Dr Shaun Awatere

Ngāti Porou
Manaaki Whenua

Shaun Awatere (Ngāti Porou) is a resource economist for Landcare Research in Hamilton. He has been working to improve the incorporation of Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge and values) into local government planning by developing the systems and processes that will enable Māori values to be integrated into urban design and development.

Related Projects

Internship project

Project commenced:

Ngā Kōwhiringa Whenua Māori – Māori land-use opportunities

Intern: Jonothan Rau

Supervisor: Dr Shaun Awatere

Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga/Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research

This research project seeks to identify horticultural land use opportunities in Māori-owned Wairoa, Te Tairawhiti rohe. The outcomes of this project are to monitor and assess current soil and water trends to determine the most suitable crops for preventing wind and water erosion. Methods include district scale spatial analysis (Reid et. al 2006) to determine the most suitable crops, of which are saffron, feijoa and gevuina.

This project continued into a Master’s study in January, 2018.

Full project

Project commenced:

Future Proofing Māori Development Opportunities: Huringa Rangi Huringa Oranga

The overarching research platform questions include:

Full project

The Intergenerational Reality for Māori Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME): Building resilience of Māori SMEs for the future

The significance of this research project lies in its contribution to deeper understand what role Māori SMEs have as critical constituents of the Māori Economy. Recent years have seen attention paid to the merit of the Māori economy, based on the potential of an economy worth an estimated $42.6bn in 2013 (Nana, Khan, & Schulze, 2015).

Project commenced:

Economic and Spatial Modelling for informed Māori Land Development

The challenge for Māori carrying out development is to determine how to balance the drivers of a neo-liberal economic approach with the very ideals and principles that define us as Māori to ensure quality social and environmental outcomes for future generations. Through a previous NPM research project "Whakatipu rawa mā ngā uri whakatipu" the team has developed a prototype decision-making framework for collective assets, which takes into account well-being indices, tikanga Māori and financial measures.