Project Abstract
Context - The Environment Court of New Zealand hears appeals about resource consent decisions that have been made by local authorities. Objective - This research project seeks to analyse the decisions made by the Court, and the extent to which applicants and respondents are able to anticipate the underlying principles. The area under examination will be systems engineering projects, e.g. but not limited to windfarms. Method – In the first workstream, published reports of the Court will be analysed using qualitative research methods, to extract themes. We seek to identify decision making principles, and priorities thereof, with any categorisations that may be apparent. In a second and potentially separate workstream, we will interview applicants and respondents for select cases, using semi-structured interview methods. We seek to understand their points of view and perspectives, and categorisations of world view. A third workstream will be to synthesise the findings from the previous studies and develop a conceptual model.
Funding: None at present, applicants would need to apply for UC doctoral scholarship or be self funded. This may also be suitable as an independent course of study.
