Pro bono analysis of environmental litigation trends, presented as evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal.
The Waitangi Tribunal hears claims that the Crown has breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi, including claims about land, water and the environment. Our team worked through a large body of complex documents and past cases to trace how environmental disputes have moved through the courts over time, and those trends were presented as evidence.
Records shape what counts as harm. Environmental change that was never measured or written down is hard to prove, however real it is to the people who lived through it. What a system records decides what it can recognize.
Place is relational. The same river or coastline can be a resource in one document and an ancestor in another. Data about a place carries the worldview of whoever collected it.
Patterns need people. Counting cases shows a trend, but only careful reading shows why it happened. The most useful analysis moved back and forth between the two.