Nona Taute graduates from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Photo / Simon Young
Nona Taute graduates from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Photo / Simon Young
A childhood in the steaming streets of Rotorua and generational connections to the geothermal field beneath have inspired a seven-year PhD journey.
Nona Taute’s whānau has long lived alongside the city’s geothermal features, used by Māori for bathing, cooking, healing and other cultural practices.
In the 1960s, part of hiskoro’s land, stretching down towards Lake Rotorua, was taken under the Public Works Act to build Rotorua Airport. The lakeside geothermal pools were buried.
“It was not only the loss of my own family’s land, but the loss of what was once a geothermal taonga [treasured resource] for the iwi and hapū,” said Taute (Te Arawa, Tainui) in an Auckland University media release.
”[The Government] consulted with the landowners, but it wasn’t so much asking – it was telling us, ‘This is what we’re doing’.”
More than 60 years later, that whānau experience sowed the seed for Taute’s doctoral thesis, which aimed to empower Māori knowledge in decision-making around geothermal developments.
His research focused on the Taupō Volcanic Zone, stretching from Maketū to Mt Tongariro.
This is the most concentrated geothermal region in Aotearoa and a significant place in Te Ārawa and Ngāti Tūwharetoa oral histories, with stories of ancient gods breaking the crust and releasing fire to the waters trapped below.
Taute describes his work as a decision-support tool – a bridge between technical and non-technical worlds so iwi and hapū can have a seat at the table.
“If we want iwi members to meaningfully contribute to decision-making, they’re never gonna be able to do that if engineers have given them all this technical jargon about extraction rates, pollution quantities,” he said.
Nona Taute graduates from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Photo / Simon Young
His research made non-technical people “feel like experts”, the statement said.
“They’re getting this information in a way that they can meaningfully interpret for themselves, come up with their own opinions and concerns, and those things are translated back to the engineers or clients to hopefully implement them into design and management systems.”
In practice, his model laid out cultural, social, environmental and economic sustainability indicators that measured the mauri (life force) of a project.
“It’s expected the cultural indicators would be verified, interpreted and measured by the iwi, whereas environmental indicators might be measured by scientists and engineering consultants, and social indicators might be measured by community stakeholders,” Taute said.
Nona and his proud whānau on graduation day. Photo / Simon Young
The cultural measures were further broken down into three Māori knowledge domains: wairuatanga (spirituality), Māori political aspirations (cultural identity, politics, iwi governance, tino rangatiratanga, iwi relevance in the management sphere), and customary uses (the ability of iwi to use geothermal resources for bathing, cooking, healing or cultural practices).
“The idea is that you get all the right people in the room to interpret and measure all the indicators, and thresholds convert an indicator measure to a level of mauri … you can track the sustainability of the project by aggregating all these mauri scores or levels to see how it’s tracking throughout the project and beyond,” he said.
Taute graduated on Tuesday with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering – capping an academic journey that began when he moved to Auckland for undergraduate study in 2014.
He has been teaching for the past five years and studying towards his doctorate part-time, stretching that out to “about seven years”.
He also has a young son and is involved in waka ama, representing the university at the Queen Lili’uokalani Canoe Race in Hawaii and helping coach the team.
As part of his research, Taute also produced a short film in te reo Māori as an educational resource for children to learn about geothermal resources and sustainability.
The film has been screened at kura outreach programmes, research presentations and within hapū communities.
“My hope is that this research will enable iwi and hapū to more effectively communicate their values and concerns and see them meaningfully reflected in future outcomes,” he said.
