The paper asks “why are we always arguing about risk?” It explores what drives risk perception in decision-making processes in Aotearoa New Zealand’s marine environment. The research’s holistic framing shows that the prevailing concern with risk and uncertainty (RU) issues in government and managerial settings deflects attention from and hides the background influences of worldviews. After introducing the invisibilities around RU and outlining worldview-based perceptions of risk, the paper turns to an empirical investigation focusing on deep-seabed mining investment in the context of Aotearoa’s Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act (Environmental Effects) 2012. Enacted as part of neoliberal reforms, the Act seeks to reduce environmental degradation in tandem with economic growth. A situated methodology examines a consenting process within this Act as a strategic site to establish expressions of RU and shaping invisibilities. Three key influences are revealed: the positionality of decision-makers, their disciplinary training, and the largely unknown filtering of environmental and economic options that come from 3 worldviews held in Aotearoa (dominant social paradigm, new environmental paradigm, Te Ao Māori). We contend hidden worldviews impact on economy–environment relations and ensuing economic and environmental practices and outcomes. This arises because they underpin and fuel debates around what RU are acceptable and how benefits should be distributed (public vs. private benefits investment decisions, and economy vs. environment). Unless we recognize and understand these hidden influences, we simply cannot work with them. This insight has major implications for how RU ideas might be framed and navigated in emerging policy settings.

Risk and uncertainty (RU) are elusive concepts, not understood or experienced universally, and frequently debated and conflated (Stirling, 2010), yet they intrude into most aspects of 21st century decision-making about changing uses of ocean, coast, and land. We argue different “truths,” stemming in large part from worldviews, are integral to naturalizing, restricting, and veiling major shaping of knowledge about RU on and in policy processes. This presents wickedly perplexing challenges to researchers, policymakers, communities, and practitioners operating in emerging and contested marine decision-making spaces. This state of affairs affects how governance and management of the marine environment is understood and done.

Our research has proceeded in an unorthodox fashion, iterating between a diverse array of literatures, data collection, and observation across various scale of decision-making in Aotearoa New Zealand1 and one detailed case study supplemented with interviews. It is because of this approach, applied by an interdisciplinary team, that we have generated novel insights into how worldviews in particular, underpin perceptions of RU.

Our research experience suggested that first, most people did not consciously position themselves when confronted with RU issues in different situations. Rather, the worldviews of people unconsciously constrained their comprehension of RU matters. Second, explorations of particular disciplines revealed widely differing interpretive conventions on RU. This meant starting positions had to be acknowledged to begin with. Third, a most startling and demanding discovery was that there are fundamental differences in the way people actually understand the world, their conceptions of how the world works, and their notions of how the world should work. We argue that it is these underlying and conditioning differences that give rise to different perceptions of RU and are at the heart of why we do not agree on what risk is and shy away from facing uncertainty implications. If the existence of differing worldviews remain unacknowledged, then conflict will continue and decision-making will remain biased toward accepted understandings, ultimately supporting the status quo. We quickly realized that worldviews give “invisible” justification and permission to behave in the world in certain ways, and to work on the world’s outcomes in multiple settings guided by hidden assumptions.

From our experience scientists, managers, and policymakers have been slow in realizing the importance of these aspects—hence “invisible” power—and in highlighting them we aim to create ground for meaningful conversations in policy settings. This leads us to make 3 radical claims in the paper. First, different worldviews shape how arguments about RU are framed, made, and evolve within policy processes. Second, we contend RU arguments, either separately or when interlinked, hide the importance of worldviews. This hampers the political and collective work of economic and environmental management. Third, enabling worldviews to be more transparent and integrated into the working out of management processes and decisions demands ways of exposing worldviews; and addressing how to imagine alternative approaches to managing, without getting stuck in legislation and policy originally designed for the dominant worldview, or that are facing strong pressures from actors invoking that worldview.

The recent call to put use changes and nurturing transitioning behaviors ahead of profits exposed the need to rethink the relationship of private and public interests, a process which is entangled in the worldviews of these actors (Environmental Defence Society, 2021). This call for a goal-reset supported the country’s environmental research communities. The mission-oriented Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge (SSNSC), for example, argued that its research be holistic, decolonizing, and future-looking. This aspirational frontier demanded new individual, group, institutional, and societal bridging capacities to understand the RU that are integral to all decision-making. However, New Zealand’s newly elected Coalition government (2023) has emphatically reprioritized economy over environment. Central to this turn-around is Fast Track consenting legislation. This is described by the government as providing a short-term consenting process that can boost employment and economic recovery, in regions and nationally. New legislation bypasses wide scrutiny of new investment and potentially releases declined investment proposals such as a Chatham Rise Rock Phosphate mining the paper’s case study, by placing decision approval in the hands of only 3 Ministers, advised by an appointed review committee. This seismic shift in Aotearoa’s political economy had major implications for how the research team approached messaging their research into the drastically different regulatory and institutional conditions.

This paper stems from the RU program in SSNSC Phase 2, a unique research configuration of 3 workstreams (Science, Mātauranga2 Māori, and Social Science) dedicated to advancing governance and management principles, policy, and practices. This collaboration soon offered views of RU perceptions that differed from those ordinarily adopted in solely science-based studies, stemming from synergies that quickly emerged between the Mātauranga Māori and Social Science workstreams. This arose from the mix of researcher backgrounds and career experiences. While the disciplines included geography, limnology, resource economics, and anthropology, multi- and interdisciplinary engagements soon overshadowed disciplinary beginnings, which brought a profile of capability to the project and the paper. Our exposure to worldviews was uneven. Tantalizing insights emerged as kairangahau Māori (Māori researchers) and Pākehā3 researchers shared and reflected on their introductions to the worldview concept. As a group we asked ourselves what worldviews informed our thinking, something we had never done before. We are of course not “objective” here: collectively the team holds views close to Te Ao Māori and the new environmental paradigm (NEP) and seeks to work actively with these, despite operating mainly within a context of the dominant social paradigm (DSP). However, we believe our unique intellectual journeys predisposed us to being receptive to seeing the hidden influences of worldviews on RU.

As with much research, the project emphasis was emergent. Notably 2 years from its funding conclusion (2024) the SSNSC switched into what was termed an “integration for impact” mode aimed at collating learnings, lessons, and recommendations from every major project for 2 audiences—high-level decision-makers such as politicians, CEOs of Ministries, and companies; and an audience of practice-centered recipients such as policymakers and implementers in especially Regional Councils, Economic Development Agencies, and iwi (Māori tribal unit) organizations. This moved effort toward clarifying findings, sharpening messages, and creating infographics in support of arguments. Importantly, a constancy to the governmental climate was assumed. In line with this change of emphasis, the author team began to assess what this meant for the interpretation of past and projected RU dimensions, especially around deep-seabed mining (DSM).

When we moved into the “integration for impact” phase we felt research expectations were changing from description and explanation to reaching into policy environments. We began to engage with a range of policy communities, policy advisors, and businesses. These mainly took the form of webinars because of a reluctance by many to travel to face-to-face meetings. They were a first attempt to see how our ideas “landed” in policy communities. Our efforts started with a presentation to the Parliamentary Speaker’s Science Forum on alternative forms of environmental governance stressing differences between conventional science-led practices and the principle-based Te Ao Māori approaches (Awatere and Mark-Shadbolt, 2023). A series of presentations on the project’s discovery journey about RU followed. This included the Policy Strategy Community of the Ministry for Environment, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor and team, and the teams of 2 Chief Science Advisors (Le Heron et al., 2023). A few excerpts from the meetings show why we have confidence that our general message about RU was understood. We played devil’s advocate by suggesting the difficulties of implementation laid not with the common view that there was never enough data when trying to assess risk, but rather it was lack of worldview understandings. One senior official remarked, “now that is a new realization.” Guidance for Commissioners involved in consenting on TAM was mentioned by participants as being recently available. In addition, it was observed that when evidence was required on uncertainty it had to be “in the best practice of your discipline.”

Our paper has 2 theoretical and empirical foci. First, a framing of positionalities, disciplines, and worldviews, and an elaboration of RU as seen through the ordering principles of the 3 largely underexplored worldviews found in the literature. This conceptual and theoretical discussion provides an interpretive base for our empirical investigation for the Chatham Rise Rock Phosphate consenting process where we make worldviews discernible. This investigative methodology differs from that of environmental risk assessment as it explicitly encompasses economic as well as environmental concerns rather than probability-based assessments of environmental impacts. While acknowledging the independent co-existence of the 3 worldviews, we resist the idea that they can be directly compared with a view to achieving a new synthesis. Rather, we explore their contrasting dimensions and complementarities, before considering the bases on which they might be co-constitutive. Further, we surmise that there may be severe limits on how people holding different worldviews might or might not be able to “talk to each other,” a situation regarded by Tuck and Yang (2012) as an incommensurability between knowledges. Further we are particularly curious about how worldviews might be encoded into institutions and decision-making practices.

Second, we identify a significant strategic site in Aotearoa’s legislative and legal frameworks where worldviews, whether a particular view, or competing worldviews, might influence RU conversations, the direction, dialogue, and eventual content of decision-making. In particular, consenting processes are sites where networks of experts, procedures, documents, and institutions generate and embed scientific knowledge about human and natural worlds and permitting of activity options and their terms of operation are made. We hypothesize that such sites, especially the consenting frameworks where the merits of serially independent investment decisions are scrutinized, can enable worldview clashes to be empirically detected and discussed in decision-making. We examined how applicants and submitters can selectively deploy evidence to influence the Commissioners (a small decision-making group) in the consenting process. This provides a “first look” at how worldviews influence arguments. Our research reveals that the relations of RU are changeable, with respect to contextual interpretations, immediate and long-term consequences, and geographic impacts. The analysis of submissions and testimony enables us to show how worldviews are deeply implicated in maintaining and creating worlds, but this world-building is imbued with the unpredictable effects of RU perceptions.

One of the hardest aspects of our research has been accounting for the messiness of life in decision-making. Figure 1 consists of 2 conceptual framings that when seen in relation to each other are conveying different messages. The framings are separated by the research question bubble. Depending on which way the figure is read, left or right, RU is understood rather differently. This means a search for a single definition of risk is pointless. Both risk and uncertainty are “imagined” contextually by differing imagineers. The multiple framings shown are the basis of claims we make later in the paper about worldviews. Making them explicitly evident, rather than seemingly self-evident and of little consequence as is often the case, is a prompt to keep them in mind. The left side of the figure lays out the 3 invisibilities we focus on, but set in the evolving political economy of any setting. This portion of the figure situates individuals in relation to their life experiences and everyday lived experiences; acknowledges that individuals build their own and collective capacities and capabilities through professional and disciplinary training, which gives confidence to how individuals know RU; and introduces the less obvious category of worldviews which are drawn on to order thinking about and acting in the world. We have found both in seminars and interviewing that this co-placement of positionality, disciplines, and worldviews is not immediately intuitive but seems to trigger engagement around RU perceptions. The right side of Figure 1 highlights our contention that attention to only risk perceptions masks worldviews. The implications of this masking are many.

