Keynote Speakers
Gail Tipa
Kai Tahu
The potential for collaborations between Māori and non-Māori to enhance future environmental management.
Māori are particularly sensitive to the use and development of their lands, waters and taonga and hold distinct perspectives concerning their cultural identity and their custodial obligations to manage these resources.
There is enormous potential for the use of mātauranga Māori to enhance our understanding of the environment, to discuss appropriate use and development, and provide a more holistic and integrated perspective to planning and policy. The current resource management reforms provide a significant opportunity for New Zealand to move beyond the status quo and implement innovative approaches that recognise the positive contribution mātauranga Māori can play in management decision-making processes.
This presentation will provide practical examples where Māori and non-Māori have worked together in a number of environmental contexts. A particular focus will be the contribution of geographers to advancing many of these innovations.
Biography
Gail completed a BA at the University of Otago and taught for six years at schools in Dunedin and the Taieri before completing a Masters degree in Resource and Regional Planning. She then worked in the planning field firstly for the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand and then for the Southern Regional Health Authority.
In 1996 Gail began consultancy work, being involved with the Ngāi Tahu claim and other iwi resource management projects. Gail completed a PhD (Otago: 2003) focusing on environmental co-management from an indigenous perspective and on retaining the character and taonga in a range of waterways. Her work in improving the interface between indigenous cultures and environmental decision-making has been adopted internationally.
She has represented her rununga and iwi on committees and Boards. She continues to hold responsibilities for resource management on behalf of Te Runanga O Moeraki. In 2020 Gail received the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and environmental management. Gail has held several governance roles within Ngāi Tahu and Crown organisations.
Katharine McKinnon
University of Canberra
Resilience in relationship: Curiosity, possibility and Living ‘the good life’
Many of our key social institutions are predicated on delivering a good life for citizens. But what is a good life? Whose ‘good life’ are we talking about? And whose knowledge counts in efforts to shape a good life for others? In the Anthropocene it is increasingly clear that the good life of one is bound up with the good life of many others, human and non-human, with whom we share the Earth. Thus the good life that we share with one-another, and the livelihoods that sustain us, are multi-species and diverse. Unfortunately, our key social institutions tend to offer a narrow range of strategies and solutions that seldom reflect this diverse and interdependent reality.
Drawing on her research in health, education and international development, Professor McKinnon discusses how curiosity-driven research and an ethics of possibility are crucial to efforts to build more-than-human communities that can flourish in the long term.
Biography
Professor Katharine McKinnon is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Canberra. For the past 20 years she has worked with a broad range of communities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, engaging in qualitative and participatory social research for community learning and development. Her current research considers questions of: how to achieve gender equity in ways that suit the lives and livelihoods of people in their different places and communities; how to reshape enterprises and organisations around priorities of care and inclusivity; and how to put an ethics of care for people and environment at the heart of economies and livelihoods.
Katharine has published extensively on topics of community learning and development, and economies of care. Her most recent book, Birthing Work: The Collective Labour of Childbirth highlights the human and more-than-human interdependence that is at the foundation of family life and livelihood. Her work on community development practice in northern Thailand is published as a monograph in Development Professionals in Northern Thailand: Hope, Politics and Practice (2012). She has contributed to several key texts in her field, including The Handbook of Diverse Economies, Postdevelopment in Practice, and her work has also been published in leading journals in the discipline. She currently volunteers as Chair of the inaugural Board of the Directors for the Community Economies Institute, a not-for-profit member based organization dedicated to furthering research, education and advocacy for economic practices shaped around an ethical concern for that ‘surviving well together’.
Julian Agyeman
Tufts University
Just Sustainabilites in Policy, Planning and Practice
In his talk, Julian will outline the concept of just sustainabilities as a response to the ‘equity deficit’ of much sustainability thinking and practice. He will explore his contention that who can belong in our cities will ultimately determine what our cities can become. He will illustrate his ideas with examples from urban planning and design, food justice and the ‘Minneapolis Paradox’.
Biography
Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA FRGS is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the originator of the increasingly influential concept of just sustainabilities, the intentional integration of social justice and environmental sustainability. He centers his research on critical explorations of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the urban environment, whether mediated by governments or social movement organizations, and their effects on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity.
He believes that what our cities can become (sustainable, smart, sharing and resilient) and who is allowed to belong in them (recognition of difference, diversity, and a right to the city) are fundamentally and inextricably interlinked. We must therefore act on both belonging and becoming, together, using just sustainabilities as the anchor, or face deepening spatial and social inequities and inequalities.
He is the author or editor of 12 books, including Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003), Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability (MIT Press, 2011), and Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities (MIT Press, 2015), one of Nature’s Top 20 Books of 2015. In 2018, he was awarded the Athena City Accolade by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, for his “outstanding contribution to the field of social justice and ecological sustainability, environmental policy and planning. In November 2021, he was invited by then Boston Mayor-Elect Michelle Wu to be a Transition Advisor on her Transition Committee.
Rebecca Lave
Indiana University
Critical physical geography in practice: Our depth perception improves when we combine biophysical and social lenses
The widening gap between critical human and physical geography raises concerns about the long-term viability of our field and spurs regular calls for reintegration. Even a brief review of these calls makes two points glaringly clear: this discussion has been going on for a long, long time and, given its regular reoccurrence, it would seem we have little to show for it. I argue here that there is already a strong and growing body of work that draws together critical human and physical geography: critical physical geography (CPG). Individually or in teams, critical physical geographers are bridging the gap, combining insights from climatology, geomorphology, biogeography and remote sensing with approaches from political economy, feminist geography, STS, and environmental justice. The key characteristics that unify this work are 1) its emphasis on treating biophysical processes and unequal social power relations with equal seriousness, 2) its acknowledgement of the politics of knowledge production, and 3) its normative agenda of promoting eco-social transformation. Using examples from CPG research, I argue that combining critical human and physical geography lenses allows us to see eco-social issues differently and more deeply than current environmental narratives.
Biography
Rebecca Lave is a Professor of Geography at Indiana University and President-elect of the American Association of Geographers. Her research takes a Critical Physical Geography approach, combining political economy, science and technology studies, and fluvial geomorphology to analyze stream restoration, the politics of environmental expertise, and community-based responses to flooding. She has published in journals ranging from Science to Social Studies of Science and is the author of two monographs: Fields and Streams: Stream Restoration, Neoliberalism, and the Future of Environmental Science (2012, University of Georgia Press) and Streams of Revenues: The Restoration Economy and the Ecosystems it Creates (2021 MIT Press; co-written with Martin Doyle).