MAVORA Development of a Planning Process for Reconciliation of Interests in Wilderness K. F. O'Connor • G .W. Batchelor • J. J. Davison Lincoln Papers in Resource Management No. 4 Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute, Lincoln College Published by Centre for Resource Management ISBN 0-908584-75-X ISSN 0111-1809 MAVORA Development of a Planning Process for Reconciliation of. Interests in Wilderness :s- "C ..! ·c:; c 0 (.) ~ Q) .c m>. E "'c m c -:::s 0 E "C c m "C c :i c m E m... 0 > m :E MAVORA Development of a Planning Process for Reconciliation of Interests in Wilderness K.F. O'Connor, G.W. Batchelor and Jenny J. Davison Lincoln Papers in Resource Management No. 4 Published by Centre for Resource Management for Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute Lincoln College, New Zealand, September 1982 PREFACE The present work is subtitled 11 Development of J Planning Process for Reconciliation of Interests in Wilderness. This title introduces three important elements. First, it is a particular kind of study. Second, it is oriented to reconciling conflicting interests. Third, it deals with wild land in public ownership. We have attempted to do much more than present a report involving inventory and assessment of resources and recommendations of a package of resource uses. Certainly from the beginning this project has had as its main puroose the formulation of a multi-objective use plan, producing a recommended use planning outline for the Mavora Lakes area. It was with this aim that a proposal was submitted to the Director General of Lands to secure financial support for the project. It was consistent with this stated purpose that the Department of Lands and Survey financially suoported the original field work and collation of information with a view to assisting its own decisions on land management for the areas of its responsibility. It became evident as the first draft of recommended use plannin1 outline was being prepared in 1976, that there were profound conflicts between different possible uses of the area and there also appeared to be major differences of attitude between different national and local government agencies. Any recommendations that vte might make to the agencies involved concerning resource uses for the future would have lacked cogency if they did nothing to resolve such conflicts or differences. Study of new approaches to resource mana~ement and to land evaluation in particular became essential. Whereas most New Zealand land planning studies hitherto ~ad emphasised land inventory and capability assessment, we found that the required recommendations themselves demanded foundations in the socio-economic as well as in the physical or ecological sphere. Diligent use of the now bountiful international literature on land evaluation and resource managenent and planning allowed us to understand the kinds of approach that were necessary to integrate socio-economic with physical and ecological considerations. ~ethods had been developed in other countries for integrated resource planning and mana0enent, as conflict resolution among land use interests is now commonly called. ~ost of these methods were found to be based on resource inventory and interpretation procedures which would have required far more expenditure of money and manpower than we had available, more indeed than we believed the Mavora area could at present justify. We found that we had to develop new operational procedures to suit our mountain wilderness problem. Our objective in this respect became the development of resource evaluation and use planning procedures which would allow the major directions of use to be rationally decided, at the same time identifying the supplementary studies likely to be necessary for consequential decisions. One of the important geographic features of New Zealand is that it is predominantly hilly and mountainous. It is a remarkable accomplishment that this complex terrain should have been so well inventoried in terms of topography, geology, soils and land units by the Department of Lands and Survey, Geological Survey of the Depart­ ment of Scientific and Industrial Research, Soil Bureau of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and Water and Soil Division of the Ministry of Works and Development respectively. Use suitability assessments, however, must consider the resource at a dimension appropriate to each use for which suitability is being independently estimated. Among the potential uses of the Mavora are pastoralism with its extensive ranging of livestock, wildlife conservation with extensive ranging of birds, recreation with the important elements of landscape viewing and wilderness and nature experience, and water production and management from extensive catchments. Each of these uses warrants resource evaluation at dimensions far larger than the bounds of the individually mapped land unit components. Furthermore, design of such uses in harmony with mountain nature requires that planning must take account of the systematic unities in landscape, as well as of the differences between its components. These considerations of dimension and of system unity suggested that we should incorporate the land systems concepts of Christian (1958). We believe that these concepts contribute materially to the discernment of order in the midst of variety represented by resource inventory. They also allowed us to prepare economically a planning outline suitable for primary decision making. It has already been suggested that land systems may have great value as a base for primary land use decisions in a wider range of situations in New Zealand where integration of uses is sought (O'Connor 1978, Mathieson 1976). We affirm the ii more traditional view that use capability for individual uses should be assessed for individual land units as the need arises for second-order decisions on actual practice. The socio-economic information incorporated in this study may not always suffice for the second-order decisions that will be necessary to implement the use recommendations arising from the primary assessment. We consider, however, that sufficient kinds of socio-economic information have been integrated in the planning process outlined here, for local, regional and central government personnel to accept the primary evaluation we have made. If they disagree with us in assess­ ments or weighting of social interests, then it will be easy for them to insert new values and examine the consequences in the planning process. If new recommen­ dations would arise from alteration of assessed values or weightings then it may be prudent to assess socio-economic conditions more carefully. We believe that they should find it a relatively straightforward exercise to gather the further detail if it be required. We believe that the constant clarification of values and the recurrent confrontation of values with facts which are at the heart of resource management (Davidoff and Reiner 1961, Kaplan 1958, O'Connor 1978) will be made more productive and less burdensome because the planning process which we have developed provides a methodic context for these activities. This study took longer to complete than its complexity and scope warranted. The study has been through three major phases, each of which has had its own character and reflects the state of the art for the authors at the time. The first phase of work involved the collation and interpretation of resource data. It led to a set of recommendations which were grounded as much on the intuitions of the authors as on the resource facts collated. As indicated earlier, such a basis would not have been cogent for resolving the conflicts between resource uses and between resource management agencies. The second phase of work involved a structuring of the planning process in which representatives of such resource management agencies and interest groups could be positively consulted. From this phase a draft report emerged which was submitted for comment to the sponsors. The third phase has involved the senior author in the revision of the presentation of the planning process and findings into their present form. Interruptions occurred between each phase, first from the departure of the second author to resume a teaching career ~nd the more urgent demands on the other authors of the preparation for and iii compilation of proceedings from the 1977 Conference on the Conservation of High Mountain Resources and their involvement in studies of nationwide recreation use of mountain lands, and finally for the senior author from the recurrent tasks of a University Institute post. These delays have been turned to profit. As a teacher in resource management programmes I have used the "Mavora Planning Process" for nearly four years at Lincoln College so that students could subject it to their own critical analysis and test its worth in a wide range of land evaluation and planning exercises. As indicated immediately above, an earlier draft of this report was submitted for comment to the Department of Lands and Survey which funded the original invest­ igations, as well as to some other parties. As an outcome of student experience and in consequence of comments received, I have carried out extensive revisions of the presentation without substantially altering the findings of the study. This revision was made because comments from critics of the draft report and from students using the methods developed in it indicated that the real value of the report lay in the process and methods developed and that failure to understand them would lead to continuing dispute about the findings and recommendations. We believe that wise decisions must be grounded in a sequential procedure for confrontation of physical and ecological fact and function of the real world with the needs and values of an equally real and complex society. We do not deny that such considerations have influenceddecisions in sinilar matters up to the present. We claim, however, that unless such considerations are seen to be taken in an open, clear and orderly process, our society will never be confident of its political decisions and seldom be able to identify and profit from its mistakes.