Karen T Fisher

• PhD
• Associate Professor at University of Auckland

The world’s oceans and coastal areas have been severely impacted by multiple anthropological stressors. Coastal and marine managers, scientists and organisations around the world look to active ecological restoration measures to help slow the decline of ecosystem health and boost the natural recovery of ecosystems. Marine restoration, while heavily...

In response to growing social and ecological pressures, ecosystem-based management (EBM) has been proffered as an alternative governance regime for marine and coastal systems in Aotearoa New Zealand. The challenge of how to engender a transition toEBM remains, however. This paper investigates the proposition that Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) can b...

This research article outlines a provocation for diverse and experimentally open, situated approaches to exploring care and caring. The diversely positioned authors discuss this idea using the subject of soil, in the place and context of Aotearoa New Zealand. Little is known about the diversity of ways that everyday people value, or, have caring re...

Drawing on ethnographic research with Māori women in northern Aotearoa (New Zealand) I use this paper to encourage reflection on how the loss and damages (L&D) discourse might better engage with Indigenous peoples’ lived realities of climate change. I argue L&D scholarship and policy-making is dominated by reductive economic, hazard-focussed, and f...

We provide a perspective on the ubiquity of PFAS (a suite of unique per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or ‘forever chemicals’) as toxic, pervasive and environmentally persistent more‐than‐human agents. We situate our discussion of these more‐than‐human contaminants in our location of Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), a post‐production, post‐consumption...

We examine the ecosystem degradation of the Kaipara moana as an example of the nexus of settler colonialism and slow violence. Settler colonialism is a type of domination that violently interrupts Indigenous people’s interactions and relationships with their land-, sea-, and water-scapes. Slow violence provides a conceptual framework to explore the...

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is a holistic approach to managing marine environments that can potentially reconcile cross-sectoral conflicts, scale mismatches, and fulfil sustainability objectives. In Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ), the operationalisation of EBM has been uneven; however, a set of principles to guide EBM in Aotearoa NZ provid...

This paper examines the history of settler-colonialism and how settler-colonial-led policies and projects to remake the landscapes and waterscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand resulted in the production of Indigenous environmental injustices. Underpinned by theorising on ecological justice and decolonisation, we draw on archival sources and oral histori...

Western and Central Pacific (WCP) tuna fisheries form part of a broad and complex social and ecological system (SES). This consists of interconnected elements including people (social, cultural, economic) and the biophysical environment in which they live. One area that has received little attention by policy makers is gender. Gender is important b...

Despite evidence that Indigenous peoples’ multiple subjectivities engender diverse lived experiences both between and within Indigenous groups, the influence of multiple subjectivities on Indigenous peoples’ vulnerability and adaptation to climate change is largely un-explored. Drawing on ethnographic research with Indigenous Māori women in Aotearo...

Aotearoa New Zealand has shifted towards more collaborative decision‐making for freshwater in recent years, as national and local authorities seek new ways of working with communities. While the potential benefits of collaboration are well established, the messiness of collaborative processes can challenge institutional imperatives to develop forma...

Collaboration and cooperation between and across countries, communities, and individuals is critical for the capacity of social-ecological systems (SES) to respond to climate change. In Solomon Islands, the tuna fisheries' SES provides food security, income, employment, and contributes significantly to the nation's economy. However, being at the fr...

This book was inadvertently published with incorrect information with reference to The Waikato River Authority on pages 306, 307, 369 and 370. This text has now been revised and updated.

In settler-colonial nations such as Aotearoa, New Zealand, ecosystem degradation and restoration of coastal estuaries and their catchments are typically framed through a scientific lens and often privilege patriarchal beliefs and epistemologies. A consequence of colonization in Aotearoa is that sediment(ation) pollution is deemed undesirable, and s...

Western and Central Pacific (WCP) tuna fisheries are faced with complex and interlinked social and ecological challenges including high seas management issues, setting sustainable limits, human rights violations, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) activities. However, strong but narrow disciplinary science persist to dominate governance...

This paper explores European (Pākehā) settlers' perceptions of smells and why certain smells were labelled as threatening and transgressive, whereas others were deemed desirable and health-inducing. Whether it was the stench of dried fish, the musky odours of wetlands or the scent of flowers, representations of smell pervade the writings of Pākehā...

A scientific storytelling approach is used to communicate results from a transdisciplinary model of human‐environment estuarine systems for the purpose of developing system understanding and improving transdisciplinary communication. Questionnaires and a media analysis are used to collate public perceptions of observed environmental change in estua...

