Coastal Cultural Health Index
This Coastal Cultural Health Index (CCHI) for Te Awanui was developed as part of the Manaaki Taha Moana (MTM) research programme. MTM aims to “restore and enhance coastal ecosystems and their services of importance to iwi, through a better knowledge of these ecosystems and the degradation processes that affect them”.
The CCHI for Te Awanui project builds on previous research to construct an index (i.e., a collection of indicators) to evaluate the health of Te Awanui Tauranga Harbour from a Tangata Whenua perspective. The CCHI project hopes to enable iwi and hapu, as well as organisations such as Bay of Plenty Regional Council, to monitor the “health of the harbour” from a Maori cultural perspective. Ideally, the CCHI will provide a basis for monitoring changes into the future, with a focus on areas of major degradation or biodiversity hotspots.
This report is the first of two CCHI for Te Awanui reports that examine the use of matauranga maori as a tool for building integrative environmental monitoring strategies. This report seeks to develop and apply a cultural framework for the formulation of cultural indicators that will be used to evaluate the marine and coastal environments of Te Awanui, Tauranga Moana. Click on the link below to view the first report:
This first report incorporates the first three (of five) sections of the Te Kupenga Tairoa Framework. The first section: Nga Taura Here, involved an extensive literature review of documents and traditional accounts with particular relevance to the cultural perspective of Te Awanui.
The second stage: Te Kupenga, aimed to identify the uniqueness of hapu interaction within their rohe moana. Two hapu from Te Awanui, Te Wahanau a Tauwhao ki Otawhiwhi and Ngati Taka participated as case studies groups. Te Kupenga goes further to identify the concerns of tangata whanau and categorise major trends in cultural issues.
Section three of the framework: Nga Punga, revised and collaborated sections one and two of the framework. A suite of cultural indicators was identified with reference to previous cultural indicator literature.
The second report will further refine CCHI for Te Awanui and the methods of development. From the draft CCHI, numerical indices will be formulated to enable quantification and analysis of CCHI. Methods and framework design will be further refined in order to ensure a user-friendly transferable monitoring tool kit.