Legal personhood has been signed into law for the Whanganui River and the Urewera. Now Māori and Pacific leaders are proposing the same for whales at the UN as a further step to protect the environment. By Aaron Smale.
Māori leaders, including the Māori King, together with other leaders from throughout the Pacific have supported a resolution for the adoption of the whale as ocean ambassador to the United Nations. They are seeking support for a global agreement on protecting the legal personhood of whales in international waters.
The resolution was proposed to the United Nations last week by Dr Ralph Chami of Blue Green Future, who with blue carbon expert, Dr Carlos Duarte, is one of the lead technicians working with Indigenous founders of the Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative.
“For the first time, our tribes have formed a collective to work to implement Indigenous customary protections across whale migration routes between critical feeding and breeding grounds,” said Lisa Tumahai of Ngāi Tahu.
Legal personhood – which has parallels with corporations and trusts – was first enacted to protect the environment in Bolivia and has also been used here as a mechanism to protect the Whanganui River and the Urewera.
Tumahai is co-chair of the Hinemoana Halo Ocean (H20) Fund which was set up to raise a $100 million blue bond for Indigenous-led blue habitat restoration and rewilding projects as part of a large-scale plan to recover and protect whale populations across the Pacific Rim.
The fund is a joint Conservation International Aotearoa initiative with seven Indigenous partners from New Zealand, Tonga, French Polynesia, and the Cook Islands.
“Dr Chami’s work with our Indigenous tribes in Aotearoa and the Pacific adds to the growing scientific acknowledgement of the role that our relations, the Tohorā (whales), play in addressing the twin challenges of climate change and ocean biodiversity loss,” said Mere Takoko, Vice President of Conservation International Aotearoa.
Ngāti Wai leader and co-chair of the H20 Fund, Aperahama Edwards, said that his tribe and others would be committed to placing back the authority of Indigenous tribes over their oceans to support the effort.
“It is important that indigenous peoples from across the Pacific come together to rewild our oceans and restore blue habitats to help stabilise our communities on their lands and create long-term climate resilience,” said Edwards.
Indigenous representatives pledged to work together to create the world’s largest Indigenous marine protected area network over a 2,200,000 km2 area.
The network will come under a customary protection framework that intends to put more investment into whale conservation and introduce seasonal protections across whale migratory routes or “blue” corridors. The full plan will be released at the 2024 UN Ocean’s Decade Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
