Māori and Pasifika voices to be front and centre in international climate change talks

Sunday, 30 August 2020

British High Commissioner Laura Clarke, on a recent trip to Christchurch, said the UK wants to work with Māori on its climate change agenda, 'drawing on that indigenous knowledge and perspective'.

Māori and Pasifika voices will be at the heart of major international climate change negotiations next year after the United Kingdom promised to ensure the “moral authority” of indigenous people is heard.

The UK, seeking to cement alliances in the wake of its departure from the European Union, also hopes for greater collaboration with New Zealand on trade and climate issues.

While sharing knowledge on primary industries and the agritech sector are key to discussions, the UK also wants to work with iwi.

British High Commissioner Laura Clarke says Māori voices will be front and centre of international climate change talks.

“We’re very focused on engaging with Māori business and understanding where we can find benefits in terms of the free trade agreement for both the UK and New Zealand, particularly thinking about the Māori economy and Māori small and medium-size enterprises,” British High Commissioner Laura Clarke told Stuff on a recent visit to Christchurch.

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Clarke believes there is opportunity for greater collaboration between New Zealand and the UK.

The UK also wants the voices of native peoples to be a key part of discussions at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP), which it is hosting with the Scottish government in Glasgow in November 2021.

“We want to work with Māori on our climate change agenda, drawing on that indigenous knowledge and perspective,” Clarke said.

“The UK, with its COP presidency as a whole, is wanting to put indigenous perspectives at the heart of its work.

“We’re saying, ‘We’ve got this shared planet, we have these shared taonga, we need to work together going forward, and where there are difficulties we need to be honest about it and work on them’.”

New Zealand and the UK formally launched free trade negotiations in June, aimed at securing a Free Trade Agreement with the UK following Brexit.

Clarke, who last year expressed regret on behalf of the UK government for the deaths of nine Māori during the first encounters between Captain Cook and tangata whenua, said the UK is working hard to increase its efforts in the Pacific, recently doubling its number of diplomatic missions there.

“I think the UK stepped back a bit too much from the Pacific in the 1990s, early 2000s, and we recognise that.”

She also suggested Pasifika concerns would not be overlooked in the coming climate change talks.

“These countries are on the front line in terms of climate change impacts.

“We want to work with them on that because they bring a particular kind of moral authority to these conversations, and we want to work closely with other partners like Australia and New Zealand in the region.”

During her trip to Christchurch Clarke discussed opportunities to collaborate with Ngāi Tahu, met those working in the Antarctic community and talked trade with businesses.

Among them was Greenvale Pastures in Methven, which produces high-quality specialist seeds and cereals using environmentally sustainable farming practices.

“They’re doing really innovative work in terms of agritech and making sure that as you do your farming you’re not using any more water or putting any more inputs into the soil than you should, and a whole load of things you can do in terms of using technology and best practice.

“There’s a lot of that sort of thinking going on in the UK as well, and so if the UK and New Zealand can come together to collaborate more and share that best practice more widely across the world, collectively that’s going to reduce overall emissions quite a lot.”

Environmental concerns must also be at the heart of the global recovery from Covid-19, Clarke said, an area in which the UK and New Zealand have already worked together.

“While we’re all investing massively in the economic recovery we need to be setting our countries on low carbon trajectories, and not just replicating what we had before in terms of energy mix and ways of living and working. We’re trying to do something better.”

A shift in thinking could also make the most of the two countries’ export sectors by co-operating and selling into third markets by taking advantage of counter-seasonality – so there is no competition between the likes of Waikato lamb farmers and their Welsh counterparts.

And despite recent grandstanding from US president Donald Trump about coronavirus in New Zealand, Clarke has been impressed with how it has been handled here, suggesting others could learn from putting science at the forefront of public messaging.

“Covid is of course a global health crisis but it’s also a communications crisis – how do you communicate this to your population, how do you nudge the right behaviours, how do you get people to comply with public health guidelines.

“All the communication around it has been really strong – the concept of a bubble I think originated here but is now being used quite widely elsewhere, including in the UK.

“That’s incredibly powerful.”