Giving, Receiving, and Growing: A case of community-guided investment

Let’s start several years ago. Ōnuku Rūnanga wanted to build a wharf. The marae is set in the most idyllic location in an already picturesque setting: Akaroa. The wharf would push into the ocean before the marae and provide endless opportunities for fishing, commerce, recreation, and cultural expression.

The problem is wharves are expensive. Ōnuku needed the funds to build and maintain the wharf. They needed to invest in a business that would provide long-term income. They also needed an investment that aligned with their values and preferences. As mana whenua and kaitiaki, they have deep obligations to the harbour and the surrounding lands.

The ocean that has sustained Ōnuku for generations provided the natural starting point for continual growth and wellbeing. As kaitiaki, Ōnuku give much to the ocean, advocating for its protection, maintaining food resources, supporting scientific research, and much more. In turn, the ocean provides for them. Aquaculture was considered the best place to start. However, there are many potential aquaculture businesses, each with pros and cons.

Māori organisations have very broad responsibilities. Te ao Māori is based on a holistic understanding of connectedness. Imagine a spider web with dew drops, in which every dew drop reflects all others. The ocean is one drop of dew on this vast, interconnected web, reflecting an endless array of other connections. Community is another.

The obligation to support the community’s wellbeing is critical for any decision Ōnuku makes.

At this point, Ōnuku know they want to invest in a business opportunity, they want to focus on the ocean, they want to get into aquaculture, and they want to involve their community. Now, it is time to tie these drops together with the web.

We make decisions based on our preferences. If we decide on behalf of others, we need to incorporate their preferences. But how do you incorporate the preferences of hundreds of diverse people into a decision?

We could ask people what they prefer in person or through a survey. This approach has a few problems - too many to get into here, but in a broad sense, they relate to cognitive biases. Here are some:

• Confirmation bias - favouring information that confirms existing beliefs
• Anchoring bias - relying too much on initial information
• Overconfidence bias - overestimating one’s knowledge or abilities
• Availability bias - judging based on known information
• Framing bias - decisions influenced by how information is presented
• Loss aversion - fear of loss greater than potential gain

Rather than focusing on the investment and opening up the decision to all the potential biases people may have for different investment options, Ōnuku stepped back to explore the community’s broader aspirations and preferences.

Essentially, the potential investment options were put to the side while we explored aspirations. To do this, we used a method called choice modelling. The choice model focused on the values Ōnuku should promote through an aquaculture business. We selected four key values:

• Protecting the environment
• Protecting taonga
• Creating jobs
• Making money

Our method was a pairwise choice experiment. The participants were given two options and tasked with selecting their preferred option. The choice model, for example:

Would you prefer an aquaculture business that…

Creates a HIGH number of jobs and DOES NOT HARM the environment

Or

Creates a MODERATE number of jobs and ENHANCES the environment

The participant made multiple trade-offs like this until we had a clear understanding of their preferences for each value. These preferences were recorded as numerical weights. For example:

• Protecting the environment (4.5)
• Protecting taonga (2.5)
• Creating jobs (2)
• Making money (1)

We then combined each person’s preference weights to create an overall view of the community’s aspirations for an aquaculture business.

Next, we turn to the type of aquaculture business. In collaboration with a group of aquaculture and business experts, we came up with a list of potential species to farm.

Nine species made it to the final list. The challenge now is to understand how each species aligns with the four critical values. Will it create jobs, and if so, how many? Will it enhance or harm the environment, and if so, how much?

The experts, alongside a Ōnuku governance board, mapped each species to each aspiration by the degree to which the species enhanced or degraded the value.

Now we had:

• The community’s aspirations for an aquaculture business – converted to numbers
• The degree to which each species can enhance or degrade those aspirations – converted to numbers

The next step is to combine these two pieces of information, giving us a list of potential species to farm. These are then ranked based on their alignment with the community’s aspirations and values.

The benefits of this approach are numerous. Here are a few that jump out for me:

• The community can see their preferences reflected in the decision. Rik Tainui, chair of Ōnuku, told me that without a process like this, it is unlikely he would have got the communities support to make an investment of this scale.
• It is now the community’s investment, not just made on their behalf. People are more committed to and supportive of things they helped create.
• The process was highly transparent, which built trust.
• There is a high degree of reciprocity built into the process, where each party is enhancing the mana of each other.
• There is a higher degree of confidence in the final decision as it is based on the collective wisdom.

What Ōnuku did not do was invest in the option that ranked highest – Scampi. Instead, they invested in Salmon, one of the lowest-ranked options. So, was the process a failure?

I don’t think it was. Once we finished the pre-feasibility work, it was time to investigate the practicalities of each potential opportunity. Scampi, while being the highest-ranked option, had some major limitations, particularly the cost to establish and the risk of not obtaining any financial return.

On the other hand, Salmon presented a low-cost immediate return due to an opportunity to invest in an existing operation. Salmon was ranked so low due to its environmental impact and the community’s strong preference for environmental protection.

What happened next is why I don’t believe the process was a failure. Ōnuku knew their preferred option did not align with the community’s preferences, so they needed to make it align. They could not approach salmon in a traditional way that caused environmental harm. If they were to pursue salmon farming, then they needed to do it in a way that mitigated harm and aligned with the community’s preferences.

This provides an impetus to do better: invest in new technologies, commit to science, and develop complementary operations that create circular feedback loops that mitigate the salmon waste problem. The community input provided the information required to invest, which was the original intent. It did not pick the investment directly, which was never the intent.

In the end, the community was happy. Their input was transparent and reflected in the investment decision. Perhaps there was some element of consultation and doing what we were going to do anyway. However, this was outweighed by the process’s benefits and how the community’s preferences were incorporated into the business model.

I have run this process several times with different groups, and the top-ranked options rarely become the focus. At some point, practical realities intervene, but this does not invalidate the process. The process is not intended to be algorithmic in its decisions; instead, it wants to be transparent and informative in guiding decisions. Reciprocity, trust, transparency, and a community focus were the goals for this investment – goals which Ōnuku achieved.

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