About Waiheke Marine Project

 

The Waiheke Marine Project began in April 2019, when a dedicated group of people from the Waiheke Collective became a sub-group and held a series of community meetings across Waiheke to call for volunteers to protect and regenerate the Waiheke Marine environment.

The project is an important pilot programme that could provide a model for implementation across Aotearoa/New Zealand showing how community consultation can help marine conservation and protection.

This is consistent with Sea Change Project 2016 (Tai Timu Tai Pari), when the Stakeholder Working Group considered that any marine protection proposals for Waiheke Island and Aotea-Great Barrier Island be developed by the communities themselves.

Waiheke ki uta, Waiheke ki tai, Waiheke ki tua

Waiheke here, to the sea and into the future

Actions:

Talking with people who live and work on the island and who want to protect and regenerate the marine environment

Actions of the Waiheke Marine Project

  • Researching the science of the current state of the marine environment and how to protect it,

  • Gathering existing information on rules, regulations, laws and policies that can protect the sea and assessing whether they are working,

  • Talking with people who live and work on the island and who want to protect and regenerate the marine environment

  • Holding key events to get diverse groups of people talking and listening to fishers (both commercial and recreational), boaties, iwi, landowners, business and tourism operators, students and rangatahi, government agencies, conservation groups, academics, scientists and any other interested parties.

Throughout 2020, the Waiheke Marine Project shared the agreed actions and proposals with the community and work to promote understanding and implementation.  Proposed and agreed-upon actions will be presented to the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) of Sea Change which in turn reports to the Ministers of Conservation and Fisheries.

In 2020 we held a Future Search event at Ahipao, Matiatia, Waiheke Island

 

Project goals:

Coordinate action for marine regeneration on Waiheke Island 

Project goals phase two

● To continue awareness raising and have inclusive and consensus driven conversations about the health of the Waiheke Island marine space that encourages critical thinking and whole systems solutions,
● To support leadership by Ngāti Paoa and mana whenua priorities for Waiheke Island, actively partnering as Tangata Tiriti and Tangata whenua in the WMP,
● To seek, collate and openly share all knowledge streams about Waiheke’s marine environment to empower local decision making for marine protection and regeneration,
● To support the build of youth capacity for sustainable environmental care,
● To catalyse, activate, and support actions for local marine environment protection and regeneration,
● To develop open-source action and evaluation tools to support self-managed and ongoing marine protection and regeneration actions at Waiheke Island,
● To share lessons with others pursuing marine protection and regeneration; locally in Tīkapa Moana/Te Moananui-a-Toi, nationally in Aotearoa/New Zealand and globally.
● To attract sufficient resources (funding and in-kind support) that can be leveraged to efficiently operate a backbone structure to deliver these goals.

In collaboration with Waiheke Collective

A project within Waiheke Collective

The Collective was formed in 2017, it includes: Ngāti Paoa, Auckland Council, Hauraki Gulf Conservation Trust, Forest & Bird, QEII National Trust, Department of Conservation (DOC), Waiheke Resources Trust, and other local conservation organisations and individuals. The vision of the Waiheke Collective/Te Korowai O Waiheke is: “working together to activate & amplify efforts for a healthy & thriving Waiheke natural environment”.

All initiatives that arise out of the Waiheke Collective (like the Waiheke Marine Project and Te Korowai o Waiheke) are committed to upholding the Charter of the Collective that gives guidelines for operating in a participatory and consensus building manner. Monthly meetings of the Waiheke Collective enable ongoing connection with the various environmental initiatives on the Island.