Figure 1.

Risk and invisibilities: An overview. A succinct definition of perceptions of RU is “the way changes to something are valued or a desired future outcome are understood and expected to be experienced.” Yet in decision situations the chances are that risks are argued about, a lot. Why so, we ask? From the literature and our research, we can point to 3 “big” concepts or influences that suggest why people think differently from each other. It is not very clear how visible the influences are or how consciously they are recognized. The influences—personal positionalities, academic disciplines, and professional bodies and a background of worldviews—are thus connected to focusing questions to help reveal their impact on conceptualizing risk and uncertainty. The diagram is seen as a vital first step that alerts us to things we should seriously consider if we wish to progress our decision-making capabilities individually and collectively. In a way the figure is a mind prompt, one we can carry with us into meetings and conversations. This is our hope. The questions in each of the bubbles prize open differences that might derive from each influence and can be asked often to refresh our changing understandings. We argue about what’s risky because we think and believe differently. The framework sets us on a journey to unpack risk and uncertainty complexities.

Figure 1.

Risk and invisibilities: An overview. A succinct definition of perceptions of RU is “the way changes to something are valued or a desired future outcome are understood and expected to be experienced.” Yet in decision situations the chances are that risks are argued about, a lot. Why so, we ask? From the literature and our research, we can point to 3 “big” concepts or influences that suggest why people think differently from each other. It is not very clear how visible the influences are or how consciously they are recognized. The influences—personal positionalities, academic disciplines, and professional bodies and a background of worldviews—are thus connected to focusing questions to help reveal their impact on conceptualizing risk and uncertainty. The diagram is seen as a vital first step that alerts us to things we should seriously consider if we wish to progress our decision-making capabilities individually and collectively. In a way the figure is a mind prompt, one we can carry with us into meetings and conversations. This is our hope. The questions in each of the bubbles prize open differences that might derive from each influence and can be asked often to refresh our changing understandings. We argue about what’s risky because we think and believe differently. The framework sets us on a journey to unpack risk and uncertainty complexities.

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We started our journey of interrogating RU with the idea of positionalities, because it grounds the idea that depending on people’s positionality at any time, the nature of their RU perceptions are unlikely to be constant and that life influences are likely to be cumulative as well as changing. Understandings of RU have traditionally relied on a “universal self,” that is, a self that is static and whose perceptions are fixed and knowable (and who is usually both white and male). We argue there is no “universal self” from which to understand RU. Instead, the self is formed via a complex set of interactions between someone’s disciplinary training, worldview, and situated experiences, as depicted in Figure 1. These interactions will be rearranged for different circumstances and contexts, meaning that anyone’s perception and understanding is a dynamic phenomenon. Figure 1 suggests that individuals are influenced by bundles of knowledge, can be manipulated for example by choice architects (Williams and Nuyesn, 2007; Esmark, 2019), where they stand in life and circumstances (Zorko, 2020), the institutions they are part of (Koonene et al., 2019), and the conventions they are tied to. In practice, positionality means that “where you stand” matters, namely the situated knowledge of, and attachment to, place that an individual may have.

Figure 2 illustrates this complexity by picturing several different situated reactions to a rain forecast (Blackett et al., 2017). For example, if a person is inside a building, the rain will not affect them in the same way as someone taking their baby to the park who is concerned for their baby’s welfare should they get wet, or a fisher wishing they had paid attention to the maramataka4 and who is concerned about storms. Thus, a person’s knowledge set, circumstance, and situation can dramatically influence how “rain” will be perceived and experienced.

Figure 2.

Explanation of positionality with a rainy day example. How does “where you stand” affect your perception of risk? The figure simulates alternative positionings and positionalities with respect to a rain forecast (positionings more where you are [e.g., at the park], positionalities more who you are, how you identify [e.g., a mother]). The figure shows different activities so as to create familiar situations and encourage discussion about plausible decision-making in the light of grounded circumstance. Of course, the figure is a simplification but shows that different kinds of positioning and positionalities do exist and what they might mean to people. In decision-making about competing resource uses and desired behaviors relating to alternative and improved futures, those involved in debate about what choices to make may simultaneously occupy multiple positionalities about the matter at hand. They may find it hard to settle on one option. This illustrative “proof” of different kinds of positionalities can also be used as a basis of “continuous and situated trialing.” Our invitation to the reader is that the next time you go to a policy or planning meeting, you can make a list of the different backgrounds of those there. How are official positions or background training and experience possibly influencing their arguments? Are they concerned with professional risks instead of considering the merits and demerits of evidence? Are there other hidden influences “in the room”?

Figure 2.

Explanation of positionality with a rainy day example. How does “where you stand” affect your perception of risk? The figure simulates alternative positionings and positionalities with respect to a rain forecast (positionings more where you are [e.g., at the park], positionalities more who you are, how you identify [e.g., a mother]). The figure shows different activities so as to create familiar situations and encourage discussion about plausible decision-making in the light of grounded circumstance. Of course, the figure is a simplification but shows that different kinds of positioning and positionalities do exist and what they might mean to people. In decision-making about competing resource uses and desired behaviors relating to alternative and improved futures, those involved in debate about what choices to make may simultaneously occupy multiple positionalities about the matter at hand. They may find it hard to settle on one option. This illustrative “proof” of different kinds of positionalities can also be used as a basis of “continuous and situated trialing.” Our invitation to the reader is that the next time you go to a policy or planning meeting, you can make a list of the different backgrounds of those there. How are official positions or background training and experience possibly influencing their arguments? Are they concerned with professional risks instead of considering the merits and demerits of evidence? Are there other hidden influences “in the room”?

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Different disciplines and professions offer a wide panorama of perspectives on what risk might seem to be. They each teach particular ways to think about, critique and scrutinize the world, thereby shaping how people interpret RU. As part of our RU research program, we completed a review of the last 25 years of work in 13 established and recent disciplines (Anthropology, Economics, Psychology, Sociology, History, Linguistics, Humanities, Law, Human Geography, Political Science, Marine Policy, Natural Hazards, and Climate Science) with respect to how they first apprehended RU in the 1990s to the present. Our review built on the research of Althaus (2005) and Renn (2008a; 2008b) who sought to provide succinct definitions of how each discipline answered 2 questions: how is risk viewed and how is risk knowledge applied to the unknown or to uncertainties? Their findings show that early social science disciplines were siloed, leading to narrow risk definitions isolated from worldviews (Boholm and Corvellec, 2011). By the early 2010s, each discipline was heading toward establishing relational theorizations incorporating other disciplines. Most disciplines were attempting to locate RU investigations in ongoing social processes (Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty Research Network, 2005). The distinction between RU as an object of inquiry and RU as a mode of inquiry into social and ecological processes had gathered momentum (Strand and Oughton, 2009). Stirling and Burgman (2021) say, however, that identifying disciplinary differences in understanding risk is one thing, recognizing the filtering out effects of disciplinary hierarchies is another. Disciplinary training frames RU assessment in any given situation. For instance insights from our research suggest that in a consent process, what is “fair” is often seen through the lens of discipline: lawyers may approach consent processes on a “fair to each case” basis, that is, if it was allowed in the past it should be allowed now; biologists may focus deeply on estuarine sediment changes and probabilities and what is “fair” to the ecology; social scientists may consider “fair” to be about what is reasonable now given past activities; and Māori researchers may equate “fair” with responsibilities to future generations (although this is a sociocultural standpoint rather than a discipline per se). Disciplinary hierarchies may also be at play, as the worldviews of lawyers and natural scientists often have more power than those of other disciplines.

Both positionalities and disciplines are tangible and (more) easily documentable. Worldviews on the other hand are concepts, in the background, often invisible, side-lined or ignored. Indeed, a frequently asked question at our presentations on the evolution of the research has been, “Where did worldviews as an idea come from?” Worldviews are of course a well-supported concept in the literature, but this highlights our argument that taken-for-granted elements of conceptualization such as worldviews need to be made visible in policy, community, and nonacademic settings. Simply put, worldviews are conceptions of the world. Slightly rephrased, a worldview is a view of the world, used for living in the world. Worldviews are thus organizing frameworks that have evolved to illuminate and deal with changing conditions on multiple scales, from the planet to local and today to the future. This puts the accent on the enactive or world-making aspects of any worldview. We identify 2 important qualifications. First, when we refer to worldviews we are speaking of the cognitive orientation of both individuals and societies at large. This qualification prompts reflection on the interplays between individual positionalities and the kind of world they wish to be in, and acknowledging the influence of power relations and politics. Second, there is a need to recognize that parts of any worldview are shared by many people in the community, other parts differ for individuals, so worldviews of different people are shared yet unique. This suggests it is useful to think about an individual living within the premises of several worldviews instead of having a single worldview and often being in places where they are subconsciously trying to resolve tensions among multiple worldviews.

We focus on 3 contemporary Aotearoa-relevant worldviews—the DSP; the new environmental (or ecological) paradigm (NEP); and Te Ao Māori (literally, the Māori world) (TAM). The DSP and NEP worldviews are well established and discussed in the psychological literature, from the mid-1970s (Dunlap, 2008; Hawcroft and Milfont, 2010) and are prevalent in Aotearoa New Zealand (Thomson, 2013). Te Ao Māori worldview has been developing in Aotearoa since c. 900 AD and is discussed in Aotearoa literature (Salmond, 2014; Joseph et al., 2020; Mika, 2021; Scobie and Sturman, 2024). These 3 worldviews respectively cover an historical “Western/European” approach (DSP); a new melding of ideas based on current environmental predicaments (NEP); and a historically sourced and contemporarily lived Te Ao Māori way of being in the world (TAM). In Aotearoa, not only is the latter a lived experience of many (just as the other two are), but there is also a legislated necessity to engage with Mātauranga Māori. This gives the TAM worldview the power and voice to be included in the colonial decision-making system that we find ourselves in. The obscurities of worldviews makes them challenging to navigate, but it is enriching to do so. We now seek to explore worldviews as they pertain to risk perception specifically and qualitatively observe their embodiment in decision-making.