There remains uncertainty about the legal and policy tools, processes and institutions needed to support ecosystem-based marine management (EBM). This article relies on an interdisciplinary study of ecosystem-based language and approaches in the laws and policies of New Zealand, Australia and Chile, which uncovered important lessons for implementin...

There remains uncertainty about the legal and policy tools, processes and institutions needed to support ecosystem-based marine management (EBM). This article relies on an interdisciplinary study of ecosystem-based language and approaches in the laws and policies of New Zealand, Australia and Chile, which uncovered important lessons for implementin...

Although Indigenous peoples’ perspectives and concerns have not always been accommodated in climate change adaptation research and practice, a burgeoning literature is helping to reframe and decolonise climate adaptation in line with Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. In this review, we bring together climate adaptation, decolonising and inters...

Existing frameworks for interpreting and acting upon the health consequences of climate change fail to engage with the multiple and complex forms of loss and damage that Indigenous peoples experience to their health and wellbeing in a changing climate. Using a case study of Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, we call for a new research agenda that foreg...

In this concluding chapter, we bring together our earlier analyses of the historical and contemporary waterscapes of the Waipā River (Aotearoa New Zealand) to consider the theory and practice of Indigenous environmental justice. In this chapter, we return to review three key dimensions of environmental justice: distributive, procedural, and recogni...

Around the world, many societies are trying to create and apply apparatuses that recognise Indigenous interests in freshwater systems. Such policies and strategies often acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ rights and values they attached to specific waterways, and take the form of new legal agreements which are directed at reconciling diverse worldview...

In this chapter we provide a broad overview of three dominant ways environmental justice is framed within the scholarship and consider how Indigenous peoples’ understanding and demands for environmental justice necessitate a decolonising approach. Despite critiques, many scholars and policymakers still conceive of environment justice through a sing...

This chapter examines the historical waterscapes of Indigenous Māori iwi (tribes) and hapū (sub-tribes) in the Waipā River (Aotearoa New Zealand). We highlight some of the principles of Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) that shaped Māori understandings and engagements with their ancestral waters and lands prior to colonisation. We explore how the arriv...

In Aotearoa New Zealand, co-management initiatives are increasingly commonplace and are intended to improve sustainable management of environments as well as foster more equitable sharing of power between the settler-state and Indigenous Māori iwi (tribes). In this chapter we examine one such co-management arrangement that recognises and includes N...

Open Access Chapter: Access Here https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-61071-5_6 We explore the ways in which the formal recognition (to some extent) of Indigenous knowledge systems within environmental governance and the role of reconcilition in achieving environmental justice. We examine whether recent agreements between the New...

In this chapter, we explore environmental justice as an intergenerational imperative for Indigenous peoples by examining how different conceptions of time shape responses to climate change. We offer insights into how bringing Māori, Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, understandings of time can open new spaces for thinking about and planning...

This chapter focusses on the state-sponsored ecological transformation of Aotearoa New Zealand’s wetlands into grasslands under the auspices of settler colonialism, agricultural productivism, and public health. The physical removal of wetlands, we argue, were a constitutive part of the mechanisms of settler colonial domination. We demonstrate how t...

We argue that it is important to acknowledge that river restoration (both in theory and practice) still remains largely located within the realm of the hegemonic Western knowledge systems. In this chapter we challenge the Eurocentrism of dominant ecological restoration projects by documenting the different framing and approaches to restoration bein...

In this chapter, we outline the history of water pollution in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Waipā River and its tributaries and demonstrate how environmental injustices can accumulate slowly over time. We highlight how Indigenous (Māori) and non-Indigenous (Pākehā) peoples held fundamentally different understandings of what constituted contaminated or cle...

Touching Outward; Art-making at the seam where care meets risk. What it is to touch? If we think with, and take seriously a fluid ontology, can we recognise embodiment itself as fluid? Drenched with unknowing and drenched with sensation and made possible by movement, vibration and magnetism. This video article engages with the potentiality for rese...

This open access book crosses disciplinary boundaries to connect theories of environmental justice with Indigenous people’s experiences of freshwater management and governance. It traces the history of one freshwater crisis – the degradation of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Waipā River– to the settler-colonial acts of ecological dispossession resulting in...

Legislation emerging from Treaty of Waitangi settlements provide Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, with new opportunities to destabilize and decolonize the colonial knowledge, processes and practices that contribute towards negative material and metaphysical impacts on their rohe [traditional lands and waters]. In this article w...

This chapter explores how the settler colonial project to remake the landscapes and waterscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand contributed to the creation of new hazardscapes closely tied to Māori dispossession and marginalisation. In particular, actions to clear indigenous vegetation, introduce exotic biota, and drain wetlands contributed to increased in...

