Motu researchers release a guide aimed at assisting communities facing large, disruptive changes

By Catherine Leining, a Policy Fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research*

The challenges our communities are facing don’t come with a manual.

How and where should households, businesses and marae recover and rebuild in the devastating wake of Cyclone Gabrielle knowing future storms lie ahead?

What changes will enable farming and forestry operations to thrive under carbon and other environmental limits?

How should skilled workers and their families in places like Taranaki or Southland prepare for fundamental changes to the sectors for which they trained?

How can communities help meet the needs of those struggling most with the rising cost of living?

These challenges are not short shocks from which things can return to normal. They require transitions to new ways of life.

Imagine it was possible for everyone involved – community groups, iwi and hapū, businesses and unions, researchers, educators and local government officials – to plan ahead together to address these challenges, boost their resilience, minimise the damages, manage the costs, and create new opportunities in fair ways that look after everyone involved.

Motu Research has released a new guide to help communities in Aotearoa New Zealand transform these kinds of disruptive changes into ‘just transitions.’ Just transitions use collective processes that are inclusive, produce fair and equitable outcomes, support wellbeing and leave no one behind. This is not just a bunch of vague ideals. Just transitions are a serious business needing urgent attention and action.

The guide covers four stages of community-driven just transition processes: connecting, planning, acting and adapting. It suggests the ways diverse communities can develop shared visions and work together to achieve them. The guide draws on tikanga and mātauranga Māori and includes case studies of transitions led by iwi, hapū and Māori communities as well as others. It gives people ideas, methods, tools and links to more resources.

The guide was developed by a team of over 25 contributors, led by Motu Research. It was grounded in research, including an international literature review and a user needs survey. We held five dialogue meetings with over 70 community practitioners and experts. We had seven external peer reviewers from Aotearoa and overseas.

The guide was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and supported with co-funding from the Aotearoa Foundation.

Over the past year of preparing the guide, the most important thing our team did was to listen. We listened to community members sharing about major disruptions they have experienced. Causes included severe weather destroying neighbourhoods and livelihoods, economic changes shutting down large employers, the lasting impacts of Covid-19 on health and wellbeing, threats to taonga species and traditional kai, or government decisions on resource management.

We heard how some communities have responded to these challenges by bringing people together to hold hard conversations, develop a shared vision for the future, plan ahead and take action.

We heard from entrepreneurs creating businesses with the goal of creating new jobs, strengthening communities, growing sustainably and restoring the environment.

We heard from innovators establishing new networks for sharing information and resources to boost collaboration and support those least resilient to change.

We heard from iwi and hapū taking an intergenerational, principles-led approach to their own development and drawing from tikanga and mātauranga Māori to help lead regional change in ways that give better effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

We heard about the critical importance of bringing underserved and underrepresented voices to the decision-making table. This is important, because people affected by a transition begin from different starting points.

From this, we learned community-led transition processes are hard, slow, messy and resource intensive. And they are essential to real progress. This is because they build the understanding, capability, resilience and social licence to manage disruptive changes in ways that safeguard both people and the environment. A just transition approach brings communities together.

There is no single definition of ‘just transitions.’ The idea emerged from the North American labour movement decades ago to protect workers facing job losses in polluting industries. Today, the term brings dimensions of justice together with inclusiveness and wellbeing.

The concepts of justice, inclusiveness and wellbeing are universal. We don’t always agree on how to achieve them. But in seeking to make them a reality, we find common ground and make progress as a society.

A guide to just transitions for communities in Aotearoa New Zealand can be read online or downloaded from the website of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Additional project resources, including a webinar recording introducing the guide, are available from the website of Motu Research.

Just transitions will happen by intention, not by accident. And in Aotearoa New Zealand, our communities can help lead the way.

*The development of the guide was co-led by Catherine Leining and Troy Baisden at Motu Research. Catherine participated in her capacity as a Motu Policy Fellow and not as a Commissioner with He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission. This post was first published by interest.co.nz on 18 August 2023.