Table 1 is a first approximation of key elements of the 3 environmental worldviews prominent in Aotearoa. The table layout, a simple listing of elements of each worldview, is intended to neutralize the power dynamics of representation. We began our formulations of worldviews with the DSP (Pirages and Ehrlich, 1974; Milbraith and Fisher, 2021), segued into the NEP (Dunlap and Jones, 2002; Kilbourne et al., 2002) and then began a dialogue within the team to incorporate TAM as an equal worldview partner in our discussions. Worldviews of all stripes involve assumptions about the nature of reality which are translated into “mental maps” to aid functioning in society. This succinct, abstract and descriptive phrasing needs to be grounded in ongoing socio-ecological processes both to make sense of why worldviews matter to investors and policymakers and to reveal considerable gaps in knowledge about how worldviews become “societal” actors in their own right. An early study about planetary futures (Cotgrove, 1982) concisely points out that most societies have a DSP. Cotgrove suggests a paradigm is dominant, not because it is held by the majority in a society, but because it is held by dominant groups who use it to legitimize and justify prevailing conduct. For the most part worldview accounts are descriptive of what worldviews are, rather than what performative effects worldviews might have. Koltko-Rivera (2004) argue for a worldview research agenda (in psychology) saying that the “broad matter of how worldviews are formed and developed deserves serious research.” Importantly he asks, under what circumstances do individual, and we would add institutional, dispositions crystalize and remain little susceptible to change? We would go further by asking how are RU issues implicated in the reluctance to change?

Table 1.

Elements of worldviews in Aotearoa

WorldviewMain Driver of WorldviewKey Elements of Worldview
Dominant social paradigm (DSP) Bountiful world for resource extraction 
  • Limited government interference

  • Support free enterprise, private property rights and gain over collective benefits and outcomes

  • Faith in the efficacy of science and technology with a view that science is value free

  • Support for economic growth and progress

  • Faith in abundance of resources

 
New environmental paradigm (NEP) Nature as a limited resource, protectionist 
  • Favors participatory structures

  • Trusts democracy rather than experts

  • Views nature as a delicately balanced limited resource

  • Humans should live in harmony with nature

  • Science and technology are limited and value-laden

 
Te Ao Māori (TAM) (Key ideas/principles underpin Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975) Relational environmental approach 
  • Conceptualizes social relations in ecology rather than separately

  • Individual and community behavior regulated by concepts of mana (power, authority), tapu (sacredness), and mauri (lifeforce)

  • Institutions based on core principles like kaitiakitanga (sustainable management), whakapapa (connectedness), and manaakitanga (reciprocity) influence decision-making for social and spiritual outcomes for future generations

  • Priority given to delivery of outcomes of mutual benefit for kin groups, ecosystems, and communities

  • Extracting resources should be done in a manner that builds Intergenerational benefits

 
WorldviewMain Driver of WorldviewKey Elements of Worldview
Dominant social paradigm (DSP) Bountiful world for resource extraction 
  • Limited government interference

  • Support free enterprise, private property rights and gain over collective benefits and outcomes

  • Faith in the efficacy of science and technology with a view that science is value free

  • Support for economic growth and progress

  • Faith in abundance of resources

 
New environmental paradigm (NEP) Nature as a limited resource, protectionist 
  • Favors participatory structures

  • Trusts democracy rather than experts

  • Views nature as a delicately balanced limited resource

  • Humans should live in harmony with nature

  • Science and technology are limited and value-laden

 
Te Ao Māori (TAM) (Key ideas/principles underpin Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975) Relational environmental approach 
  • Conceptualizes social relations in ecology rather than separately

  • Individual and community behavior regulated by concepts of mana (power, authority), tapu (sacredness), and mauri (lifeforce)

  • Institutions based on core principles like kaitiakitanga (sustainable management), whakapapa (connectedness), and manaakitanga (reciprocity) influence decision-making for social and spiritual outcomes for future generations

  • Priority given to delivery of outcomes of mutual benefit for kin groups, ecosystems, and communities

  • Extracting resources should be done in a manner that builds Intergenerational benefits

 

Worldviews provide a direct link between RU perspectives and how people act in different roles. This is a difficult step because making worldviews tangible is unsettling. Yet various ideas, often unsorted or randomly aired, are used to make claims and justifications relating to one’s actions or the actions of others about how the world should be organized. Table 1 is an exposure to the main worldviews in the Aotearoa context. The DSP social paradigm which holds sway as “the” overarching influence in the country is first up. The table’s utility is in its display of how any worldview is a multifaceted set of attitudes, motivations, values, and expectations about outcomes. The holistic organizing dimensions of a worldview may appear bounded and satisfying but they can also be self-critical. Difference is apparent in that the ways of organizing the world of natural resource uses is inherent in the “logics” of each worldview. The table must be qualified: it is an approximation of features pulled together so that resonances of opposing and/or differing views in decision-making can be detected.

Aotearoa exhibits 3 worldviews, which we have elevated into view. Our main interest in this situation is threefold: what are the research-grounded features and boundary conditions among them, what do assumed principles and their influences mean for ways of perceiving RU, and what emergence can be detected in either pro-environment or pro-economy investments. We note that RU guidance is implicit in the elements of each worldview shown, either in isolation or in couplings of justifications for investment. The bland summary of elements can be invigorated by equally terse, but informative expressions of RU. In DSP, progress implies risk, and of course uncertainties, for enterprises as well as individuals. Technology as a driver of economy sharpens this. Schumpeter (1942), for example, speaks bluntly of creative destruction, phrasing that warns of risks for some and gains for others when seeking profits, especially from competition among new and old players. This widely accepted storyline of risk (Jasanoff, 1999) emphasizes the responsibilities enterprises have to manage or control their risks, in order to succeed. By contrast TAM is a principles-based philosophy and social technology aimed at ensuring immediate and intergenerational enhancements of the bases of livelihood in place. TAM does not draw RU distinctions but turns to principles to guide sustainable investment. According to Hikuroa (2017) and Harmsworth and Awatere (2013) concepts like whakapapa (genealogy) affirm the interdependence of all elements and organisms within ecosystems including humans. This holistic worldview is in direct contrast to scientific approaches that often rigidly and narrowly define how elements of the environment interact. TAM is attuned to not only harvesting for future abundance but also unequivocally highlights cumulative risks to people and places induced by DSP-justified behaviors.

While the sequence implies a chronology of sorts, this can be contested. TAM arguably existed in Aotearoa before DSP and NEP claims, and following this reasoning, TAM could head the list. The utility of the table nonetheless lies in the joint exposure of worldview elements, which can be noted in isolation or as part of a bundle of propositions. A broad categorization can be made of each worldview, recognizing that the DSP and NEP have been defined in opposition to each other. The DSP is ahistorical and geographically ungrounded and universalist in its claims, a summary that is also broadly applicable to the NEP. This however is a summation that echoes the principles of western science. This is partly broken down when the human–nature relation is considered. The divergence on this relation is extreme for DSP and NEP, but this too is unsituated, being instead turned into oppositional knowledge politics rather than the development of some aspects of synthesis or co-development. Only when the content of the TAM list is examined, is there the basis of a holistic conception that accommodates the disparate and unlinked elements of the DSP and NEP. What is commonly missing from contemporary worldview debates is the centrality of the Progress narrative in the DSP. This narrative assumes that progress is something that inherently involves risk-taking. If risk is involved it should be incentivized and rewarded, otherwise constant caution will lead to fewer developments and less progress. DSP thus has a distinct approach to risk built in.

It is easy to want to compare and contrast these differing worldviews in order to make them speak to each other and perhaps be commensurable. But the more we considered this idea, the less comfortable we became. From discussion within the TAM and social science teams we were able to come to terms with the fact that while DSP and NEP cannot escape their western science lineage of conceptualizing in abstract terms. TAM leapfrogs this restriction, in that it is rooted in the everyday existence and experiences of Māori, and draws on place-based and situated knowledges accumulated over generations in Aotearoa.

Table 2 reassembles Table 1 by ordering the elements according to drivers that are dissimilar or similar. Team discussion identified presumptions about direct comparisons of worldviews, noting the tendency to try to map one worldview directly onto another (especially as this can be done with DSP and NEP). We wanted to stress however that TAM is nuanced, complex, and not solely an “opposite” to western thinking. By using dissimilar/similar as headings in Table 2 we mapped the worldviews in a way that respects the integrity of each worldview, while making visible their emphases. To aid the cross-interrogation, the table is color-coded which makes visible the overall extent of each worldview when the yardstick is the conceptual sum of the worldviews. This also makes transparent the presence and absence of boundary relations among the prevailing worldviews in Aotearoa. In effect, it avoids any suggestion that TAM in Aotearoa is an afterthought or is something to be placed in grudging opposition to a dominant mainstream New Zealand western paradigm. A first impression from Table 2 is the presence of “gaps” across the worldview elements assembled with respect to driver status. In places they “touch” associatively, but elsewhere elements stand on their own. The color-coding highlights the siloing of DSP and NEP and TAM’s overarching holistic approach. The impactfulness of TAM as a conceptual organizer of the disjointed qualities of the other 2 worldviews is manifestly obvious. The collective organization of place, space, livelihood, and the state of the world is clear in TAM elements whereas these aspects are left to “invisible hands” in the DSP experience. There the “hands” at work “gather for individual interests” and not shared and collective outcomes.

Table 2.

Complexities of comparison

Dissimilar, and at Times Opposing, Drivers 
Economic growth Harmony with nature, protect nature 
Nature as use Nature as awesome 
Nature as use Nature as awe inspiring (mana) 
Abundant resource Limited resource 
Free market, limited government Participatory processes 
Science and technology value free Science and technology value laden 
Science and technology value laden or value free Science and technology embedded within value systems, e.g., manaakitanga—reciprocal relations between people and the environment 
Humans separate from nature (hierarchy) Humans genealogically connected with nature (whakapapa) 
Humans separate from nature (awesome, best left alone) Humans genealogically connected with nature (whakapapa) 
Private property rights Conservation estate and reserves 
Private property rights Communal property rights and use rights 
Conservation estate and reserves Communal property rights and use rights 
Similar, and at Times Aligning, Drivers 
Economic growth, nature as use Intergenerational benefits for kin and ecosystems 
Harmony with nature Intergenerational benefits for kin and ecosystems 
Abundant resource Circular, interlinked (mana, tapu, mauri), and reciprocal (manaaki) resource use 
Limited resource Circular, interlinked (mana, tapu, mauri), and reciprocal (manaaki) resource use 
Nature as awesome Mana—nature is awe-inspiring 
 