In this paper, we consider how Indigenous peoples are contesting freshwater management regimes based on Western ontologies and epistemologies, and are seeking recognition for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge, practices, and authority over freshwater. We focus on the potential of new governance arrangements emerging around the globe to contribu...

Managing the cumulative effects (CE) that arise from human and natural stressors is one of the most urgent and complex problems facing coastal and marine decision makers today. In the absence of effective processes, models, and political will, decision-makers struggle to implement management strategies that effectively tackle cumulative effects. Em...

This chapter draws on feminist political ecology and intersectionality approaches to examine efforts to address climate and gender injustices in the Philippines. Existing scholarship often depicts women in the Global South as the most vulnerable to climate change because of social norms and greater poverty; however, this feminisation of vulnerabili...

This special issue of the Resource Management Journal highlights key findings and recommendations associated with a two-year research project called “Navigating the implementation impasse: enabling interagency collaboration on cumulative effects”; this project explored elements that underpin cumulative effects (CE) management in Aotearoa New Zealan...

There is a general recognition that collaboration between key institutes and stakeholders is needed to produce effective CE governance and management; this process requires the negotiated development of collective aspirations and principles. This paper describes the results of a collaborative workshop where a diverse group of participants (ie 58 ex...

Cumulative effects management requires a platform of holistic systems-based thinking that integrates cross-scale interactions and combines the numerous synergistic and antagonistic human-environmental impacts. Various approaches facilitate systems-based thinking, though these tactics are often in conflict with current sector-based management and st...

The Aotearoa Cumulative Effects (ACE) framework was developed to bring together the diverse themes required for effective cumulative effects (CE) management. Several of these key themes are individually detailed in papers included in this special issue. Here, we demonstrate how these key themes can be brought together through a collaborative proces...

The workshop entitled ‘From visions to scenarios for nature and nature’s contributions to people for the 21st century’ was organized by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) expert group on scenarios and models and its technical support unit, and hosted by the NF-UBC Nereus Program, the Peter Wall Institute f...

Scholars frequently identify how path dependency serves to constrain the process of climate adaptation and is a key feature of maladaptation. Most studies, however, centre on theoretical, rather than empirical-based discussions of what path dependency is, how it occurs, and what factors assist in breaking path dependency. This paper provides a case...

E-print: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2hvykg7ZEDvwpz444yC4/full?target=10.1080/04353684.2019.1568201 We document and interrogate our collective experimentation with disruptive academic practices as early- and mid-career women researchers in Aotearoa New Zealand. We grapple with our disruptions and attempted interventions to do academic work...

Globally, the creation and implementation of climate change policies continues to be contested amongst politicians, international institutions, and civil society. Carbon markets, designed to incentivize greenhouse gas emission reductions, are one of the main climate mitigation approaches worldwide. Existing scholarship highlights how carbon markets...

Cumulative effects in the marine environment increase the risk of environmental, economic or social collapse because the combined effects of new and existing marine industries, climate change and other stressors are often not accounted for in the determination of environmental capacity. Ecosystem-based management and the development of tools that t...

Policies and strategies promoting renewable electricity development have become popular tools in the global fight against climate change. Yet their aim, achievability, and effectiveness vary considerably across the globe. In 2007, New Zealand set one of the highest renewable electricity targets in the world: making electricity 90 % renewable by 202...

Multiple dilemmas confound social-ecological modelling. This review paper focuses on two: a modeller's dilemma associated with determining appropriate levels of model simplification, and a dilemma of decision-making relating to the use of models that were never designed to predict. We analyse approaches for addressing these dilemmas as they relate...

Collectively authored paper presented in the Recovering the Radical Potential of a Feminist Ethic of Care: Exploring Practices of 'Caring With' session

Many of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are known to be very vulnerable to climate change impacts. This is particularly so where national economies are highly dependent on tourism-related revenue. Yet, little is known of the adaptive capacities of tourism providers in SIDS and how they respond to climate variability and change. This resea...

The purpose of the workshop was to co-produce knowledge on equity and inclusion at academic meetings, such as conferences, symposiums and workshops. Members of various equity groups in the Faculty of Science, The University of Auckland were invited to participate with the aim of hosting a conversation about how we can better accommodate the needs o...

This paper problematises positivist framings of water demand management (WDM) that define the average-water-user. Through a situated, case-study account undertaken in suburban Auckland, we highlight variable social and cultural underpinnings of domestic water use. Activities that are commonly the focus of WDM are shown to be embedded elements of li...

