Dr Brad Coombes - School of Environment

Job title: Senior Lecturer
Phone: 64 9 373 7599 ext 88455
Office: Rm 686, Human Sciences Building,10 Symonds Street, Auckland
Postal: School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland
Email: b.coombes@auckland.ac.nz

Qualifications

BA (Hons), PhD (Otago)

Biography

Research interests:

Environmental management and conservation
Collaborative natural resource management
Political ecology of conservation and restoration
Sustainability and environmental justice
Indigenism, indigeneity and (post)colonialism
Environmental politics of Treaty settlement

My main research focus is the participation of indigenous peoples in conservation management and environmental planning. This research focuses on the obstacles to establishing partnership approaches, and the appropriateness of comanagement, collaborative science and community-based management for resolving conservation conflicts. Environmental justice, postcolonial governance and the political ecology of resource conflicts are integrating themes for all of my research projects.
	I have been involved in several research projects which were commissioned to support the environmental claims of iwi (Maori tribes) before the Waitangi Tribunal. Those projects focus on the capacity of indigenous peoples to influence landscape change and halt environmental degradation through the planning process. They also emphasise the impacts of conservation on the communities which surround national parks, and the search for policies which attempt coexistence between conservation, development and Treaty rights.
I am also interested in long-standing dilemmas in environmental management, particularly our capacity to impinge upon private property rights to maintain environmental values. Conflicts about and approaches to promoting indigenous habitat protection and water quality control on private land are long-term research emphases. Strategies to motivate the public to participate in environmental projects are another key concern, especially through environmental education or care group approaches to environmental enhancement. I have onging commitments to community-based restoration projects throughout New Zealand.

I am involved with the following research groupings:

Chair and Board Member of the Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledges and Rights Commission of the International Geographical Union.
Co-director of Te Whare Kura - a Thematic Research Initiative of the University of Auckland to promote research into Indigenous Peoples, Knowledges and Identities.
Co-leader of Contested Environments - a research theme in the School of Environment.

Teaching:

Webs for GEOG.320 (Resources and Environmental Management) and ENVMGT.746 (Collaborative Environmental Management) probably give the best indication of my teaching interests and approach.

My favourite teaching context is always in the field, so take a peek at photos from the ENVMGT.746 field trip (which investigates conservation on private land in Far North District).

Most Recent Publications

Selected/recent journal and book articles (titles of each journal article are hyperlinked via their DOI numbers to PDF sources):

‘Washing their hands of it? Auckland City’s risk management of contaminated, formerly agricultural land as neoliberal responsibilisation’ in eds. T. Tasan-Kok and G. Baeten, Contradictions of neoliberal planning: cities, policies, and politics, Springer, Antwerp, in press for 2011 (with Smith, C).

‘Urban Maori and environmental justice – the case of Lake Otara’ in eds. E. Peters and C. Anderson, Indigenous urbanisation in international perspective, UBC Press, Vancouver, in press for 2011.

‘The challenges of and from indigenous geographies: implications for openly transcultural research,’ in V J. del Casino, M. Thomas, P. Cloke, R. Panelli, The Companion to Social Geography, in press for 2011 (with Gombay, N, Johnson, J and Shaw, W).

‘Decentring White ruralities: ethnic diversity, racialisation and Indigenous countrysides’, Journal of Rural Studies 25(4): 355-364, 2009 (with Panelli, R, Hubbard, P, and Suchet-Pearson, S)

‘Postcolonial conservation and kiekie harvests at Morere – abstracting indigenous knowledge from indigenous polities’, Geographical Research 45(2): 186-193, 2007.

‘Defending community? Indigeneity, self-determination and institutional ambivalence in the restoration of Lake Whakaki’, Geoforum 38(1): 60-72, 2007.

‘Postcolonial predicaments and historiographic anxiety: Treaty settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Journal of Historical Geography 32(2): 444-453, 2006.

‘‘Na whenua, na Tuhoe. ko D.o.C. te partner’ – prospects for comanagement of Te Urewera National Park’, Society and Natural Resources 18(2): 135-152, 2005 (with Hill, S).

‘The limits to participation in disequilibrium ecology: Maori involvement in habitat restoration projects, Te Urewera National Park’, Science as Culture 13(1): 35-72, 2004 (with Hill, S).

‘The historicity of institutional trust and the alienation of Maori land for catchment control at Mangatu, New Zealand’, Environment and History 9(3): 333-359, 2003.

‘Ecospatial outcomes of neoliberal planning: habitat management in Auckland Region, New Zealand’, Environment and Planning B 30(2): 201-218, 2003.

Graduate Students

Current PhD students:

Petra Meijer: Public ecology in ecological restoration: How is community-based monitoring linking science, beliefs and values?
Megan Selby: Is the use of focal species a successful strategy for biodiversity conservation?
Sanjay Sharma: Integrated Conservation and Development at Kinabalu National Park
Jamie Steer: Deconstructing introduced wildlife and the future of biodiversity in New Zealand
Enni Suonio: Interaction between business models and environmental strategies for new media technologies and services

Current Masters students:

Christine Anderson. MSc Env.Mgnt. (completing soon): Ngati Hine, The Department of Conservation and Motatau Forest Reserve - co-management, rangatiratanga, kaitiakitanga?
Ben Bartle. MSc Env.Mgnt.: From dung to dollars: lessons for effective implementation of agricultural emissions trading from other market based trading mechanisms
David Bryden. MSc Env.Mgnt.: (completing soon) Community-based approaches for endangered species management in the Pacific: Takitumu Conservation Area, Cook Islands
Lucy Hawcroft. MSc Env.Mgnt.: Participation, ethnicity and environmental values
Wan Lee. MA Dev.Studs.: (Cosupervisor). Beekeeping in Togo: exploring the relationship between apiculture and land stewardship.
Rae Lett. MSc Env.Mgnt.: Claims settlement: relationship building, rangatiratanga or mere inclusion of TEK in conservation management?
Federico Mendez. MSc Env.Mgnt.: Fishers’ Cooperatives and sustainable fisheries governance in Mexico.
Divesh Mistry. MSc Geography.: Devolution and the decolonisation of environmental management: Lessons from Nga Puna Wai o Hokianga
Gini Morrison. MSc Geography (completing soon): Environmental justice and indigenous rights: co-management of the Te Arawa lakes

Honours/dissertation students (completed end 2010):

Jessie Bird. BA Hons.: Re-positioning the public-private divide: an analysis of the High Country tenure reform
Divesh Mistry. BSc Hons.: Cultural health indicators and the potential for scientization
James Tremlett. BA Hons.: Reclassification of the Maui dolphin

School of Environment

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