Dissimilar, and at Times Opposing, Drivers 
Economic growth Harmony with nature, protect nature 
Nature as use Nature as awesome 
Nature as use Nature as awe inspiring (mana) 
Abundant resource Limited resource 
Free market, limited government Participatory processes 
Science and technology value free Science and technology value laden 
Science and technology value laden or value free Science and technology embedded within value systems, e.g., manaakitanga—reciprocal relations between people and the environment 
Humans separate from nature (hierarchy) Humans genealogically connected with nature (whakapapa) 
Humans separate from nature (awesome, best left alone) Humans genealogically connected with nature (whakapapa) 
Private property rights Conservation estate and reserves 
Private property rights Communal property rights and use rights 
Conservation estate and reserves Communal property rights and use rights 
Similar, and at Times Aligning, Drivers 
Economic growth, nature as use Intergenerational benefits for kin and ecosystems 
Harmony with nature Intergenerational benefits for kin and ecosystems 
Abundant resource Circular, interlinked (mana, tapu, mauri), and reciprocal (manaaki) resource use 
Limited resource Circular, interlinked (mana, tapu, mauri), and reciprocal (manaaki) resource use 
Nature as awesome Mana—nature is awe-inspiring 
 

Table 2 adopts an innovative approach of a “worldview mapping” to cross-interrogate the worldview content of Table 1. What results from the color-coded probing we use in Table 2 is a more comprehensive overview of invisible influences made tangible. We are interested in the differences and similarities among the worldviews. Do they overlap in any way? What is the nature of the intersections? At a conceptual level each worldview may seem a sufficient set of principles and behavioral nudges. At least 3 valuable insights come from the figure. First, the adequacy of each worldview in their own right is called into question, by virtue of “seeing” a list of other possible claims. Second, the DSP is narrow, it’s economy for profits, justified by a belief in inexhaustible natural resources which are accessible by social arrangements of privileged access. NEP’s central premise is saving the environment by adopting environment supportive behaviors. TAM is quite holistic. Third, intriguingly some claims reach across the other and are simultaneously relevant. Confusing? This finding was a surprise. We had assumed a high degree of integrity of each worldview, but the mapping shows otherwise. It is no wonder RU about proposed use changes and behavioral transitioning should be argued about.

The new levels of awareness about worldviews have implications for how RU ideas might be framed and navigated. Foremost the mainstream RU narrative that is usually justified in economic terms is not compatible with TAM. The notions of others, co-benefits, intergenerational cumulative effects and possibilities, and multidirectional spatial flows and feedback are big challenges to conventional phrasing of RU storylines. The richness of TAM in contrast to the slender content of the western derived worldviews suggest efforts should be made to fully incorporate Māori at the beginning of policy design work as well as partner participants in actual frameworks. This resonates with the standard practice of contemporary disciplines where risk is recognized as an entry point into societal processes as well as consisting of pluralities of understanding where differences and similarities are in tension.

Tables 1 and 2 are conceptual clarifications of worldviews which do much to establish the credibility of worldviews as a meaningful category in socio-ecological research. The invisibilities of marginalized worldviews to those who hold the hegemonic DSP worldview has been made apparent through the 2 tables. Those who understand and operate within a TAM framework know and understand the dominant Pākehā worldviews as they must interact with and live these, but the reverse is not always true. With a deeper understanding of worldviews as a category to make sense of decision-making directions and outcomes, we also recognized that another challenge had to be met. The burden of proof about worldviews could not be merely conceptual, it had to be empirical. Our investigative methodology that places worldviews in legislative and legal processes within a known national context is in keeping with the latest social science insight on approaches to RU. The case study chosen provides an investigative portal into a legislatively prescribed consenting process.

We tentatively hold that the way we have traditionally come to know or not know RU is compounding the difficulties of stepping toward co-learning, co-production, and co-governing initiatives. Trying to find risks and uncertainties hides bigger picture issues as shown in Figure 1. Thinking through worldviews offers a chance to interrogate where values might come from, and how that relates to overarching beliefs on how the “world should work” or be made to work by individuals and enterprises. If we take risk as perceived relative to worldviews, we suddenly open up numerous possibilities for conversation, and “ah ha” moments, as previously unperceived blockages in viewpoints come to light as having a basis in a bigger knowledge set. We should be cautious, however, in expecting conversations to be always productive or sustained.5

In this section we first introduce DSM as a global phenomenon, so that the proposed Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd (CRP) mining application relating to the unique Chatham Rise ecosystem, which forms the paper’s case study, can be understood as part of a new global era of natural resource extraction. We then detail key aspects of Aotearoa’s Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act (Environmental Effects) (EEZ) (2012) and the subsequent CRP application made under this regulation. Our empirical investigation of the CRP consenting process is a knowledge-generating intervention informed by the conceptual framing of Figure 1, and the connections and relationalities that the figure implies. It does not aim to offer resolution of conflicts and claims made during consenting, but instead concentrates on “giving life” to worldview expressions so their co-constitutive roles in RU perceptions are made evident. Throughout we attempt to foreground how worldview assumptions are wittingly or unwittingly guided into RU claims.

The geopolitics of DSM evolved dramatically in the 2020s in response to demand for rare minerals seen as necessary for the green energy transition centered on electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, windfarms, and agricultural fertilizers such as phosphate. DSM includes removing mineral deposits and metals from the seabed in the form of deposit-rich polymetallic nodules on the ocean floor. Such mining, dubbed an experimental field, is set in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), whereby countries are mandated to manage their own maritime territory and EEZ, while the high seas and the international ocean floor are governed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), made up of 169 member countries. Importantly UNCLOS (1982) considers the seabed and its mineral resources as “the common heritage of humanity” that must be managed in a manner that protects environmental benefits for future generations and be free from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations. Currently in 2024 the ISA (2024) is preparing to resume negotiations with its constituency that could open the world’s ocean for mining including minerals critical to expansion of a green energy transition.

This is arguably a new phase in ocean resource exploitation. Prospector companies are conducting ocean floor searches to aid their case for a license under whatever rules the ISA determines. Minerals found are being tested to confirm their suitability as industrial inputs. Would-be mineral users (such as automakers) are being bombarded with ethical questions from anti-DSM lobbyists. There is provision for countries and mining companies to make applications in tandem which is a new model of alignment of investors. Notably little is known about DSM. Ashford et al. (2024) identify for example direct harm to marine life, long-term species and ecosystem disruptions, impacts on fishing and food security, economic and social risks offshore and shoreline facilities, labor exploitation, and climate change impacts. Such a high-level summary points to an unknown totality and quantum of uncertainties. It is also a narrative which stresses potential impacts but is short on highlighting assumptions about the right to prospect and exploit, which amounts to tacit approval that it is “okay to proceed.” The ISA will provide a channel for applications which effectively reduces DSM in its evolutionary moment to a “worthy problem” which is governable. What is missing is knowledge about the patterns of behaviors, past, present, and promised, by investors. It remains to be seen whether the rule set created is about economic growth for a small group of investing entities, or whether it embodies new institutional arrangements and principles to constrain how economic growth impulses could harm the environment.

Table 3 summarizes the EEZ Act according to its envisaged operation and functionalities. A companion Act of government reform, the Resource Management Act (1991) dedicated to land and coastal management, preceded the EEZ Act. Treaty6 obligations are made explicit in the EEZ Act.

Table 3.

EEZ legislation and worldviews

Features of ActExclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012
Preamble to legislation Designed as an ocean equivalent to Resource Management Act 
Purpose Protect EEZ and continental shelf from pollution by regulating and prohibiting discharges and dumping 
Goal Manage effects of particular marine activities in offshore waters 
Delegation of governing powers EEZ Act requires the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to make full use of powers to request information, obtain advice, and commission reviews when considering an application for consent 
Decision-making criteria EPA can be directed by the Minister to give effect to a government policy. If information is uncertain or inadequate, the EPA must favor caution and the environment, and consider whether an adaptive management approach would allow an activity to be undertaken 
Conditions of consenting Interested parties able to seek a marine consent, marine dumping consent or a marine discharge consent 
Consenting channels Consent applications considered by an EPA Board appointed Decision-making Committee 
Interface with Treaty obligations Recognize Crown’s responsibility to give effect to Treaty principles, recognition of Treaty and Māori interests in marine consent process, and an Independent Māori Advisory Board for EPA 
Features of ActExclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012
Preamble to legislation Designed as an ocean equivalent to Resource Management Act 
Purpose Protect EEZ and continental shelf from pollution by regulating and prohibiting discharges and dumping 
Goal Manage effects of particular marine activities in offshore waters 
Delegation of governing powers EEZ Act requires the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to make full use of powers to request information, obtain advice, and commission reviews when considering an application for consent 
Decision-making criteria EPA can be directed by the Minister to give effect to a government policy. If information is uncertain or inadequate, the EPA must favor caution and the environment, and consider whether an adaptive management approach would allow an activity to be undertaken 
Conditions of consenting Interested parties able to seek a marine consent, marine dumping consent or a marine discharge consent 
Consenting channels Consent applications considered by an EPA Board appointed Decision-making Committee 
Interface with Treaty obligations Recognize Crown’s responsibility to give effect to Treaty principles, recognition of Treaty and Māori interests in marine consent process, and an Independent Māori Advisory Board for EPA 

The DSP is for the most part the guiding influence on this development-oriented legislation. Legislation now in place for land and coast/marine resource governance and management meant 2 separate pathways by which societal assessment of incremental use changes is carried out. The oversight framework for each pathway pivots on creating a competitive arena of argument where proposed developments are scrutinized. Table 3 is an in-depth summary of the development pathway enshrined in the EEZ and Continental Shelf and Environmental Effects Act 2012. At stake with the legislation is the extent to which economy can be privileged over environment by developers, or conversely, whether environmental and Treaty (Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi) obligations can be successfully invoked to stop or greatly modify a proposal, for different desired outcomes. We hypothesize that the arena of consenting processes is where worldviews should be verbalized in favor of consent applications consistent with legislation and be present in counter narratives brought forward by submitters to discredit the applicant’s case. In the absence of prior worldview research on consenting processes we had no idea of how the worldviews might be expressed or the kinds of evidence that might be brought forward to supplement narratives or storylines in the spirit of various worldviews. This is the empirical question.

The effects-based EEZ, while widely reported as modeled on the Resource Management Act in fact deals with quite a different domain. The marine scene has relatively few activities that are covered by the prior and highly targeted Fisheries Act 1996 which includes commercial, customary rights, and recreational fishing. Other activities are covered by the EEZ Act. The overriding concern is about intrusions by a relatively small number of conspicuous investors into the marine environment. The Act contains minimal guidance on linking risks and consequences, however, perhaps reflecting a lack of appreciation of the way context changes were opening up the need to think about RU. Finally, the EEZ Act is explicitly framed in keeping with TAM, a probable consequence of momentum from the Treaty Settlement process7 that began to see iwi and hapū invest in the Māori economy. The Act was “to develop credibility and relations with Māori” and includes a statutory Māori Advisory Board in its regulatory organ, the EPA (Environmental Protection Authority Te Mana Rauhī Taiao).

The EPA is legally mandated to obtain information from relevant sources to perform its duties. Knowledge demands are entangled with the implicit powers that are conferred to applicants. Applicants are in the position to screen out relevant contextual matters (if they can), which steers the decision-making focus to the specific request and its “limited” risks. The EEZ Act includes provision for the applicant to propose adaptive management options, a “second chance” provision that enables applicants to modify their initial case to meet criticisms of other submitters.

Close associations of team members with the Chatham Rise as an “investment attractor” was important in choosing the CRP application (Le Heron et al., 2016). The 2014 timing of the application meant it was, at the time of the research, a historical environmental controversy, with limited political repercussions that might flow from the research process. However, this decision proved advantageous, as it opened the door to the development of holistic knowledge that could be framed both longitudinally and plotted geographically. Though we could not foresee the 2024 attitudinal change of government—away from the steady progression of environmental wins—this development introduced us to the wider global developments in which CRP was involved. Historical documentary inquiry also brought into focus a peculiar and unremarked feature of worldviews: their chameleon-like representations in “controlled” consenting situations when deployed by deliberative parties to advance particular investment schemes, especially the way they became material instead of remaining merely conceptual. This empirical observation influenced the bank of questions we could meaningfully develop for interviewing.8

High public awareness about the CRP case, access to consenting records, the likely receptivity of experts to approaches from the research team and the complexities of knowledge arising from consenting demands and issues all gave weight to our choice of case study. Documents were systematically obtained from official websites relating to the laws and their consenting procedures, as well as academic papers and reports, and conference presentations. These sources enabled a genealogy of key decision moments in the case to be prepared alongside interviews. The genealogy reveals who was involved and why, includes first approximations of strong and weak presences of the worldviews, and sketches associated narratives about RU logics.

The social science team conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews of 8 expert witnesses representing both applicant and submitters and additionally included 3 interviews with EPA staff. These interviews allowed multiple cross-interpretations of how evidence and arguments were prepared and used in consenting processes. They also discussed the constraints of and the roles played by probability risk assessment in consent hearings. The interviews revealed degrees of awareness, sensitivities, and implications of worldview influences in practice. The Te Ao Māori team drew on 12 further interviews that showed interviewee efforts to articulate Māori worldviews to other professionals, and to highlight resistances and misrepresentations of Te Ao Māori in different settings (Hyslop et al., 2023). There is currently little extant research on the inner workings of consenting processes, especially as regard to how worldviews play out or are deployed in actual consenting cases. This research helps fill that gap.

If contemporary policy is intended to redirect uses and behaviors through more aware decision-making, then the degree to which consenting processes facilitate or impede this bridging remains the terrain of challenge. Our case study methodology shifts inquiry from detached “this is what has happened” descriptions to “who was able to steer RU assessments in what directions, and with what effects and consequences on use choices and ways of behaving.”

Phosphate is considered a necessary agricultural fertilizer in Aotearoa with a high demand, but has a history of mixed environmental and social outcomes resulting from mining practices, for example, strip-mining of 80% of Nauru’s surface (Seneviratne, 1999; Wikipedia, 2021). Further, current phosphate supplies are largely mined in Western Sahara, which is controversially occupied by Morocco (Fadel, 2019). Growing demand for phosphate and the optics of the current supply have raised interest in mining local deposits, which happen to exist on the Chatham Rise seabed, east of the South Island. A succession of seabed mining applications in Aotearoa (Figure 3) have occurred since the 2013 amendment of the Crown Minerals Act to authorize permits for this activity.9 Government consents have been ultimately turned down after numerous rounds of regulatory proceedings and litigation (EPA, High Court, Appeal Court, Supreme Court) and so present interesting insights into the tensions between allowed mining permits and economic factors, social license, and biophysical, social, and cultural risks and benefits.

Figure 3.

A history of Chatham Rise phosphate mining application. Isolated deep-seabed mining for phosphate in the Aotearoa seemed in the early 21st century to be unproblematic. Mining interests were able to assert a social license based on export earnings, needing another source of phosphate and in the case of Chatham Rock Phosphate, its experience in mining at depth. The summary of pending and actual resource use steps connected with seeking a mining consent hides a very complex and contemporarily an evolving consenting situation. Figure 3 documents restrategizing by CRP after its declined application. The Chatham Rock Phosphate consenting process became a courtroom learning exercise over the spatial reach of cumulative effects and uncertainties and nature of Treaty rights and obligations. It also gave important exposure to the Precautionary Principle as an idea and set of behavioral steps and gradually understood environmental risks and uncertainties. This Principle is not a strict rule but it is elevated as an approach because it seeks to prevent unknown and undocumented environmental harm reaching into the future. A central premise is that when evidence is at hand, decision-makers should act cautiously to protect the public from imaginable and plausible risks. It amounts to balancing investment processes between caution and risk, a stance that is as much pro-development as it is anti-development. The way this played out was unprecedented. A largely unheard of worldview (TAM) had come into visibility, in a manner that exposed the limits, in the current context, of the prevailing DSP and NEP worldviews. Data from Burgess (2013) and Environment Foundation (2018).

Figure 3.

A history of Chatham Rise phosphate mining application. Isolated deep-seabed mining for phosphate in the Aotearoa seemed in the early 21st century to be unproblematic. Mining interests were able to assert a social license based on export earnings, needing another source of phosphate and in the case of Chatham Rock Phosphate, its experience in mining at depth. The summary of pending and actual resource use steps connected with seeking a mining consent hides a very complex and contemporarily an evolving consenting situation. Figure 3 documents restrategizing by CRP after its declined application. The Chatham Rock Phosphate consenting process became a courtroom learning exercise over the spatial reach of cumulative effects and uncertainties and nature of Treaty rights and obligations. It also gave important exposure to the Precautionary Principle as an idea and set of behavioral steps and gradually understood environmental risks and uncertainties. This Principle is not a strict rule but it is elevated as an approach because it seeks to prevent unknown and undocumented environmental harm reaching into the future. A central premise is that when evidence is at hand, decision-makers should act cautiously to protect the public from imaginable and plausible risks. It amounts to balancing investment processes between caution and risk, a stance that is as much pro-development as it is anti-development. The way this played out was unprecedented. A largely unheard of worldview (TAM) had come into visibility, in a manner that exposed the limits, in the current context, of the prevailing DSP and NEP worldviews. Data from Burgess (2013) and Environment Foundation (2018).

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The formal documentation of the consenting process overseen by the EPA was a rich source of evidence of “invisible” worldviews at work. We reviewed CRP’s application and 2 key submissions (from the Crown10 and Ngai Tahu iwi11). In Table 4 we sketch out alignments between the 3 worldviews and submissions, making obvious the power of analyzing the content of evidence in terms of worldview conceptualizations.

Table 4.

Worldviews: Inside the Chatham Rock Phosphate consenting process

Chatham Rock Phosphate Application (for consent)Crown Submission (adopting persona of a neutral arbitrator)Ngai Tahu Submission
Application justified by DSP ideals Economic opportunities and gains
  • Granting of permit de-risks the company

  • Company estimated New Zealand would be $900m richer and contribute $250m to exports and import substitution, without costing risks

  • Strategic upside of security of local supply, reducing uncertainty of supply over the long term

 
Informed by mix of worldviews Democracy rather than experts
  • Omissions over seafloor impacts on chalk and ooze layers

  • Asked “when can adaptive management process be part of a precautionary approach?” This question is an attempt to resolve contradictions from the creation of new threats and risks (from mining) by monitoring to reduce uncertainty but not unknown risks.

  • Quoted Supreme Court: evidence needed that adaptive management approach will sufficiently reduce uncertainty and manage remaining risk

 
Espoused in a manner consistent with TAM Individual and community behavior regulated by concepts of mana, authority, tapu, and mauria
  • Environmental costs enduring and are disproportionately shouldered by future generations, thus making visible cumulative and complexifying risk effects

  • Rethinking context of economic effects on existing interestsb by centering on agency (e.g., Ngai Tahu, Kaimoana Fisheries, Summerton’s), a move that attaches risk discussion to a diversity of actors

 
Economic decision not cultural, social or environmental
  • Cultural/social perspectives not relevant to assessing application—consistent with DSP where the focus should be on private and not collective outcomes and gains

  • Ignores Te Tiriti obligations in EEZ Act, partly because wording in the Act is tentative

  • Company growth is equated with collective economic gains which reinforces an acritical and limited risk lens.

 
Nature as delicately balanced limited resource
  • Stated position: challenge is using resources efficiently to create economic benefits, while maintaining high-quality environmental standards that safeguard the life-supporting capacity of the environment for ourselves and future generations

  • Minister Adams (then Environment Minister): “this is not about pitting the economy against the environment. It is about balance, and responsible management of our oceans.” Must not ignore the vast untapped economic potential beneath our seas

  • Concern that overall functioning of ecosystem on Chatham Rise not being considered, especially given prior contests over deep-sea trawling. The “grim” features of a bare and barren seabed-scape was revealed by the film documentary On an unknown beach (2016)

 
Institutions based on core principles like kaitiakitanga, whakapapa, and manaakitangac influence decision-making for social and spiritual outcomes for future generations
  • Contends that the EEZ Act is conservative relative to the Resource Management Act in seeking to avoid risk and protecting the environment.

  • Risks should be borne by applicant, but Ngai Tahu paraphrase the CRP’s attitude: “We do not know what the impacts on cultural values are, but whatever they are, we not going to do anything about them.”

  • Exercise of kaitiakitanga is an ongoing activity, an active role that Māori hold in respect of environmental assets. This is happening all the time, so Ngai Tahu are an existing interest entitled to express views on RU.

 
Environment can be managed for economic growth
  • Company holds its operation sustainable, so attempting to dictate narratives in favor of the company’s proposal

  • Confident claim that environmental impacts of operation would be minor and localised without evidence

  • MBIE assessed work program, technical, financial capability, and understanding of geological resource—enrolling favorable expertise to deflect wide discussion of RU.

  • CRP’s dredging process asserted to be one of the most environmentally benign forms of mining practiced in the world—though no comparative evidence given

 
Humans should live in harmony with nature
  • Look at planned development to decide whether environmental effects are acceptable and how they should be dealt with—this accepts the inevitability of effects, but does not propose risk-reducing steps

  • Chatham Rise one of the most diverse seabed assemblages on the planet but does not elaborate on environmental harm from disturbing the seabed assemblage

  • Concern over effect of lighting on sea birds—widening appreciation of risks

 
Conceptualizing social relations in ecology rather than separately
  • Who will bear the burden of risk? Not the applicant. As Ngai Tahu summarize, CRP will “give it a go” but “will provide no assurance of a good outcome. The risk is to be borne by the environment” and other actors

  • Effects on mid Chatham Rise Benthic Protection Area cannot be avoided, remediated, or mitigated nor can they be offset or compensated for. This directly confronts DSP thinking about natural resource extraction.