Indigenous knowledge (IK) is now recognized as being critical to the development of effective, equitable and meaningful strategies to address socio-ecological crises. However efforts to integrate IK and Western science frequently encounter difficulties due to different systems of knowledge production and underlying worldviews. New approaches are ne...

With the increasing popularity of video games over the last few decades, a significant research area for disaster studies has presented itself. Preliminary disaster video game research deconstructed a multitude of disaster video games from various international organisations (e.g. UNESCO, UNISDR), governments (e.g. Canada), non-government organisat...

E-print: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2hvykg7ZEDvwpz444yC4/full?target=10.1080/04353684.2019.1568201

On an increasingly populated planet, with decreasing biodiversity and limited new opportunities to tap unexploited natural resources, there is a clear need to adjust aspects of marine management and governance. Although sectarian management has succeeded in addressing and managing some important threats to marine ecosystems, unintended consequences...

The impacts of global environmental change create new challenges and opportunities for indigenous peoples worldwide. Yet, there remains limited recognition that indigenous knowledge frameworks could (and should) influence the processes and outcomes of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This paper presents insights relating to indigenous issu...

This commentary responds to the proposal for geographers to engage in debating the ontological politics of resilience multiple. An examination of how resilience is (multiply) deployed and enacted at points of articulation provides a means by which to politicize the proliferation of resilience interventions and to comprehend the world-making effects...

The preoccupation with the risks, uncertainties and anxieties that characterise the Anthropocene drives much of the research currently undertaken to address wicked problems. In the context of New Zealand, the framing of the Sustainable Seas Ko ngā moana whakauka National Science Challenge around the concept of ecosystem-based management aims to pro...

Funding and priorities for ocean research are not separate from the underlying sociological, economic, and political landscapes that determine values attributed to ecological systems. Here we present a variation on science prioritization exercises, focussing on inter-disciplinary research questions with the objective of shifting broad scale managem...

Ecosystem service approaches are increasingly utilised in coastal areas, often as part of an ecosystem-based management or adaptive governance framework that aims to address complex coastal problems. Ecosystem services are appealing in this context because they link human well-being to the functioning of ecosystems, and provide a common language fo...

Ecosystem service approaches are increasingly utilised in coastal areas, often as part of an ecosystem based management or adaptive governance framework that aims to address complex coastal problems. Ecosystem services are appealing in this context because they link human well-being to the functioning of ecosystems, and provide a common language fo...

Complex problems often result from the multiple interactions between human activities and ecosystems. The interconnected nature of ecological and social systems should be considered if these “wicked problems” are to be addressed. Ecosystem service approaches provide an opportunity to link ecosystem function with social values, but in practice the e...

This article investigates the complexities of negotiating subject positions in transnational and transcultural research by focusing on the gendering of race and racialization. As more people claim to be of mixed ‘racial’ descent and Western researchers grow more diverse, it is increasingly important that this diversity is reflected within geographi...

This paper investigates the writing of situated knowledge and explores the possibilities of enacting difference by writing differently. We present a selection of research stories in which carrier bags, sounds, baskets, gardens and potatoes are interpreted less as objects of research or metaphors to aid in analysing phenomena, than as mediators of t...

Promoting community support in rehabilitation efforts through incorporation of aesthetic considerations is an important component of environmental management. This research utilised a small-scale survey methodology to explore relationships among the ecological and morphological goals of scientists and the aesthetic goals of the public using the Twi...

The fluid city project is an art-science-education project in which digital art plays a key role. Through a series of interactive public art installations this work aims to highlight the intangible and tangible values of water in the City of Auckland, New Zealand. Digital art work provides a focus for bringing together different understandings of w...

Articles (open access) available here: http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz12/ TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Mapping Culture Multimodally - Nancy Duxbury and Craig Saper Augmented maps Border Memorial: Frontera de los Muertos - A public artwork by John Craig Freeman with critical commentary by Jessica Auchter 'Time Window Weimar': Students Map thei...

The ‘average water user’ concept which informs much research into household water use neglects the beliefs, knowledges and rationalities that underpin people's water use and limits management strategies. Photo diaries and participant-led reflexive diaries supported with interviews are used as complementary research methods to critically analyse wha...

Participation has been identified as a key element for efforts to manage rivers more sustainably. While repairing biophysical processes to support improved habitat quality is at the core of many management initiatives, re-connecting local people to river environments is also vital. Governance frameworks for river management have typically applied '...

The aim of this paper is to explore the processes and outcomes of neoliberalism in relation to urban water supply in the city of Tagbilaran, the Philippines, in order to provide a nuanced account of (an) actually existing hybrid neoliberal space. Using Bakker's typology of market environmentalist reforms in resource management as a guiding frame to...