Care-full Science

In the early 2000s, there wasn’t any funding for research into kauri dieback. There were scientists at a Crown Research Institute who wanted to investigate the problem, but they didn’t have the resources to do so. The following quote is from one of those scientists. It took advocacy from different types of people to come together and make the case for research.

"...the reason why [my research supervisor] was interested was because [someone] from Forest and Bird who used to be the Chair of Forest and Bird Waitakere lived here. There was a man […] who lived in Titirangi, and there was a park ranger […] who said, "Something's wrong with the kauri." So it was a local resident, a park ranger, and a Forest and Bird person. And they said to Ross, "Something's wrong with kauri. There's something wrong with them. It's not right." And they knew because of longstanding -- [the park ranger] was amazing. So we were brought in to investigate it."

Public and community input are valuable in identifying ecosystem threats because they are on the ground, in the forest, on a regular basis. 

This site in Waitakere became “ground zero” for kauri dieback research because with the advocacy of these community members, practitioners, and scientists, the first official research funding came from Auckland Regional Council. They were given $80,000 to determine the problem with the trees, do a survey, and then analyse the results with molecular biology.

Scientists faced a competitive race for funding to even get the chance to study kauri dieback. The same researcher describes that environment below.

"We were set up to compete. The CRIs and even the universities. That's our funding model. So I'm not blaming anyone. I've written bids against others knowing full well that I would really like to include people but didn't because if they got the funding I wouldn't. This was in the early days, right? We were set up to [compete] and it tore the heart out of the science community because some of those people, like you saw at [the] Research Centre, were amazing colleagues. They worked together."

This competition made it difficult, if not impossible, for scientists to collaborate across research institutions, which meant information was siloed. Rather than working cohesively against the pathogen threatening Aotearoa’s taonga, the science system at this time could only support fragmented efforts.

One of the barriers to robust collaboration was the challenge of data sharing. If there is a common goal of tackling a biosecurity threat, you might imagine that everyone would rush to share all of the available information. Due to a number of factors, the reality is a bit more complicated. In the quote below, a researcher shares his frustration with self-serving attitudes toward data.

"I think there's always a sense of ownership, particularly among researchers, a sense of protection of one's own data. So that's common, and that probably explains a lot of it. A lot of effort goes in–a lot of effort and money goes into collecting data, and I think people are reluctant to just hand it over to others to do great things with, when they're hoping that they're going to do great things with it."

As kauri dieback research developed so have more collaborative ways of working not only with data but also with communities. There was an initiation of more careful science.

Monitoring and science-based management are the prominent approaches to tree health in Aotearoa New Zealand, which means that the wider public and Māori were left out of care for kauri when the pathogen hit. The economic, ecological, and scientific values of kauri took precedence, while social and cultural values featured less in the conversation. 

The researcher from above describes his work trying to shift this dynamic and make data more available.

"[Our work is] really trying to develop a surveillance and data management system that works for everybody. And I think, well, at its very foundation, it's elevating Māori into this space. And the approach is really to, at the very foundation, make the surveillance system work for Māori. And therefore, it starts out at the very foundation being hapu-centric and a system that respects data sovereignty and cultural authority. And then allows other agencies, researchers, universities, crown agencies such as DOC and MPI, to come into this system to access data, contribute data and to facilitate connection between Western scientists and managers and mana whenua on the land."

In the past, Māori have been shut out of biosecurity management, but imagine a new system where indigenous access to and interpretation of information takes precedence, while Western scientists and managers can contribute and collaborate as partners. This approach builds trust between groups while ensuring indigenous values and agency are respected in biosecurity work.

Below, a researcher talks about the importance of diverse management options that can get more people working on biosecurity in tandem.

"There has to be multiple solutions; there'll be scenarios where you can't use phosphite, there'll be scenarios you might not be able to use [...] I mean, I don't know, it's like any disease, there'll be ecosystems or types of trees, or types of —that might need something in spring and something in summer and [...] I don't think there'll be a silver bullet, in my heart of hearts. So yeah, there'll be a toolbox of different—but that's the point of having different solutions. Or there may just be different ways that people would prefer—like a farmer might want to use a fungicide, and another farmer might want to use a biological control, and another farmer might want to use a mātauranga solution. So it should also be about the kaitiaki or the guardian of that tree, who should have the choice to choose their toolbox, as well."

Reaching all of these people comes with its own challenges though. Who can show up on a week night to listen to someone talk about the importance of washing your boots? Who wouldn’t attend? How do you reach the people who are distrustful of the biosecurity sector, busy, or uninterested?

People are central to answering the scientific questions, but their importance extends beyond who produces and has access to scientific data. Who is enlisted in the on-the-ground biosecurity work, and what are their values, motivations, and worldviews? In the following quote, a researcher discusses all of the perspectives you have to work with when a plant pathogen like kauri dieback is soil-borne and moves with human disturbance.

"At some moment you realise, people, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. Like a lot of biosecurity things, it's [kauri dieback is] human-mediated to some degree. And, even though myrtle rust is a little bit autonomous, the kauri dieback's autonomous too (for it's water stage, right?) Soil-borne movement is about engaging people, engaging public, engaging forest users, engaging communities, engaging the residents in Titirangi, trampers, hikers, pig hunters, conservationists, researchers [...] And then when you've got kauri in an urban ecosystem like Auckland, it's about landscaping, gardening, road building, energy companies digging, and telecommunications companies digging up [...] So, how do you engage with people [...] and communicators and people that have other networks?"

