Cutting up the high country: the social construction of tenure review and ecological sustainability

Abstract

Tenure review is the name given to the process of dividing New Zealand's South Island high country Crown pastoral leases between primary production and biodiversity conservation held as freehold tenure or full Crown ownership and control respectively. The process, started without a clear statutory mandate in 1991, was subsequently legitimated by enacting the Crown Pastoral Land Act 1998. In addition to providing for the division already mentioned, the new legislation included the object s24(a)(i) that required tenure review 'promotes ecologically sustainable management' of the lands in question. The tenure review process has been accompanied by an intense contest between some stakeholders that has created polarised support for either production or conservation and their corresponding ownership form. However s24(a)(i) is relatively absent in the discourse surrounding tenure review. This research aims to investigate this absence and identify the consequences. A qualitative epistemology was adopted based on a grounded social constructionist approach. The discourse (including interviews) relating to history, legislation, government policy and reports, ecology and ecosystem management, high country science, and the current stakeholders (the scientists, the runholders, the ENGOs, Fish and Game, Ngai Tahu, the Department of Conservation and Land Information New Zealand) was analysed and interpreted from a social constructionist perspective. The emergent social constructions revealed that the sidelining of s24(a)(i) met the needs of each of the three 'official' parties to tenure review, albeit in different ways. This sidelining also had the effect of silencing those not designated as 'official' where their advocacy was based on the concepts of ecological sustainability and ecosystem management. Recommendations are made for institutional reform necessary to successfully implement what is interpreted as a particularly appropriate conceptual basis for the environmental protection of the degradation prone and productively marginal high country tussock grasslands.