New Zealand community resources

This article is an offshoot of New Zealand community action focusing on community resources and assets. Resources such as networks, events and community involvement (people and relationships) can be considered as primary resources. Also resources are the activism and physical assets (or what citizens value), such as green spaces and biodiversity, cycle lanes, food initiatives, etc, from the other New Zealand community pages.

Community resources

• Vogelmorn Community Group, "charitable trust set up in 2015 which owns the land and buildings of the former bowling club. (The Hall and most of the adjacent Green are owned by Wellington City Council.) The buildings are available for rental to community groups and arts practitioners for workshops, rehearsals, classes and many other activities. VCG also organises events, or co-hosts them with other groups and individuals."
• The Commons, Christchurch
• Kiwis can do, the bank of real solutions
• Government websites: 25 easy steps towards sustainability, Oceans, Green Ribbon Awards
• wikieducator:Oil Free Aotearoa

Ecovillages

Atamai Village: Atamai Village near Motueka in the Tasman region of New Zealand's South Island, has been going since about 2007. The development was designed as an enduring settlement to accommodate approximately 200 people, living in a traditional village environment designed along permaculture principles. Families were to own private dwellings and share in 45 ha of common land. They never got to own any of the common land. Transport in the village was be by bicycle, but everyone drove cars. Resources such as water, waste management, fuel, energy and food were be have been produced and provided within the village wherever possible. This idea failed. The entire village, as well as individual house sites, was supposed to have been designed on permaculture principles to enhance both the physical and social resilience of the Atamai community. This never happened. The so-called village never actually materialised. It has been an abject failure, with only a few permanent residents. Several people purchased land within the development and then, realising their mistake, tried to put their land on the market. But there was no market, because the trustees of the property development insisted on covenants being placed on titles and those covenants acted as a deterrent to any would-be purchaser who didn't want to be part of the development. The development site is now a mass of mud and excavations with a few unattractive buildings dotted around. The area is festooned with real estate agents' "for sale" notices. The death knell of the whole venture was sounded when one of the founding trustees/ project manager, fled New Zealand to avoid his creditors, the Inland Revenue and various banks. He was bankrupt, Owing well in excess of NZ$1 million. The venture, throughout its existence, attracted the attention of the New Zealand authorities, including the Charities Commission (which revoked its charitable status, the Financial Markets Authority and local regulatory bodies. Although it was advertised as an eco-village, the excavations and constructions were carried out at enormous environmental cost, using diesel fuelled heavy excavating equipment. It was never what it was advertised to be. It had all the features of an old-fashioned commune, led by a self-styled guru, whose belief system focused on Peak oil and the end of the world as we know it. The discredited notion of millennialism, reinforced by the American-style "end of the world prepper" activities were, in reality at the heart of this failed venture. Its failure was the subject of numerous articles in the local and regional newspaper, the Nelson Mail...stuff.co.nz, June 13, 2015; stuff.co.nz, June 14, 2015; stuff.co.nz, June 13, 2015

Legal resources

River granted full rights of legal personhood

In March 2017, the New Zealand Parliament passed the "Te Awa Tupua" (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill to provision the full rights of personhood upon the Whanganui river. This landmark legislation was 140 years in the making, as the Whanganui iwi tribe had campaigned for the river to be recognised as a living entity with legal rights since the 1870s. With this new designation, if the river is harmed or contaminated it will result in the same penalties and legal ramifications as if damage or injury had been done to the tribe or any of its members, because it is now recognized as being one and the same.

Guardians from both the Whanganui iwi and the New Zealand government have been appointed to act on behalf of the river, which will be legally represented by two lawyers, and treated like a charitable trust. The legislation also provisions $80 million New Zealand dollars ($56 million) as reparations to the iwi and NZ$30 million ($21 million) toward a legal defense fund, and NZ$1 million ($700,000) to form the necessary legal framework.

Shortly after this ruling, a similar designation was given to the Ganges river by a court in India that referenced the New Zealand law as a precedent for their decision...Shareable, Tom Llewellyn, March 7, 2019

Research

From Wikipedia:New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities

The New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities states that it is an inter-disciplinary research centre "dedicated to providing the research base for innovative solutions to the economic, social, environmental and cultural development" of New Zealand urban centres. It states "87% of New Zealanders live in cities. The health and well-being of a significant proportion of (New Zealand) population is reliant on developing environments that take into account the connections between transport, design, energy, health and governance and other issues."

Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman of the University of Otago is the director and states:

The centre builds on a strong existing network of expertise. It is a partnership, led by the University of Otago, of six universities—Otago, Canterbury, Victoria, Massey, Waikato and Auckland—two Crown Research Institutes, Landcare and NIWA and BRANZ. It is positioned to work with regional councils, territorial local authorities and national agencies, with national frameworks that can accelerate urban sustainability.

Professor Howden-Chapman has been quoted as expressing concern in 2012 at the clear absence of a central government agency in New Zealand that sees urban development and sustainable cities as a priority part of its brief.

The centre has been instrumental in researching the application of indigenous knowledge to sustainable urban design.

• New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities

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