Method:A participatory process was initiated as part of the AUPIK project based on results of a multi-perspective empirical baseline analysis which resulted in a first draft text about measures to promote disaster resilience in home care. 37 representatives of home nursing care providers and community health-care services, professional boards, scientific and education institutions participated in a web-based survey on the draft text, followed by two digital group discussions. Finally, the gradually revised, condensed and consented starting points were published and distributed.Results:Eight starting points were defined. Among others, there is an urgent need to strengthen risk awareness and resource management among home care providers, to promote individual disaster competence and preparedness among all parties involved and, not least, to strengthen community-based networking initiatives between home care providers, emergency and disaster organizations and local authorities. Institutions or persons who should take responsibility for implementation at different levels are addressed directly.Conclusion:The final version of the starting points represents a consensus on urgently needed initiatives to promote disaster resilience in home nursing care in Germany. The participatory development process should support commitment on the part of all stakeholders and thus promote effective implementation of disaster resilience initiatives in home nursing care.

Diversity, contestation, participation in Aotearoa New Zealand‘s multi-use/user marine spaces

We present a short commentary on the ongoing relevance of Confucianism and Taoism for recent Chinese migrants and, subsequently, for those who work with them. It is based on a thesis by one of the authors, Minghong Sun (2007), who explored what it means to identify as Chinese within a Euro-western setting, particularly in relation to coping strategies and the counselling interventions that might be offered. Her study investigated how recent migrants, with a strong enculturation as Chinese selves in earlier lives, responded to their host country's social-cultural environment , focusing on migrants from mainland China in New Zealand. The study emphasised the continuing importance of the influence of Confucianism and Taoism in the lives of the Chinese immigrants. The findings of the study have relevance not only for counselling, but also for educators and those who provide work-based interventions such as mentoring, coaching and professional development for Chinese migrants.

This article identifies the factors behind a shift to collaborative planning in regional freshwater management. The Canterbury Regional Council, a local government agency in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, was struggling to exercise authority and autonomy over freshwater management in the region during the 1990s and 2000s. The case study explores the regional council’s failure to create authoritative policy, which resulted in policy being rewritten and modified through litigation in the courts. In response, the regional council pursued collaborative planning mechanisms, which co-opted competing pro-development and pro-conservation interest groups, for freshwater management in the region.

ABSTRACTIn Aotearoa New Zealand, Treaty settlements return land to Māori tribal authorities, but planning authority is retained by local and central government. I offer a narrative which describes how plans for commercial property development on land returned to Māori have led to tension between a tribal authority and a local government. This article reports findings that planning processes are influenced by discourses rooted in settler colonial logics. Opportunities to transform these discourses include recognising the exercise of ‘economic sovereignty’ by the tribal authority. Considering interviews with planners involved in developing planning regulation for urban land returned to Māori through the lens of a settler decolonisation practice, I conclude that the return of land through Treaty settlements ‘unsettles’ planning. Planners are struggling to reconcile the imperative to decolonise with their everyday work in a settler colonial planning system. Te Tiriti o Waitangi must form the basis of a new planning imagination for Aotearoa New Zealand.

The involvement of persons with disabilities in formal decision-making processes is thought to have a range of benefits. However, research suggests that participatory processes may fail to match normative ideals. This study examines the participation of persons with disabilities in the development of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, from the perspective of key informants in the New Zealand disability sector. It found that participants viewed the participatory process favourably. Political activity from persons with disabilities and political willingness on the part of government contributed to this perceived success. More broadly, the participation of persons with disabilities provided a mutually enriching learning experience, reduced political machinations between nations, increased government accountability, and resulted in a more relevant text. The study provides an example of a successful participatory process involving persons with disabilities within an international context.

Effective participatory water management requires effective co-engineering – the collective process whereby organisational decisions are made on how to bring stakeholders together. This trans-disciplinary book highlights the challenges involved in the collective initiation, design, implementation and evaluation of water planning and management processes. It demonstrates how successful management requires the effective handling of two participatory processes: the stakeholder water management process and the co-engineering process required to organise this. The book provides practical methods for supporting improved participatory processes, including the application of theory and models to aid decision-making. International case studies of these applications from Australia, Europe and all over the world including Africa, are used to examine negotiations and leadership approaches, and their effects on the participatory stakeholder processes. This international review of participatory water governance forms an important resource for academic researchers in hydrology, environmental management and water policy, and also practitioners and policy-makers working in water management.

Emerging technologies are fundamentally changing how we plan, develop, and manage our cities. Given trends of increasing mobile use, local governments and public officials (and particularly city planners) are being required to adopt and use new technologies to plan, communicate and engage with citizens. In this context, this study then hypothesizes how technology trends will continue to impact planning and local government. For example, most local planning departments now have a website but a minority are mobile friendly. Building on this foundation the study then evaluates methods of civic engagement using the case study of the participatory planning application ReStreet.com, a tool for visioning the future of streets in a future of autonomous or self-driving vehicles. While other work has detailed the importance of technology in the participatory process, this tool provides an example of how methods of digital representation and new technology can enrich community participation and democratize the planning process-helping to reshape cities methods to gather data enriching the planning process.