  • Mix of habitat attributes in mid Chatham Rise not replicated elsewhere in the world, a materiality that is discussed in relation to the precautionary principle.

 
Costs of growth inevitable, but can be mitigated
  • Company willing to mitigate unspecified risks

  • Adaptive management included as a responsible approach to resettle the narrative over risks to the company’s advantage

 
Science and technology limited and value-laden
  • Parketon Trophic model used by CRP to calculate environmental impacts excludes habitat mediated interactions, without reference to other modeling possibilities

  • Mention made of generic risk of slow cadmium and uranium build up in soils with phosphate topdressing

  • Threshold question: whether adaptive management can even be considered in face of unidentified risks and uncharted uncertainties.

 
Priority given to mutual benefit outcomes for kin groups and ecosystems
  • Potential adverse cultural and economic impacts on Ngai Tahu whanau and descendants and future development rights are linked to the certain and potential adverse effects exposed.

  • Any sustainability accreditation of the Chatham Rise fisheries will face reputational risk from the mining. This view shifts focus to wider goals and new risk assessment challenges.

 
Company model choices limited
  • Modeling of sediment plume is conservative and effects of return of tailings to seabed will be restricted, a position that seeks to encourage trust in the company’s mining techniques.

 
Crown disposition
  • Overlapping/contradictory positions with respect to worldviews, in spite or perhaps because of implicitly adopting the pose of an independent arbiter.

  • Crown’s submission (and concluding statement) had few insights into Ngai Tahu let alone into TAM worldviews.

  • Crown’s decision-scape was to ensure protocols were followed, a position that leans to the status quo.

 
Extracting resources should build intergenerational benefits
  • Introducing uranium to Aotearoa soils with limited understanding of potential risks to freshwater not a suitable legacy for Ngai Tahu whanau.

  • Duty of kaitiakitanga to pass the environment to future generations in a state which is as good as or better than the current state, but collective action needed to switch from environmental harm to environmental gains.

 
Chatham Rock Phosphate Application (for consent)Crown Submission (adopting persona of a neutral arbitrator)Ngai Tahu Submission
Application justified by DSP ideals Economic opportunities and gains
  • Granting of permit de-risks the company

  • Company estimated New Zealand would be $900m richer and contribute $250m to exports and import substitution, without costing risks

  • Strategic upside of security of local supply, reducing uncertainty of supply over the long term

 
Informed by mix of worldviews Democracy rather than experts
  • Omissions over seafloor impacts on chalk and ooze layers

  • Asked “when can adaptive management process be part of a precautionary approach?” This question is an attempt to resolve contradictions from the creation of new threats and risks (from mining) by monitoring to reduce uncertainty but not unknown risks.

  • Quoted Supreme Court: evidence needed that adaptive management approach will sufficiently reduce uncertainty and manage remaining risk

 
Espoused in a manner consistent with TAM Individual and community behavior regulated by concepts of mana, authority, tapu, and mauria
  • Environmental costs enduring and are disproportionately shouldered by future generations, thus making visible cumulative and complexifying risk effects

  • Rethinking context of economic effects on existing interestsb by centering on agency (e.g., Ngai Tahu, Kaimoana Fisheries, Summerton’s), a move that attaches risk discussion to a diversity of actors

 
Economic decision not cultural, social or environmental
  • Cultural/social perspectives not relevant to assessing application—consistent with DSP where the focus should be on private and not collective outcomes and gains

  • Ignores Te Tiriti obligations in EEZ Act, partly because wording in the Act is tentative

  • Company growth is equated with collective economic gains which reinforces an acritical and limited risk lens.

 
Nature as delicately balanced limited resource
  • Stated position: challenge is using resources efficiently to create economic benefits, while maintaining high-quality environmental standards that safeguard the life-supporting capacity of the environment for ourselves and future generations

  • Minister Adams (then Environment Minister): “this is not about pitting the economy against the environment. It is about balance, and responsible management of our oceans.” Must not ignore the vast untapped economic potential beneath our seas

  • Concern that overall functioning of ecosystem on Chatham Rise not being considered, especially given prior contests over deep-sea trawling. The “grim” features of a bare and barren seabed-scape was revealed by the film documentary On an unknown beach (2016)

 
Institutions based on core principles like kaitiakitanga, whakapapa, and manaakitangac influence decision-making for social and spiritual outcomes for future generations
  • Contends that the EEZ Act is conservative relative to the Resource Management Act in seeking to avoid risk and protecting the environment.

  • Risks should be borne by applicant, but Ngai Tahu paraphrase the CRP’s attitude: “We do not know what the impacts on cultural values are, but whatever they are, we not going to do anything about them.”

  • Exercise of kaitiakitanga is an ongoing activity, an active role that Māori hold in respect of environmental assets. This is happening all the time, so Ngai Tahu are an existing interest entitled to express views on RU.

 
Environment can be managed for economic growth
  • Company holds its operation sustainable, so attempting to dictate narratives in favor of the company’s proposal

  • Confident claim that environmental impacts of operation would be minor and localised without evidence

  • MBIE assessed work program, technical, financial capability, and understanding of geological resource—enrolling favorable expertise to deflect wide discussion of RU.

  • CRP’s dredging process asserted to be one of the most environmentally benign forms of mining practiced in the world—though no comparative evidence given

 
Humans should live in harmony with nature
  • Look at planned development to decide whether environmental effects are acceptable and how they should be dealt with—this accepts the inevitability of effects, but does not propose risk-reducing steps

  • Chatham Rise one of the most diverse seabed assemblages on the planet but does not elaborate on environmental harm from disturbing the seabed assemblage

  • Concern over effect of lighting on sea birds—widening appreciation of risks

 
Conceptualizing social relations in ecology rather than separately
  • Who will bear the burden of risk? Not the applicant. As Ngai Tahu summarize, CRP will “give it a go” but “will provide no assurance of a good outcome. The risk is to be borne by the environment” and other actors

  • Effects on mid Chatham Rise Benthic Protection Area cannot be avoided, remediated, or mitigated nor can they be offset or compensated for. This directly confronts DSP thinking about natural resource extraction.

  • Mix of habitat attributes in mid Chatham Rise not replicated elsewhere in the world, a materiality that is discussed in relation to the precautionary principle.

 
Costs of growth inevitable, but can be mitigated
  • Company willing to mitigate unspecified risks

  • Adaptive management included as a responsible approach to resettle the narrative over risks to the company’s advantage

 
Science and technology limited and value-laden
  • Parketon Trophic model used by CRP to calculate environmental impacts excludes habitat mediated interactions, without reference to other modeling possibilities

  • Mention made of generic risk of slow cadmium and uranium build up in soils with phosphate topdressing

  • Threshold question: whether adaptive management can even be considered in face of unidentified risks and uncharted uncertainties.

 
Priority given to mutual benefit outcomes for kin groups and ecosystems
  • Potential adverse cultural and economic impacts on Ngai Tahu whanau and descendants and future development rights are linked to the certain and potential adverse effects exposed.

  • Any sustainability accreditation of the Chatham Rise fisheries will face reputational risk from the mining. This view shifts focus to wider goals and new risk assessment challenges.

 
Company model choices limited
  • Modeling of sediment plume is conservative and effects of return of tailings to seabed will be restricted, a position that seeks to encourage trust in the company’s mining techniques.

 
Crown disposition
  • Overlapping/contradictory positions with respect to worldviews, in spite or perhaps because of implicitly adopting the pose of an independent arbiter.

  • Crown’s submission (and concluding statement) had few insights into Ngai Tahu let alone into TAM worldviews.

  • Crown’s decision-scape was to ensure protocols were followed, a position that leans to the status quo.

 
Extracting resources should build intergenerational benefits
  • Introducing uranium to Aotearoa soils with limited understanding of potential risks to freshwater not a suitable legacy for Ngai Tahu whanau.

  • Duty of kaitiakitanga to pass the environment to future generations in a state which is as good as or better than the current state, but collective action needed to switch from environmental harm to environmental gains.

 

The documents of the CRP consenting process conducted by the EPA provide an astonishing example of worldviews making an appearance and being pushed around by protagonists. The Table 4's columns sharpen up the competing claims about the riskiness and inherent uncertainties of mining in the deep. On one level, the consent deliberations followed a conventional format—the applicant outlines their case then submitter arguments are made. The CRP team began by justifying the mining applications in classic DSP terms. The company had (it said) a history of responsible mining and extensive operational experience in like-conditions. The mining venture would be in the national interest, be an economic asset with minimal environmental impacts from the mining, and would not encroach on important fisheries or damage benthic biota. They argued from the outset that social and cultural questions should have no place in the deliberative equation. But a surprise was in store. After the conventional case by CRP, the Māori submitter Ngai Tahu recast the application according to TAM principles. This amounts to a declaration of the enactive qualities of the TAM worldview. Their argument was part rebuttal and part deflection that set up a counter narrative about probable outcomes and likely consequences in different places. The narrative raised quite new dimensions to custodianship and stewardship of the ocean by all parties and the conditions under which activities might be intergenerational, collectively imagined, and managed under co-governance provisions. This of course is still a development narrative, but it has responsibility dimensions. The reaction of the CRP legal team was “we don’t understand you; can we meet to learn about what you are saying.” Intriguingly the Crown, a submitter on behalf of the Minister, made statements that attempted to “balance” the contrary views, by voicing elements from each worldview.

aMana (power, authority), tapu (sacredness), and mauri (lifeforce).

bMāori interests are not one dimensional (i.e., just “green”) but have significant economic interests in resource use also. TAM and whakaaro Māori are used to assign value and decision-making priorities (resulting in what seems—to other worldviews DSP/NEP—to be an eclectic and contradictory assemblage, but is consistent on its own terms).

cKaitiakitanga (sustainable management), whakapapa (connectedness), and manaakitanga (reciprocity).

In examining the Crown’s submission on the proposal to seabed mine at Chatham Rise, arguments powered by particular worldviews became evident. Yet, we are not arguing that it is a simple case of aligning the government submission with an NEP worldview against CRP’s DSP worldview, although many aspects these foundational philosophies are evident. Instead, we highlight particular aspects based on “how the world should work” beliefs and note that the government’s submission also creates preconditions for alternative interpretations. Many of the entries in the Crown submission column of Table 4 could be in several categories. They were wide ranging, delving into matters left out by CRP’s application.

