Participation of indigenous groups in sustainable development monitoring: Rationale and examples from New Zealand

Over the past decade, many government policies have been aimed at the elusive concept of 'sustainable development'. Over the same period there has been a growing awareness of the need to evaluate the progress of these policies as well as the need to encourage broad community participation in that monitoring. Unfortunately, it appears the participation of one important group, indigenous communities, in many sustainability programmes (including the selection and use of indicators in their monitoring and evaluation) is limited.This paper seeks to understand the role of sustainability monitoring and indigenous community participation in that monitoring within ecological economics and transdisciplinary research. We find that there is a strong need for sustainability indicators and a compelling rationale for indigenous community participation, both from ecological economic theory and from international and national policies. We also find that the present level of engagement of indigenous groups and communities in New Zealand in sustainability monitoring remains low, under-resourced, and uncoordinated. To improve the worldwide quality of sustainability indicators there is an urgent need to address this poor participation.