ABSTRACT
The urban dwellers of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, share a long history with the sea and the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana in particular. A (self-appointed) ‘Hauraki Gulf community’ got together to discuss solutions to what they saw as a rapidly deteriorating environmental state in the Hauraki Gulf. The community initiated a participatory but non-statutory marine spatial planning process in which multiple stakeholders and treaty partners negotiated their diverse imaginaries, views and interests. The chapter explores how an urban ethics of marine stewardship emerged in the process, bringing together diverse ethicalities and working as a common ground for collaboration and consensus building. Accordingly, it draws on numerous expert interviews, observations and publications of institutions and organizations. The chapter also discusses the partly paradoxical implications of an emergent urban ethical imaginary of marine stewardship for the political ecology of the Hauraki Gulf. Not yet normative Māori ethicalities, nature-culture relations and self-determination were asserted and mapped into space. Simultaneously, aspects of an ethics of guardianship were singled out in the form of individualist ethical claims and a neoliberal governmentality. Emergent geographical imaginaries and participation have reinforced unjust urban processes and work as modes of exclusion. The chapter shows the need to understand urban ethics in their place-specific contexts and ontological diversity. It also points out how ethics are a relevant part of the political ecologies of efforts to rework urban, coastal spaces.