In contrast, Ngai Tahu claims CRP fails to meet the test of sustainable management by a significant margin. Much of their submission is devoted to establishing that a decision on the consenting process cannot lawfully erode the value of rights and assets of Māori [as Treaty partners]. This vigorously held and argued material fact is frequently reiterated because the CRP and Crown submissions have a scanty coverage of Māori concerns and certainly do not recognize the holistic and comprehensive nature of the TAM worldview. It is noteworthy that the Decision-making Committee (DMC), appointed by the EPA, made decisions covering the rights and assets of Māori but, as far as we could tell, does not admit the irreducible principle that Ngai Tahu argue: the integrity of the Settlement must be maintained through the process. There is an already agreed Settlement between Ngai Tahu and the Crown-as-Treaty-partner, to acknowledge, address, and compensate for past wrongs and loss of land and resources. Ngai Tahu in effect are arguing that all previous agreements (Treaty principles and Settlement) must be adhered to with no loss of rights on their part. In their decision statement, “The DMC acknowledge the views expressed to it that the proposal risked undermining Treaty of Waitangi settlement provisions such as the development right and the value of Treaty settlement–based fish quotas” (Environmental Protection Authority Te Mana Rauhi Taiao, 2015).

Two layers of Ngai Tahu geographic presence are outlined: where Ngai Tahu have exercised decision-making for future generations, and Ngai Tahu as a member of Kaimoana Fisheries which operates widely in Aotearoa waters. Ngai Tahu comments that “the applicant has not fully understood the nature of Ngai Tahu’s interests through the limited consultation that occurred.” It also indicates the general absence of collective perspectives in the CRP application. The assignment of examples from the Ngai Tahu submission into any element of the TAM worldview below is very tentative.

The DMC wrestled directly with the nature of RU in their deliberation. While “changes to the benthic environment were undisputed by any party to the application” (our emphasis), the task of the committee was to decide how significant these changes would be, and if it was in fact worth the risk in both short and long time frames. According to a perusal of the records, there was a recurring theme of uncertainty. A lack of data, of previous examples to draw on, and of models that were sufficiently trusted to be able to predict or at least suggest limits on outcomes were mentioned repeatedly.

The DMC was left with a lack of certainty about both the receiving environment and the adverse effects of the project on that environment and existing interests. Partly this is explained by the current state of scientific knowledge about the Chatham Rise marine environment, albeit well researched in some dimensions. But there were other uncertainties stemming from the fact that this would be the first seabed mining project ever undertaken at such depths anywhere in the world, and from the heavy reliance placed on insufficiently validated modelling to predict the impacts of the project. (Environment Foundation, 2018, our emphasis)

This is the key point on which the decision turned: the certain presence of risk and accompanying uncertainty about how significant the risks would be. The DMC and various submitters spent time discussing whether it was appropriate to take a precautionary approach, with the DMC concluding that it was. The various submitters and applicant presented their cases according to their widely different views about how the world should work (worldviews). The arguments in each case were propelled by underlying worldviews, disciplinary training (as experts are wheeled out), and multiple positionalities.

Importantly, we find that invisible differences in worldview fuel the debate around what RU are acceptable and who should bear the cost (public vs. private benefits; investment decision and economy vs. the environment). As such, they focus on unacknowledged differences rather than common aspirations. We aim not to reduce difference but to work toward commonalities with diversity. Further we shed light on the decision-making process itself and how the invisibility of worldviews potentially shapes policy practices and outcomes.

References to the precautionary approach, either in consenting processes or interviews, exemplify deep ambivalences over the tensions between caution and risk. The principle has scientific standing and has been widely adopted internationally in broad legislation but is often contested legally (Wiener, 2007). It is however an invaluable reminder that worldviews are competing systems of caution and risk. The section on worldviews confirmed the mandating power of specific worldviews and the actions that can be justified and pursued because of general mandates in legislation. How mandating plays out pivots on the degree of acceptance and articulation of ideas about burdens of proof. While traditionally the legal assumption has been to insist that any person claiming an individual or activity will cause harm has to provide evidence in support of their claim, societal pressures, influenced by precautionary principle debate, have led to a reversed posture, to one where an individual proposing an activity must prove the activity is not harmful. The former criterion, as several interviewees mentioned, tilts any review of consenting proposals in favor of the applicant. The shift toward investors having to demonstrate the effects and consequences of their proposal over time and space amounts to a moderation of the progress ethos (that there must be a very good reason to not pursue progress, where progress is equated with the use of resources).

The methodology’s stepwise logic of integrating the notions of positionalities, disciplines, and worldviews means the research avoids a reductionist stance that would arise from their isolated study. The synergies from juxtaposing and exploring these “invisible” influences, as in Figure 1, yielded rich dividends in understanding of how RU are grounded contextually and are highly sensitive to contextual pressures. On another level, the methodology exposed the ubiquity of clashes of ontological quarrels (Salmond, 2014) between worldviews, summarized by one interviewee as “everywhere we go, when enabling proposed new development, there are not many instances where there is no opposition.” The conclusion that might be drawn from this state of affairs is that both the details of a case and the bigger picture have to be put into the same interpretive frame. This signals capability building to engage simultaneously in collective and individual bridging outcomes.

The accumulated knowledge supporting the use of the EEZ Act has drawn on different interpretations of fairness in legal proceedings. The legal profession behaves as if each consenting application should be treated as equivalent and independent. This contrasts with the socio-ecological lens brought into the courtroom by mostly scientists and other experts where fairness hinges more on diverse representation of people and a recognition of emergent ecological processes being consistently applied. Fairness on behalf of ecology and people at large into the future is sidelined by “proper” legal process. The emergent qualities of knowledge is very much a product of social co-learnings. The example of Ngai Tahu having to “educate” the appellant’s legal team in the Chatham Rise phosphate mining case illustrates this. The EEZ cases over the years have seen iwi and hapū reinforcing recognition of Treaty obligations in hearings. This has led to strong demands to lay out the consequences of decisions in terms of not only environmental concerns but also Te Ao Māori principles and practices.

Quantitative numerical modeling acts as a glue holding interests in conversation in consenting processes. Modeling is an historical process, dependent on monitoring and very reliant on interpretive but selective memory (Edwards, 2017). Why has modeling come to the fore and what work do modelers do in consenting processes? While some might construe modeling as an unreflective research practice that narrows discussion to technical points, this view contrasts with how it is deployed in Courts. As interviewees put it, “scientists as modelers are trying to do good for the environment and society, while lawyers are there to win a case.” This is a sharp contrast. Modelers are attempting to gauge what might happen “down the line.” This serves as a way to delineate the “societal risk” of “taking the risks identifiable in the investment proposal.” Modelers find themselves facing arguments that discount the future, which translates into elevating the immediately understandable and nameable gains such as “jobs” and “wider income generated” for the appellant around a proposal.

Finally, the principal but unexpected finding of the research is that the EEZ legislation and its attendant societal consenting processes are at best coarse and chancy steering mechanisms for use change in marine, coastal, and land domains. The legislation was in response to adverse and dispersing environmental effects and intended as tentative responses to inadequate framing of how use questions were being settled. It was not expressly designed to “manage at large” the rise of collective issues about the magnitude, location, expansion, and ultimately use changes in the country that have intensified. They are also very imperfect fora to establish elements of transitioning behaviors away from individualism to building collective efforts around uses in marine spaces. What are the implications of this sobering finding for redressing the impediments to giving change management new life? To begin to answer this question we need to think in terms of who is caught up in this structural impasse and what options there might be to develop strategic interventions.

We begin our discussion by critically reflecting on the insights of Table 4. This figure is somewhat phoenix-like. It has arisen from the research methodology that put RU and 3 invisibilities of positionality, disciplines, and worldviews into a conceptual relation to explore the inner dimensions and workings of a particular consenting process. Its primary aim is to highlight the intermediary role of RU issues that condition ways of viewing and acting upon investor claims and as well situates the veiling of worldviews by RU issues. This makes the form of the table and what it has highlighted special.

On a simple level it is a collage of assertions and contrary views. It allows indirect decision-making agency, such as occurs when the applicant, submitters, and experts to speak before the DMC. It provides real-time examples of dawning self-awareness in the consenting process. Its structure permits the exploration of diverse perspectives on the unique deep-sea mining investment proposition. But the table is more. It is designed to co-reveal, something which avoids exclusivity of any argument by placing them together. This means the narratives of those involved are not disqualified because they are absent. At the highest level the table is a rare insight into a historical “moment” where the outcome could be the starting of an expansionary societal investment process or a closing down of expectations that such an investment stream centered on DSM might eventuate.

Yet as we compiled Table 4 it seemed like a cacophony of cut and thrust arguments. The consenting process was a massive process of “organizing and calculating in the name of risks” to steer the DMC toward outcomes desired by the protagonists. It must have been daunting to the DMC to absorb and make sense of the complexity presented. Where did the environment stand in all this? Whose environment, where, and on what time scale? Seen in this way the co-revealing brings to the fore a number of troublesome issues: assumptions about what should prevail for the applicant; little respect for socio-ecological evidence or the claims of Ngai Tahu who had to strongly state their interpretations; claims without evidence, claims with obvious partiality of evidence, claims about things being self-evident; minimal due diligence on the track record of company behavior; or no consideration of how unexpected management failures with respect to the environment might be put right. The ideas of confronting in business terms the quantum of royalties or the distribution of returns to interests or acknowledging that co-management might be a negotiable option were not discussed.

The biggest knowledge breakthrough, however, came once we thought in holistic and investment-centered terms about environmental management. What guided us were tensions over economy–environment relations. The hitherto overlooked, incremental, but ever-present role, of any consenting in the shifting trajectory of this relation is a major contribution of the paper. Consenting has to be seen, to echo Foucauldian thinkers in the field of risk (McMillan, 2016; Hardy and Maguire, 2017) as a new technique of governing which is powered by the subtle guiding effects of riskification, the squeezing out of alternative risk discourses (Hardy and Maguire, 2017). The timeliness of the CRP application process was not fully appreciated until the global DSM frontier became more known. This awareness coincided with the dramatic attitudinal and operational shift in Aotearoa’s political context, which can now be better interpreted by the paper’s learnings. We had not foreseen the possible extent of this transformative lurch in governmentality (Lewis et al., 2008) around the political project of deconstructing and then reconstructing the all-important investor moderating and mediating societal mechanism of consenting.

