The potential of Cultural Impact Assessment - how far have we come?

Abstract

This NZAIA newsletter addresses Cultural Impact Assessment (CIA) in Aotearoa New Zealand. We asked contributors to reflect on CIA, and engage in a conversation on what is working and what is not. CIAs are widely used by iwi and hapū to manage cultural impacts, but are they making a difference? To what extent are CIAs enabling iwi and hapū to have a real say over if, where and how development happens? By having a conversation on CIA, we are seeking to explore these questions and grow the collective knowledge of CIA. This article begins the conversation. Here, I share some early thoughts on CIA, from the perspective of a practitioner working for iwi and hapū to prepare CIAs, but also a fledgling academic, thinking about how we use CIA. I also write from a tauiwi perspective. I am not from this land, and therefore my views on CIA are offered respectfully and with humility - two core values of my own people and place. The impacts of development on Indigenous People is shared territory, and it is from this place that I look to contribute. I value the role of impact assessment in making good decisions, and the potential for indigenous-led CIA to ensure this happens. As an Indigenous cultural assessment, CIA reflects the aspirations of the tāngata whenua side of a treaty partnership. In this sense, CIA has the potential to contribute to a treaty-compliant resource management regime: defined by the Waitangi Tribunal (2011) as one that enables iwi/hapū to express tino rangatiranga in their traditional territories and is capable of delivering effective influence and appropriate priority to kaitiaki interests. To explore this further, I use the Aashukan Declaration as a starting point. The declaration is a set of indigenous principles for how impact assessment should be managed. It is the outcome of the coming together of Indigenous representatives from around the world to talk about impact assessment. With this starting point we can ask: To what extent does impact assessment in Aotearoa New Zealand align with these principles? By using CIA to assess cultural impacts, is the process delivering treaty-based outcomes? How far have we come?