Environment and community research at the Centre for Sustainability includes investigations into:
- Climate change adaptation and mitigation
- Community resilience
- Disaster response planning
- Disaster risk reduction
- Māori and climate change
- Māori entrepreneurship
- Marae and youth connections
- Risk communication
- Tourism resilience
Lead researchers' interests and projects
Research Associate Professor Caroline Orchiston
Acting Director, Centre for Sustainability
Research Associate Professor Caroline Orchiston's passion is for applied research that makes a difference to our society, particularly in building social capital through networks and connections, and working with communities to build resilience.
Email caroline.orchiston@otago.ac.nz
Projects
- QuakeCoRE
- Resilience to Nature's Challenges
- Project AF8: Building preparedness for a future magnitude 8 Alpine Fault earthquake
Professor Merata Kawharu
Research Professor, Centre for Sustainability
Professor Merata Kawharu (Ngāti Whatua, Ngāpuhi), has research interests that have over-arching themes of supporting Māori leadership, community and education. She has focused in areas such as land and water, capability building, climate change resilience, and connections to ancestral marae by young Māori.
Email merata.kawharu@otago.ac.nz
Projects
- Reconnecting Youth with Iwi
Research Professor Janet Stephenson
Director, Centre for Sustainability (on study leave returning January 2022)
Research Professor Janet Stephenson is passionate about collaborative, interdisciplinary research. Her research interests include indigenous resource management; the interconnections between people and their local environments; and the role of individuals and organisations in the transition to a sustainable future.
Projects
Current postgraduate environment and community research projects
Postgraduate students research projects contribute hugely to the advancement of sustainability research. Read more about their work:
- Exploring how science communication can help prepare communities for natural disasters. (Rowe)
- Building an earthquake resilient nation: the role of workplaces (Kitila)
- Rural community connection, resilience, over-forestation (Wright)
- A New Direction: Opportunities for National Guidance on Natural Hazard Management During RMA Reform (Church)
- A question of identity: How connected are Māori youth to ancestral marae, and does it matter? (Kamau)
- Climate-induced migration and Sustainability: A Spatial Analysis of Urban New Zealand (Ghosh)
- Co-creation approach for enhancing rural disaster resilience through tourism (Danzi)
- Exploring local and indigenous knowledge and resilience to water-driven hazards in rural communities (Mueller)
- Making it Work: Unlocking Whenua Potential Ahu Whenua Trust: Te Rimu Trust, Te Araroa (Mackintosh)
- Rural community connection, resilience, over-forestation (Wright)
- The relationships between kāinga, kura, food production and sustainability in the face of a changing environment (Davies)
- Towards earthquake resilience in low seismic risk zones in New Zealand: Assessing efficacy and implementation of legislatures (Akther)
- Unlocking the past wetland-scapes of the lower Waikato River system and the potential implications for future wetland restoration and Te Puuaha community (vanSchravendijk-Goodman)
- Untangling Crown obligations towards climate change risk (Tombs)
Recently completed environment and community research
Recent work from both our researchers and postgraduates.
- Telling Stories: Community engagement in a complex and dynamic natural hazards adaptation context at the Head of Lake Whakatipu (MacKenzie)
- CoolCrowd
- Cultivating Affective Ecologies for Unloved Biodiversity Through Visual Storytelling (Claessen)
- Economic Modeling for optimal allocation of New Zealand's near-shore fisheries (Chhun)
- Environmental Education / Education for Sustainability informed by Maori Culture (McKay)
- Faces of Stone: Historical contemporary cultures of Paha Sapa, USA (Stovall)
- From Vision to Action: Transitions to Sustainability in Otago's Tertiary Education Institutions (Topp)
- Identifying Frameworks for Effective Iwi and Hapu Development (Nga Pae o Te Māramatanga website) (Kawharu)
- Institutional pressures in Agribusiness in New Zealand (Wither)
- Mapping the human landscape of greater South Dunedin (McKenzie)
- Maori Decision Drivers (Rotarangi)
- Mauri whenua ora - Land and Water National Science Challenge (with Tane)
- Museums and mauri: Applying Māori concepts to the care and protection of Kāi Tahu textiles within museums (Metzger)
- Resilience and Communities (Pomeroy)
- Scoping a multi-agency Alpine Fault initiative: first steps (Orchiston)
- The Built Environment and Active Transport to School (BEATS)
- The Study of the Predicted Landscape of Tomorrow and the Experienced Landscape of Today (Marciniak)
- Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge (Stephenson)
- Wellington Cordon Project (Shrestha)