Based at the law school of Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Carwyn’s work in legal academia has focused largely on issues related to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Prior to this, Carwyn had been working at the Māori Land Court, Waitangi Tribunal, and Office of Treaty Settlements, and was also involved in the settlement negotiations for his iwi. 

Having worked in the treaty settlement space, Carwyn was drawn to joining the Adaptive Governance and Policy team after noticing the innovative work happening around environmental governance. “That’s a particular area of interest for me – the adaptive policy and governance strand of this work aligns quite well with that” Carwyn says. “There’s been some really innovate stuff happening in the treaty space, and there’s lots of potential for even more creative things to be happening.” 

Developing good governance for the wellbeing of the environment and the community is what Carwyn hopes to see come out of his involvement with the challenge. “It’s partly about developing those models but also about finding ways of encouraging and promoting implementation of them as well.” 

With treaty settlement playing an important role in environmental governance, Carwyn’s experience will provide crucial input to this work, particularly his knowledge around drawing on tikanga and mātauranga Māori to inform and develop models of environmental governance and reform environmental policy.  

Coming from a community that has been engaged in both treaty and environmental issues will provide Carwyn with an important insight to this mahi. When it comes to treaty issues, Carwyn enjoys the combination of law, policy, politics, history and tikanga. “I really like the mix and I’m also really interested in the range of disciplines that are involved in the challenge as a whole.” 

With three young children, Carwyn is kept busy in his spare time. A big fan of soccer, he enjoys watching his kids play as well as supporting Liverpool FC. 

Posted February 2021.