Addressing politics when conducting valuation for decision-making

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Decision-makers have to consider diverse and often conflicting economic, cultural, social and environmental values.

Officials advising decision-makers want best practice valuation frameworks and methods to render decision making more objective and less political. However, politics and social context unavoidably shape the way that information is generated and decisions get made. Attempting ‘best practice’ valuation without attention to this social and political context has consequences for local democracy and the environment.

This guidance offers recommendations to help advisors recognise and choose how to ethically and responsibly respond to this context.

What is valuation?

Holistic ecosystem-based management (EBM) of the marine environment seeks to recognise and accommodate the multiple ways in which people relate to and use the environment.

Valuation – the collection of information about people’s values and relationships to the environment – is often used to inform decision making. By systematically identifying, collecting, and analysing peoples’ economic, cultural, social and environmental values, decisions that affect people’s values can be made more transparent and democratically accountable.

Beyond 'best practice'

As part of any valuation process, advisors should:

• Acknowledge that all valuation exercises are influenced by political and social context
• Make deliberate and explicit choices about how they will respond to this context
• Explain their choices and how they might affect social and environmental outcomes

We recommend three steps to address social and political context in values-based decision making. The steps build on each other and act as a scaffold upon which more ‘legitimate’ decisions can be made.

The first step, giving effect to Treaty-based principles, underpins the other two steps. The second step poses questions about the consequences of decision-making, which are then used to guide the choices outlined in the third step.

This will take you further than the traditional best practice framework and is likely to result in decisions that are less contested and more widely accepted by Māori partners and stakeholders.

Step 1. Adhere to the principles suggested by Māori resource management professionals:

• The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the over-arching framework within which ecosystem-based management should sit, not the other way around.
• Decision processes should reflect the Treaty partnership – decisions should ‘give effect to’ and not just ‘consider’ iwi views. If Treaty partners do not agree, they should talk further.
• Iwi should be recognised at a governance level – kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face).
• Co-governance and co-management should be properly resourced. It is not a true partnership if one party controls all resources for information and analysis.

Step 2. When scoping your valuation exercise and methods, be explicit about your objectives and question if they are broad enough. Do valuation in ways that:

• Improve ecosystem health and recognise past abundance as a goal for the future
• Recognise that people are part of the environment — if te taiao is not healthy, people are not healthy
• Recognise and maintain mātauranga Māori about living from the land and the sea
• Recognise and value a diversity of voices, including local knowledge
• Reduce inequality and protect access to public spaces

When reporting your results, show how your valuation exercise contributes to these objectives and acknowledge where your methods constrain or prevent you from achieving them.

Step 3. Design your approach to valuation with these four questions in mind: