Governing Auckland’s blue backyard: marine spatial planning, urban environmental ethics and ‘guardianship’ in the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana

Marie Aschenbrenner - University of Munich

The urban dwellers of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, share a long history with the sea and the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana in particular. At a time when the state of the Gulf is degenerating increasingly and its future seems at stake, the “Hauraki Gulf community” (Peart & Cox, 2019) got together to discuss solutions. In an approach of non-statutory, participatory marine spatial planning multiple stakeholders and treaty partners negotiated their diverse imaginaries, views, and interests. The paper explores the moralities, techniques of governance, and expert discourses assembling in this urban ethical field of negotiation, focusing on claims and ethics of environmental care and custodianship in the form of ‘guardianship’ and ‘kaitiakitanga’. It asks, first, how the assemblage of negotiation relates to the constitution of a new caring subject for the Gulf, an ocean citizen; second, what kind of implications arise within the assemblage for a remapping and remodelling of the Gulf as Auckland’s ‘Blue Backyard’. The paper draws on material collected over the last three years in ANZ, including expert interviews, reports and publications of institutions and organisations, own observations, and media articles. The aim is to contribute new aspects on governmentality, responsibilization, and depoliticization in and with urban and marine planning, and indigenous ‘ethical’ practices and relations.