Abstract
Far from being passive and/or static victims of climate change, indigenous peoples are hybridizing knowledge systems, and challenging and negotiating new environmental and social realities to develop their own adaptation options within their own registers of what is place and culture appropriate. Our paper seeks to demonstrate how we, as guests on Māori land, were able to develop a partnership with a Māori community facing difficult adaptation decisions regarding climate change hazards through the pragmatic navigation of multi-disciplinary research and practice. In particular, we co-developed and tested the potential of a serious game (Marae-opoly) approach as a platform which assembles cross-cultural climate change knowledge to learn, safely experiment and inform adaptation decisions. Marae-opoly was developed bespoke to its intended context—to support the creation of mutually agreeable dynamic adaptive policy pathways (DAPP) for localized flood adaptation. Game material was generated by drawing together detailed local knowledge (i.e. hydrology, climate data, mātauranga hapū) and situated adaptation options and accurate contextual data to create a credible gaming experience for the hapū of Tangoio Marae. We argue that the in-situ co-development process used to co-create Marae-opoly was fundamental in its success in achieving outcomes for the hapū. It also provided important lessons for the research team regarding how to enter as respectful guests and work together effectively to provide a resource to support our partners' adaptation decisions. The paper discusses the steps taken to establish research partnerships and develop the serious game and its subsequent playing, albeit we do not evaluate our indigenous research partners' adaptation decisions. Our contribution with this paper is in sharing an approach which cultivated the ground to enter as respectful guests and work together effectively to provide a resource for our partners' adaptation decisions.
Highlights
Impacts of climate change will be disproportionately experienced by Māori across Aotearoa-New Zealand due to the pervasive impacts of a changing climate on their assets, interests, kawa and tikanga and expressions of mana and kaitiakitanga (Ministry for the Environment 2020)
Our contribution with this paper is in sharing an approach which cultivated the ground to enter as respectful guests to collaborate effectively and co-develop a resource for our partners’ adaptation decisions
We evidence this argument by addressing three research questions: Does the codevelopment process create a realistic game that reflects the hapū’s reality? Did the serious game (Marae-opoly) create a safe learning and experimental space for the hapū that is attentive to both culture and place? Was the game a useful and appropriate way to explore knowledges, perspectives, and alternatives in a way that is empowering? Our objective with answering these questions is to share a story that can inform, what we consider, useful practices for fostering respectful and productive partnerships with indigenous peoples which support efforts of adapting to climate change in place
Summary
Impacts of climate change will be disproportionately experienced by Māori across Aotearoa-New Zealand due to the pervasive impacts of a changing climate on their assets, interests, kawa (protocols) and tikanga (correct procedures, lore, practises) and expressions of mana (authority, dignity, control, governance, power) and kaitiakitanga (intergenerational sustainability) (Ministry for the Environment 2020). The challenge is coupled with asymmetries between climate change research and its distributional reach as well as the articulation of western climate change knowledge with indigenous knowledges (UN 2009; Ford et al 2012; Klenk et al 2017) It is imperative these issues be understood, acknowledged, and negotiated so that responses to the potential impacts of climate change on critical services for Māori communities such as cultural assets (e.g., Marae buildings and structures) and critical infrastructure, water management and public health, are aligned with the values of the people they are intended to help and avoid reproducing existing inequalities (King et al 2013; Klenk et al 2017; Ford et al 2020). We aim to support the bringing into being of postcolonial worlds (Ministry for the Environment 2018)
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