SUCCESS STORY - Transforming the health and wellbeing of Te Kāhui Tupua
THE CHALLENGE
Taranaki Mounga began as a restoration project focussed on outcomes like eradicating pests and reintroducing native birds, but the Board saw potential for the project to incorporate economic, social, and cultural benefits for Taranaki and its people. However, there wasn’t a clear path forward to achieve this aspirational goal as initial plans were focussed on ecological outcomes.
The outcome
A strategy that lays out a pathway to deliver ecological, economic, social, and cultural benefits to the Taranaki region which enabled the people of Taranaki to reconnect to their whakapapa, themselves, and nature itself. The holistic approach united the network of project partners to achieve the vision, “He Kawa Ora – Sustaining the health and wellbeing of Te Kāhui Tupua and their people”, and deliver on the expectations of iwi and other stakeholders.
Taranaki Mounga is an ambitious conservation project transforming the mountain, ranges, and islands of Taranaki. The project takes its name from Taranaki’s revered volcanic peak which is surrounded by rich native forest and home to rare native species such as the North Island brown kiwi and whio (blue duck). However, like most areas of New Zealand, introduced predators like rats and stoats have significantly damaged the native biodiversity and caused many species to disappear.
CREATING THE STRATEGY
Taranaki Mounga aspires to transform the region by securing Te Kāhui Tupua (the name of the legal entity encompassing Taranaki Mounga) from weeds and animal pests, restoring the environment for birds and other native species, and sustaining the changes through building community support.
“To truly sustain our progress around securing and restoring the Mounga, we needed greater clarity on how we would build support from iwi, the wider Taranaki community, and government agencies, to develop and implement our strategy” says Jamie Tuuta, Chairperson of the Board.
With this in mind, Jamie approached Brian Yee of MSH Consulting.
“I valued the collaborative process used to develop MSH’s Outcome Strategy Framework, which brought together a diverse group of stakeholders for constructive discussion and resulted in a clear and agreed-upon set of outcomes to pursue” says Jamie.
The Project Director, Sean Zieltjies, saw great value in adopting the MSH Outcome Strategy Framework.
“We needed to have coherency across the diverse views in the partnership and a way to provide clarity and prioritisation of all the things we could do. The benefit of working with MSH is that they make you prioritise and hone in on how you’re going to do it, not just what you’re going to do. And the process really provided clarity on why our partners have invested in us” says Sean.
DETERMINING THE KEY BENEFICIARY OF THE STRATEGY
A key part of the MSH approach is to determine the “primary customer” who represents the key beneficiary of the strategy. This is the individual or group whose needs should be focussed on to achieve maximum impact. This is critical as serving too many individuals or groups means resources are spread thinly and as a result no beneficiary is served well. Jamie knew that the logical choice was to consider Te Kāhui Tupua as the key beneficiary of the strategy because satisfying his needs were fundamental to reconnecting people to place.
“Te Kāhui Tupua represents and upholds the ancestral, historical, cultural, and spiritual relationship between Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and their tūpuna mounga. Our settlement focus is about what is bestfor the mountain, which has flow on effects to our people and the community. Under the settlement the mountain is recognised as a legal person” says Jamie.
Sean says the decision to have the Mounga as the key beneficiary got everyone on the same page as it grounded the strategy in something very clear and tangible, and highly tied to the local community and environment.
HONOURING TE KĀHUI TUPUA
Considering Te Kāhui Tupua as the key beneficiary of the strategy, the Taranaki Mounga Board knew that the project needed to extend beyond ecological outcomes to include economic, social, and cultural benefits for the Taranaki region.
The strategy achieved this by breaking down the overall vision, “He Kawa Ora – Sustaining the health and wellbeing of Te Kāhui Tupua and their people” into five strategic pillars:
1. Aspire: Iwi and communities are leading and owning the successful restoration of Te Kāhui Tupua
2. Share: The innovative practices adopted for Te Kāhui Tupua inspires future NZ large-scale restoration projects
3. Enrich: The people of Taranaki have the ability to self-sustain Te Kāhui Tupua now and in the future
4. Revitalise: Improving the ecological resilience of Te Kāhui Tupua so that native species flourish
5. Treasure: People adore Te Kāhui Tupua not only for his health and wellbeing benefits, but for a sense of regional identity and belonging
The five pillars clearly articulated how the strategy had grown beyond its initial ecological focus to deliver on the broader expectations of iwi and funders, and enabled people to reconnect to their whakapapa, themselves, and nature itself.