Ko Papa Ko Rangi: Up or down?

Healing from colonisation is a journey of recovery, and it begins with falling in love with home again. In this episode, we travel down the Whanganui river to meet the youngest generation of Indigenous scientists returning to their ancestral lands to keep the home fires burning. It’s not just about going along and planting some trees. It’s about being prepared to defend that place, right through to the end of your life.

When excavators arrived to break ground on ancestral lands at Ihumaatao in 2019, they were met with unwavering but peaceful defence from the people who had lived there continuously for more than 800 years. The call to stand with ahi kaa in the protection of the land ignited the whole nation. But 2019 was just a speck on the history of all that has happened at Ihumaatao. What’s the connection between colonialism and climate change, and how does the story of climate adaptation change when those keeping the home fires burning are telling it?

Everyone, from homeowners to policy makers, from marae committees to corporations, is asking, “How much will climate change cost us, and how much will it cost to adapt?” But are these the best questions? How are the assessment tools and frameworks we currently use to guide investment considering the “costs” of climate change, or the benefits of adaptation? Do we risk embedding an unbalanced future, because we’re struggling to step back and consider the full extent of what’s at stake? The final episode of this season will examine what we know about “costing climate change”, what we don’t know, and perhaps even what we don’t know we don’t know. Framing the costs of climate change, with Sacha McMeeking, Anita Wreford, Jodie Kuntzsch

To understand the paradigm within which we consider concepts of value, cost and risk, we need to grapple with our past and reconsider our present. Senior economist Shaun Awatere and Te Tiriti educator Jen Margaret look backwards and forwards, exploring how our economy and economic frameworks have evolved and been impacted by past decision-making, and what this could mean for our future with a changing climate. Ka mua ka muri, with Shaun Awatere & Jen Margaret

Work is underway across Aotearoa to quantify the costs of climate change, including the costs of adaptation or of failure to adapt. But how do we understand “cost” and will our economic paradigm really lead to effective climate adaptation? If we can’t or don’t quantify/consider some costs of climate change (and benefits of adaptation!), how can we ensure these are factored in our adaptation decisions? On the one hand, we need frameworks and tools that help us analyse our adaptation decisions (and indecisions). On the other, we need to consider the paradigm driving our current thinking, and the limits of current economic tools and frameworks to help us make collectively oriented, intergenerational decisions. Are we capable of making decisions that return to Papa and Rangi value greater than what we have taken?