Nature/culture split

[alpha-beta-soup]

This is emailed feedback that I've pasted here anonymously for discussion.

During your presentation of a draft Land Use Classification framework, I noted a strong Nature / Culture split. This is culturally specific, and in many ways unhelpful to wise land use decisions.
Indigenous forest, for example, shouldn't be assumed to be primarily for conservation purposes, including biodiversity and cultural values. It also serves many practical purposes that need much greater recognition and exploration, including nature-based flood and erosion control, carbon capture, land and water cooling and evolutionary resilience in the face of climate change, biomedical potentials and nature-based forestry (which is NOT the same thing as plantation forestry), for instance.
Its not helpful to set it aside as some kind of 'untouched' Nature category, because that leads to marginalisation in practical and economic decision-making around land use.
It would be good to discuss this further, when I've had a chance to look more closely at the framework; but this is a key philosophical issue, I think, that has major harmful practical consequences.

I believe the same comment was made in Q&A and I have responded there: https://github.com/manaakiwhenua/nzsluc/wiki/Q&A-Responses#at-a-high-level-the-framework-seems-to-stay-with-a-strong-nature--culture-split-which-ignores-the-many-practical-functions-served-by-indigenous-forest-for-instance-in-favour-of-biodiversity