Community Identification in Okeover Stream, Canterbury
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Whose stream is it anyway? Community identification in Okeover Stream, Canterbury. Natalie Scott1, Femke Reitsma2 and Kate Hewson3 1Summer student, University of Canterbury, 2Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, 3Sustainability Office, Facilities Management, University of Canterbury. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Okeover Stream flows for 1.5 kilometres through the University of Canterbury and the suburb Ilam. It is used as a research and teaching site by students and staff and has since 1999 been the focus of campus waterways rehabilitation projects. Okeover is used as a case study in exploring different ways of identifying the community associated with a resource. The catchment community can be defined in multiple ways, presenting different understandings of the stream’s stakeholders. Knowledge of the resource's community allows communication to be better targeted to the wide range of people who interact with the stream. Key words: catchment, community, management, resource, stream, university. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 1. Introduction Resources take the shape of the community in which they are located. They are not static, but shift and reflect the values and actions of the people and places around them. Not only dos human deliberately modify natural resources, but small, seemingly inconsequential actions can have a flow‐ on effect that results in a large shift in the nature of the resource downstream. Management of a resource, then, cannot merely focus on the resource itself, but must include a wider view of people and places that are acting upon it. The best resource management practices first identify the stakeholders with which the resource is related. This research seeks to present alternative methods of identifying the immediate stakeholders associated with a common pool resource and, furthermore, to define the wider community of the resource. This information can then be used to construct a list of contact points for future communication about the resource in question. The Okeover Stream is one resource that provides a case study of the different ways in which a community can be defined and identified, with regards to an urban stream. The stream is a small waterway in Otautahi‐Christchurch, New Zealand. Management of the Okeover catchment is a crucial part of maintaining river health, but the responsibility for catchment maintenance needs to 1 fall as much on the local stakeholders in the catchment as on the Christchurch City Council. In this way, the wishes and needs of the people living near Okeover can be incorporated into the future of the stream, and the issues presented by the stream are jointly owned by those who have an interest in its future. It is important to realise that the definition of a community is not restricted to physical boundaries. A catchment is conventionally defined simply by geographic boundaries. In this case, a more useful method of identifying the community is by looking at the ‘social catchment’. This includes all the people associated with the resource without restricting the identification process to those in close physical proximity to the stream. Some of these alternative ways of explaining the community incorporate traffic moving through the catchment, stormwater flow into the stream and an acknowledgement of the history of interactions between the stream and the people around it. These will be discussed in detail in Section 5 below. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews some of the literature associated with stakeholder identification while section 3 outlines the current thinking in watershed management. Section 4 presents the specific details of Okeover Stream and section 5 gives an overview of each definition of the community associated with the stream. Section 6 shows how the information gained from the community identification process could be used to facilitate community engagement programs. The paper concludes with a list of the people and organisations that need to be the starting points for any future community based management plans of the stream. 2. Stakeholder Identification Common pool resources are those where both benefits and costs impact on all members of the community. Everyone stands to gain from better understanding and administration of the resource (Husain, 2009). Individuals and groups with an interest in such a resource are collectively known as ‘stakeholders’; however, the problem remains as to who the stakeholders actually are, and how best to identify them (Achterkamp & Vos, 2007). One oft‐quoted definition is from Freeman, who states “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” is a stakeholder (1984: 46). This definition is not without contention, as it allows anyone, no matter how far removed from the everyday goings‐on of the resource, to be interpreted as a stakeholder. For practical purposes, a stakeholder must hold a direct and traceable connection to the resource at hand. Much of the debate about stakeholders has used a business‐centred definition (Neville & Mengue, 2006). In contrast to this, community based management tends to focus on stakeholders that have traditionally used or managed a resource (Wittayapak & Dearden, 1999). Thus far, most of the research on the communities associated with resources has focused on stakeholder identification. The theory of stakeholders has been widely applied in both business circles (e.g. Freeman, 1984), and subsequently in the management of natural resources (Ravenborg & Westermann, 2002; Neville & Mengue, 2006). Management schemes that incorporate stakeholders into their planning and implementation are much more likely to attain the desired 2 outcomes. The process of identifying stakeholders is closely related to that of defining where the boundaries of the catchment fall. While those people that live near to a resource can be defined as stakeholders, a broader definition of stakeholders will include all those groups or individuals that are connected to the resource, even if they are not in close physical proximity to it. Recognition of this is a necessary step towards suitable management of the resource. The stakeholders for a business and for a local resource are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Leafcutter ants (Atta cephalotes) in Columbia have detrimental effects on both the local economy and resources, for example, resulting in tensions between farmers, policy makers, and different ethnic groups in the Andean mountains (Ravenborg & Westermann, 2002). Stakeholder identification, through a series of community talks and meetings, allowed the groups to develop a cohesive action plan within their own community, to deal with the transboundary ant problem. In this case, stakeholders were seen as those homogenous groups with an underlying common interest in the resource. Some communities manage resources by retaining traditional, formalised rules pertaining to the resource at hand. In Indonesia, indigenous forest communities managed the forested headwaters of their nearby catchments through a series of locally enforced rules, to preserve the integrity of the forest and the culture associated with it (Wittayapak & Dearden, 1999). The stakeholders in this case were recognised as being the people with longstanding, resource‐based ties to the land. In this study, the stakeholders are recognised as being those with direct links to Okeover Stream, either by location living or travelling in the catchment, or by interacting with the stream through the community. In the cases of both location‐based and resource‐based ties, some of the stakeholders are unaware of the stream or of their impacts on the resource, and so are included in the community associated with Okeover without necessarily being conscious of the ways in which they engage with the catchment. Any process that involves dividing areas up encounters the modifiable area unit problem (MAUP). This states that the way in which an area is divided up changes the conclusions that can be drawn from the data (Dark and Bram, 2007). In this context, MAUP means that the way in which the area of ‘Okeover Catchment’ is defined will have major implications for the final understanding of the community associated with the resource. 3. Watershed management thus far The traditional view of a catchment is simply as a hydrological unit used in management regimes (Warner, 2006). From this hydrological definition, a catchment is demarcated by an area on the ground in which all surface and ground water flows into a specified channel (Mitchell & Hollick, 1993). In terms of community identification, this is not satisfactory, for though it covers the technical matter of water flow it does not take into account the ways in which people interact with the water course. In addition, the increased impermeability of urban catchments means sthat les rainwater reaches the stream through natural groundwater channels, but rather passes through a drainage system that does not necessarily correspond to the natural flow of water. 3 Kaler (2003) points out that institutions have as much responsibility to their stakeholders as to their shareholders. As much of the initial management of the stream has fallen to the Christchurch City Council, in the context of the Okeover case study, this