What learnings have we made? First the DSP as a package provides justification for individual and entity investment behaviors without much regard for environmental consequences. While this posture could be said to be known, it has for too long been disregarded. Our scrutiny of the content of 3 worldviews introduces for the first time strong but differing connections to RU issues, which become material in investment choices and in policy settings. DSP could be seen as a worldview that is not inclined to specifying environmental risks and uncertainties. Second, the study also affirms the formative role of politics and the broad political economy on how worldviews are apprehended. Figure 1 succinctly shows this dimension. This is a major perceptual step in ocean resource management. DSM, however, is something more. It is a planetary concern which heightens the severity of unknown uncertainties and puts new kinds of risk burdens in front of investors and policymakers. The consenting discussion illuminated how such questions are complex and murky. Third, we slowly began to realize preoccupation with RU dimensions should be critiqued by asking about the wider implications of the preoccupation. The paper provides rare insight into the politics of knowing and not knowing what accompanies the ambiguities and ignorance in such decision-making. Fourth, the empirical study of CRP consenting makes very clear the determining and contingent aspects of worldview perspectives in the selection of evidence and its presentation. This raised the difficulties of clarifying the basis upon which knowledge of RU might be brought into decision-making. Our assessment is that no single approach is sufficient to settle dissent over the nature of investment proposals. But a range of approaches is revealed by deliberately linking claims about investment to different worldviews. Fifth, few in Aotearoa have probably heard about global DSM, yet it is salutary in that it points not so much to the existence of DSM and potential environmental impacts but to the nexus of nameable companies, governments, and science providers who are seeking permission to undertake such an activity. This is a new knowledge and political terrain that sits uncomfortably in the present EEZ policy world, where consents and reviews of RU are considered in isolation and not systematically outlined as a social learning process.

By conceptualizing and empirically demonstrating the existence of 3 invisibilities, we made possible the unlocking of the interrelations of worldviews and RU in consenting. Table 4 dramatically highlights the potency of TAM as a worldview in Aotearoa. The diverse views encountered from each worldview result in a different starting point to see and imagine the world. TAM is remarkable in that it contains and diffuses (see Table 2) the often conflicting perspectives of other worldviews. Moreover, it establishes a distinctive benchmark as a starting point from which to explore strategically environment and economy in relational terms. TAM’s bridging qualities enable fuller and more complex outlines of immediately relevant concerns need to be recognized and used as the basis to build, at least in Aotearoa, a new kind of knowledge space in which to explore a richer purview of influences at work and what is at stake. Following this reasoning, TAM’s vital contribution is the portrayal of invisibilities, by virtue of the environmental and economic principles it embodies. Going further, we hold that knowledge of invisibilities and their likely effects is key in several respects. Foremost, worldviews have an invisible but significant influence on framing and agenda setting. This is why worldviews are so important—they implicitly or explicitly direct strategic thinking, the domain of policy action. They are also conflict generators if left invisible, potentially because their underlying rationalities are not exposed. Their unseen influences on the credibility of evidence of various kinds and the priorities that are being put forward by interests can, and must, be part of what is brought into policy decision-making settings. Though such a move will be demanding of documentation as Stirling (2010) notes, the clarity that it implies in understanding claims should be welcomed. It is a route to weigh up cases and specific evidence in a less adversarial manner and arrive at conditional but pragmatic solutions. This procedural step-change into the policy arena is worth experimenting with.

Practical bridging implications follow from this. What we now know about intruding invisibilities can be thought through in day-to-day capacity and capability terms. The outputs of the Sustainable Seas Integration for Impact projects are very relevant. These were crafted to offer suggestive practical steps to help refine interrogation of “facts” and “ideas” that might go into existing policy reinterpretation or beginning the more ambitious task of policy resetting (Sustainable Seas and Le Heron, 2024). The emphasis was on co-learning about creating new capacities and capabilities, something that our consenting case study showed was urgently need to develop new sorts of forward-looking narratives. Different lines of immediate questioning unencumbered by worldview and other invisibility pre-givens are available (Sustainable Seas et al., 2023; Blackett et al., 2024; Le Heron et al., 2024).

The above suggestions go some distance to meeting the observation of an interviewee who suggested that the real challenge was to see RU as truly perceptual in nature and that the urgent priority was “getting people to reflect on what they know rather than what they do!” This distinction between description and critical thought makes a huge difference to the light that is shone on a problem. A companion and equally important impediment, noted at resource-oriented conferences in recent years, is the propensity to concentrate on what is allowed in the legislation instead of imagining what could be achieved despite the legislation. The Guidance Tools when trialed in a multiagency wānanga (collaborative workshop) (Young and Le Heron, 2024) with senior practicing policymakers was found to be extremely effective in allowing discussion to move away from immediate concerns to introducing, framing, and phrasing alternative environmental management narratives of possible co-development, each imbued with different RU implications. In short, the legislation sets parties up in opposition to each other to contest different desired futures, rather than collectively imagine new ones.

Three additional matters should also be kept to the fore when seeking to activate new directions in policy development. First, a culture that formally recognizes the mandates that existing legislation creates would be the basis for setting conversations about exposing power relations of the present legislation. This however requires an attentiveness to phrasing being used in documents and announcements so as to make obvious the freedoms that mandates allow. Second, Treaty obligations need constant review. This is not as easy as it might seem. There is always temptation to put aside persistent checking on outcomes. TAM and Treaty expectations mean the pressure to meet obligations will always be on. Third, recognizing that negotiated outcomes, rather than trade-offs, have more potential to incorporate multiple worldviews instead of working to hierarchies. None of this fits easily within the current adversarial court process, yet that very process is a pool of collective knowledge, that if refashioned is the basis for communal and collective outcomes.

As Awatere and Mark-Shadbolt (2023) have argued to the country’s parliamentarians learning how to co-govern is fundamentally shaping relations and practices, we are different from any other country in our particularities. Different kinds of matters count here; in part because multiple worldviews are beginning to be recognized and situated in place. This helps us as researchers in the Aotearoa context to pose the question: How do we collectively reimagine decision-making and risk discussions? What if economy was not first, but investment was driven with respect to environmental, societal, well-being, and holistic goals? This would generate new kinds of industry that are still “economy” but not exclusively profit driven. The dichotomy of environment versus economy needs to be shaken. Instead of being in opposition, they are all part of complex systems. The wider set of cultural influences at work in Aotearoa, as the worldviews investigated show, means that as well as the staunchly individualistic and profit privileging DSP, there are models of the world that expose the need to develop collective capacities and capabilities and account for intergenerational transfer of risk. We contend that the way we traditionally come to know or not know risk with respect to the environment is compounding the difficulty of stepping toward co-learning, co-production, and co-governance. Acknowledging and working with multiple worldviews offers a chance to shift from a focus solely on the individual to more nuanced, complex, and collectively inspired approaches.

The paper’s focus has been on making worldviews visible so that they can be engaged with. This is new and very challenging territory given that vested interests will be involved. Keeping worldviews (and positionalities and disciplinary training) in the open so that those involved can navigate through multiple conceptualizations and practices is paramount. We (the authors) have developed a “diagnostic tool” that recognizes that disputes around RU are merely the symptoms of deeper differences in worldview conceptualizations about the way the world should work (Blackett et al., 2024; Le Heron et al., 2024). To return to the opening question of the paper, “why do we argue about risk?,” we believe this paper provides a strong foundational answer: because we see and shape the world in multiple different ways, yet rarely recognize the origins of these differences. To do so leads to a grounding from which meaningful conversations about “what’s risky for you?” and “what uncertainties trouble you?” can occur. Recognizing the work that worldviews do means that we may even begin to understand and place the answers we hear to these questions. A worldview approach to RU elicits the why beyond the how of risk impasses in decision-making. This is a significant contribution to policy bridging.

The raw data (transcripts) developed through in-depth interviewing that contribute to the findings of this study are supported by the ethical protocol managed by NIWA. None of the data are publicly available because of their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants. Ethical approval for this research study was granted by the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) New Zealand for the work done under the Perceptions of Risk and Uncertainty project, which was itself part of the Sustainable Seas/Ko nga moana whakauka New Zealand National Science Challenge. For more information on the ethical protocol and the storage/release of project data contact the project manager: Paula Blackett, NIWA—[email protected].

The authors would like to acknowledge the generous contributions of time, insights, and reflection of the interviewees, policymakers, and SSNSC colleagues at large, without whom this work could not have been possible. They are grateful for the encouragement and constructive suggestions of Editor in Chief Sustainability Transitions section Professor Alastair Iles throughout the paper’s journey.

This research was wholly funded by the Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge as part of Ministry of Innovation, Business and Employment contract: C01X1901.

Contributed to conception and design: EL, RL, PB, SA, JL, JH.

Contributed to acquisition of data: EL, RL, PB, SA, JL, JH.

Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: EL, RL, PB, SA, JL, JH.

Drafted and/or revised the article: EL, RL, PB, SA, JL, JH.

Approved the submitted version for publication: EL, RL, PB, SA, JL, JH.

1.

We will interchangeably use Aotearoa New Zealand (abbreviated as Aotearoa NZ), New Zealand (NZ), and Aotearoa throughout the paper as reflects actual usage. In some cases, one term is more appropriate than the others and will be used accordingly.

2.

Mātauranga means Māori knowledge, Māori knowledge system, belief system, wisdom (all definitions informed by www.maoridictionary.co.nz).

3.

New Zealander of European descent.

4.

Maramataka = Māori lunar calendar. “The maramataka is a codified …decision-making tool that has inbuilt risk and uncertainty features. It is based on an intimate knowing of environmental processes and helps to predict environmental impacts and reduce uncertainty to maintain balance between whānau/hapū/iwi and te taiao” (Hyslop et al., 2023, p. 10).

5.

On-the-ground decision-making coalitions and groupings may occur, but worldviews may not map easily to the expected. That is, goals may agree to a point, but motivations, intentions, and subsequent action may be different.

6.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi is Aotearoa NZ’s founding document establishing rights, responsibilities, and relationships between the Crown and tangata whenua/Māori. It takes its name from the place in the Bay of Islands where it was first signed, on February 6, 1840. The Treaty of Waitangi Act (1975) sets out some of these obligations.

7.

A process set in motion in 1990s to redress breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi through compensation, return of resources, and apologies.

8.

We became increasingly curious about the immediate and longer-term governmentality of consenting situations. This fed into exploring the emergence of risk and uncertainty knowledge and their role in refreshing and deepening the knowledge interactions which all applicants and submitters meet and participate in during consenting hearings.

9.

A Permit for an activity may be issued, but Consent also has to be obtained before any activities are carried out.

10.

The “Crown” is the entity that signed the Treaty of Waitangi. The Crown is used instead of government because it indicates links to Treaty processes. It should not be equated with parliamentary government, although in practice it is usually parliamentary government that is the actor.

11.

Ngai Tahu is the iwi with mana whenua over Chatham Rise. Mana whenua: territorial rights, power from the land, authority over land or territory, jurisdiction over land or territory—power associated with possession and occupation of tribal land.

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How to cite this article: Le Heron, E, Le Heron, R, Blackett, P, Awatere, S, Logie, J, Hyslop, J. 2024. Why do we argue about risk? The invisibility of worldviews in marine decision-making. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 12(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2022.00110

Domain Editor-in-Chief: Alastair Iles, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

Knowledge Domain: Sustainability Transitions

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.