Protecting Paradise: Promoting collaboration over contestation in community-based environmental projects

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Speaker: Dr Marie McEntee, University of Auckland

There is increasing requirement in New Zealand for scientists to partner with affected communities to address environmental issues. This presents considerable challenges for scientists who often have limited experience collaborating with communities. In this presentation, Marie will draw on her experiences engaging in two environmental projects, to outline the challenges these present for scientists engaging in community-based projects:

The Great Barrier Island Ecology Vision project saw Marie work collaboratively with the community of an offshore island to create a vision for the island’s ecological future. The project emerged out of years of contestation over Great Barrier possibly becoming ‘Predator Free’ and concern this caused in the community over the method of control, the scale of operation and the potential effects on non-target species. Marie provides insights on how to co-develop a community vision through bringing together very disparate perspectives.

Kauri Rescue is a citizen science project which engages the public in refining a tool for the treatment of a disease devastating New Zealand’s iconic kauri tree. Marie discusses the challenges of positioning this project away from citizens being seen just as data collectors, to citizens as project collaborators contributing to science knowledge, developing tools and managing project engagement.

Together these projects highlight the challenges of community-based science, including: over-simplification of the complexity of communities, scientists’ resistance to co-development, over-reliance on the public understanding model of science that assumes education will bring about public support, under-estimation of how wider contexts and power dynamics affect project outcomes and relationships, and a lack of consideration of the post-project period.

Marie McEntee is a social scientist from the University of Auckland, New Zealand who focuses on issues that lie under the broad umbrella of "Science in Society" with particular focus on socio-environmental issues. She is a recipient of a National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award for her teaching of science communication. She is currently on sabbatical researching remote inhabited islands to explore community-based projects that focus on environmental pest and disease management.