All of these groups have different needs, motivations, and knowledge, so being actively involved in mitigating the effects of a pathogen like kauri dieback requires a range of approaches.

Being trustworthy and maintaining reciprocal relationships is important. A kairangahau, or Māori researcher, discusses how to do this in the following quote.

"Identifying key people in those regions that could help share that information more broadly in their community. So they're the people that the community might trust or may have an existing relationship with. So getting those types of people involved. Also, community forums, so wānanga, hui, those sorts of things. I will say, [are] also pretty important for helping share and spread the information."

Many involved with kauri dieback now recognize that it is vital to use trusted channels of communication through partnerships with local leaders or community forums to reach the public. Direct conversations with community members also allow for a two-way dialogue, where peoples’ questions can be answered straight away in a way that newspaper articles or signage can’t replicate.

When the public and policymakers get together to talk about any type of decision-making, conversations can get contentious. Often these disputes arise from underlying value differences rather than the specific policy disagreements. Below, a civil servant talks about value disputes.

"That fact that when people care differently, sometimes that's a barrier because they get bogged down in how they're feeling that their value is different. And it starts from a point of caring, but often, I think, actually what it ends up as a point of anger which is quite different, isn't it? Or maybe not mutually exclusive but maybe gets in the way of what we might think of as the action that comes out of caring normally."

The anger that this public-sector interviewee describes can inhibit working relationships.

That anger described in the last quote stems, in part, from people arguing about values not just policy proposals. Disagreements become more about legitimizing worldviews than care for trees and feel deeply personal. This is often not acknowledged.

The same civil servant speaks more about unspoken values below.

"I think management agencies and publics and all sorts, people are constantly making value-based judgements about what they prioritise or care about or whatever, but often in ways that are perpetuating colonial power structures and norms and stuff. But in ways which are often unconscious. We're not explicit about the fact that we're making a decision to prioritise this value over this value because this one value is so entrenched as being the only value through colonial norms, right, that people don't even realise it's a value."

Those in power may not even realise that their values are based in the status quo of management decisions which is in turn based in a system borne from colonisation.

In order to confront this reality, those underlying values first have to come to light. The interviewee spoke about a court case where the judge’s ruling referenced an indigenous set of values as an example of progress in being explicit about what drives decisions. Read the thought's below where our civil servant speaks as a policymaker.

"And I think, across a whole lot of things, we have to get better at acknowledging where multiple competing values exist, and negotiating ways around them or understanding when one might prevail over another or whatever, but, particularly in that kind of colonisation space, one of the key things is for us to start, actually, explicitly acknowledging that there are trade-offs happening constantly because, and that's one example where that indigenous value-set has been explicitly prioritised, but, as you say, the reverse is happening constantly, but often it's totally unconscious because it's just normative."

Those indigenous value sets lead to different priorities than the colonial status quo.

When Māori perspectives are considered, biosecurity becomes about more than ecosystem health and economic protection. Below, a kairangahau (Māori researcher) describes the particular significance trees can have in ancestral lines.

"We were up on the East Coast recently in Te Araroa and they've got a pōhutukawa up there called Te Waha O Rerekohu. And talking to the locals up there, they were telling us about the history of that tree and who it represents and what that person meant to the community and why that tree has that status that it currently has. And for them it's a direct connection back to their tīpuna Nga Rerekohu […] so it would be a break on that connection if they were to lose that tree."

That connection back to tīpuna (ancestors) can only be taken into account when Māori perspectives are included. Identity can play a role in how we perceive the dangers of pathogens, but many other factors shape how people view threats to plant life.

This quote below is from the civil servant who discusses the role of globalisation in spreading plant disease.

"Pathogens are just so—this bleak future for us, that really is [a] predictable consequence of globalisation. But it's just one symptom of something which is quite profoundly problematic, I think, on a whole range of societal and environmental levels and highlights how vulnerable indigenous ecosystems and peoples are, in that kind of, colonised, globalised world. But, and also, then you look at things, some of the amazing collaborations that have happened, in that pathogen's space, where we have, sort of, re-centered to some extent, indigenous ecosystems and peoples that actually—they are some really powerful opportunities there as well." 

From the interviewee’s perspective, globalisation is what brings foreign plant material, which can carry diseases, to vulnerable ecosystems like those in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Maybe the organisms that cause plant disease aren't the villains in the story, however. They only cause harm when they are thrown out of equilibrium or brought out of their natural environment.

"Microbes are everywhere […] They are all across our body. They are within our body. They are everywhere. They are not bad. They serve a function. And it's that part of realising a tree is not a tree. It is a community of organisms that all live together. [...] Where everything's in balance, [microbes] don't continuously cause huge disease issues. When we have that level of manipulation, or if there's some form of change, or if you're moving [them] from one area to a new area— that's when we start to see the diseases appear. But, in a normal ecosystem, it's all in a level of balance."

This quote brings forward the idea that a single organism, like a tree, can be the home to countless creatures, microbes, and fungi who call it home. When we think of the forest as this complex system, it changes the way we value and interact with it.

Below, a researcher talks about her interest in trees as elements in wider systems of life.

"...it's that dependency of all living beings, with its environment to create that overall understanding that it is not about individual tree species, or individual [inaudible] but how everything is linked as to that system for understanding and caring for the system. It's almost a mission because tree is only one component. It might be an important component, but its role, its function within that system, which I think, is required to really provide care for systems in the environment we're in."

In her eyes, care for our environment requires understanding the role that each component plays. Caring for trees requires understanding how they support and are supported by other living and elemental aspects of the forest in order to identify and remedy problems.