Southern Pacific

Navigating a Future of Responsibility in the Southern Pacific Region -

We have taken Indigenous peoples and communities as a priority focus, and relationships between Indigenous peoples and later settler communities as an opportunity to highlight the concepts of co-responsibility and ethics.
The environment provides a theme for collaborative responsibility and ethics, and for shared purpose – even though the approaches may be formed from different cultural legacies.

Responsibility is a highly respected concept amongst people associated with human rights and ‘social justice, who are pro-active for the environment, sustainable economy and who work from a base of values and ethics beyond exclusive commercial interest and advantage. In this region we are prioritizing involvement with indigenous people of this region.

For those who have come as later settlers to this region, it is imperative that we orient our future in collaboration with Maori, Pacific Islands peoples and Aboriginal people. There is growing willingness to do this, while many factors, such as the globalized free market, with the myriad effects that reach into every corner of our lives and undermine values and institutional efforts to work together in ways that are more respectful of indigenous experience and knowledge. There are many contradictions, including that indigenous people as well as the rest of us, seek to engage advantageously in the global marketplace.

The groups who are working on the Charter in New Zealand are made up of different cultural and socio-professional groups, including Maori, Samoan/Pacific Island, and Pakeha (white). The fields of work include academics in Education and Management (Not-for-Profit), independent researchers and community researchers, cultural leaders and advocates, and an education professional. We have initiated a small group in Australia, who are academics and environmental researchers and educators, one of whom works with works Aboriginal person.

We find that there is a strong interest in responsibility from those associated with environmental work – in projects, research and education. Along with support for the concept of responsibility there is a tendency to find this somewhat abstract and that it needs to have practical application to be of real significance.