Indigenous Forest Management in 21st-Century New Zealand: Towards a ‘Postproductivist’ Indigenous Forest–Farmland Interface?

Abstract

The critique of indigenous forest management in New Zealand in this paper contextualises the discussion in light of recent Eurocentric debates on the transition towards ‘postproductivist’ and ‘multifunctional’ agricultural and forestry regimes. The research findings confirm recent criticisms of Australian writers with regard to the direct transferability of the notion of a transition towards postproductivism developed by European researchers and also lend support to Holmes's (2002) notion of productivist and postproductivist occupance. Long-standing productivist demands continue to be made on New Zealand's indigenous forests, especially from economically marginalised stakeholder groups who depend on the continuation of logging for economic survival. We argue that the tension between the recent adoption of a ‘postproductivist’ conservation policy at government level and the continuing ‘productivist’ attitudes among some stakeholder groups explains why the protection of remaining indigenous forests continues to be contested. The New Zealand findings also provide further evidence for those persons criticising the implied linearity and dualism inherent in the Eurocentric postproductivist transition model. We argue that processes at the New Zealand forest–farmland interface support Wilson's (2001) notion of a territorialisation of productivist and postproductivist territories into a ‘multifunctional’ territory. From a social constructionist perspective, the results highlight the fact that a clear separation into productivist and postproductivist occupance may not be easy to conceptualise as our view of agricultural land as ‘productivist’ territory and unlogged or sustainably managed indigenous forest as ‘postproductivist’ territory is largely based on a Euro–American ‘deep green’ view of unaltered ‘nonhuman’ nature. This supports Mather's (2001) suggestion that postproductivism should be cast as part of a shifting mode of social regulation of forestry with particular stakeholder groups constructing images of nature according to their interests, and where western ideas of nature as a (postproductivist) wilderness embody cultural politics which arguably serve to marginalise the interests of indigenous communities.