Lesson 3: Resources & Sustainability
How Will Your Society Survive — and Thrive — Long Term?
Every society must answer the most fundamental question of all: how do we get what we need to live? Today students examine different economic models, explore the kaitiakitanga principle, and complete the resource pillar of their Society Blueprint.
Whakatūwhera — Cultural Opening
In 2017, the Whanganui River became the first river in the world to be granted legal personhood. It is now a legal entity — like a company or a person — with rights that can be defended in court. This law came from the Māori concept that the river is an ancestor, a living entity, not a resource to be extracted. The iwi who fought for this change understand something that mainstream economics has been slow to learn: you cannot build a sustainable society by treating the natural world as a bottomless mine.
Kaitiakitanga — guardianship of the natural world — is not just environmental policy. It is an economic principle: the health of the land determines the wealth of the people.
"Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au."
I am the river, the river is me. — Whanganui Māori proverb
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students Will Know
- Three models for managing resources (private ownership, commons, gift economy).
- The "tragedy of the commons" and how societies have solved it.
- How kaitiakitanga offers an alternative framework for economic thinking.
Students Will Demonstrate
- By designing the resource system for their society (food, energy, shelter, water).
- By identifying at least one sustainability mechanism in their design.
- By presenting their complete Society Blueprint in a 3-minute pitch.
🌿 Kaitiakitanga — Guardianship as Economics (15 mins)
Unpack the concept together before comparing economic models. Key elements of kaitiakitanga as a resource management system:
A temporary restriction on gathering or fishing in an area — allowing it to recover. A sophisticated form of sustainable yield management, developed centuries before Western conservation science.
The life force of a place — when the mauri of a river or forest is diminished (by pollution, overharvest), it signals ecological harm. Maintaining mauri is the goal of kaitiakitanga.
Resources are held on behalf of the iwi — including future generations. No individual can permanently "own" and deplete what belongs to all. This prevents the tragedy of the commons.
What you take, you must give back — in some form. Surplus was shared through gift economies (hau), building social bonds and ensuring no one went without while others had plenty.
💰 Three Resource Models (15 mins)
1. Private Ownership (Market Economy)
Individuals own resources and trade them. Price signals allocate goods. Incentivises innovation and efficiency but can produce extreme inequality and environmental degradation.
Risk: Tragedy of the commons — individuals maximise their own gain, collectively depleting shared resources.
2. Commons Management
Resources are held collectively and managed by community agreement. Elinor Ostrom (Nobel Prize 2009) proved communities can successfully manage commons without privatisation or government control.
Examples: Swiss alpine grazing communities (700+ years), Japanese fishing cooperatives, Māori fisheries management.
3. Gift Economy / Redistribution
Surplus is given away rather than accumulated. Status comes from generosity (mana through giving), not hoarding. Social bonds — not prices — allocate goods. Requires trust and small community size.
Examples: Māori hau (gift reciprocity), Pacific Island feasting economies, some contemporary "pay it forward" models.
🐟 Tragedy of the Commons — Fishing Simulation (15 mins)
Run this quick simulation to make the tragedy of the commons concrete and visceral.
✍️ Society Blueprint — Resource Design (10 mins)
Complete Your Resource Pillar
Students finalize their blueprint resource section. They must address four core needs:
How does your society grow, gather, or produce food? Who has access? How is surplus managed?
Is water a public right or private commodity? What energy sources does your society use? Who controls them?
Does everyone have the right to housing? How is land allocated? Can individuals own land, or is it held collectively?
What is your society's relationship with the natural world? Is there a kaitiakitanga principle built into your laws?
🎤 Society Pitches — Kaikōrero (remaining time)
Each student (or group) delivers a 3-minute pitch of their complete society. Structure:
- Context — who are you and where/when is your society? (30 sec)
- People & Community — who belongs, and how are they connected? (30 sec)
- Governance — who decides, and how? (45 sec)
- Resources — how do you sustain yourselves? (45 sec)
- Biggest challenge — what could destroy your society, and what's your plan? (30 sec)
Aromatawai — Culminating Assessment
Society Blueprint — Marking Guide
Beginning (1–2)
Describes a society with all four pillars present. Choices are made but not justified.
Developing (3–4)
Explains the reasoning behind key design choices. Identifies at least one trade-off or weakness.
Proficient (5–6)
Shows connections between pillars (changing one affects others). Society reflects learning from multiple real-world examples. Sustainability mechanism included.
Extended (7–8)
Society design includes a genuine tension or irreconcilable trade-off. Student can articulate why their system might fail and what they would do. Draws meaningfully on Te Ao Māori concepts.
Whakaaro — Final Reflection
You have now spent three lessons designing something human beings have been struggling with for thousands of years. There is no perfect society — every system has trade-offs. The most honest thing you can say about your design is not "here is the best society" but "here are the choices I made, and here is what I was willing to sacrifice to make them." That is also how real societies are made — through countless decisions, compromises, and negotiations between people with different needs and values.
The Māori concept of kaitiakitanga — guardianship — is perhaps the most important idea you take from this unit: whatever society you live in or build, you are responsible not just for your own wellbeing, but for the health of the whole system, for those who will come after you.
"Whāia te ara o ngā tūpuna, ā, ka tau ki uta."
Follow the path of the ancestors, and you will reach the shore safely.
Curriculum alignment
- Matter Interactions and Energy — Practices: Applying the law of conservation of energy to account for transformations between energy forms within simple everyday closed systems (e.g. combustion engines, light bulbs, spe…
- Matter Interactions and Energy — Practices: calculating the energy efficiency of simple everyday systems when given the starting and final energy amounts in joules or the % efficiency of individual steps
- Earth Systems — Practices: Applying understanding of carbon movement to real-world contexts (e.g. climate change mitigation, land use planning, energy choices), using evidence to evaluate the effectiven…
- Relationships — Practices: Reflecting on how role models and peer influences shape values and behaviours, and practising making intentional choices that align with personal identity and wellbeing, even …
- Matter Interactions and Energy — Knowledge: Changes in the natural and human world involve the transfer and transformation of energy:when food is digested, energy stored in chemical bonds is released and used to support…
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students design and critically analyse imagined societies — exploring governance, resource distribution, and systems thinking through the lens of tikanga Māori and contemporary civic values to understand how societies are structured and by whose values.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Can identify key systems in a society (governance, economy, environment) and explain how they interact
- ✅ Applies tikanga and manaakitanga principles when designing governance and resource-sharing systems
- ✅ Evaluates a designed society against criteria of equity, sustainability, and tino rangatiratanga
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide a society design template as an entry point; use role cards to assign students specific societal roles. Extension tasks include comparing their designed society to an existing iwi governance model or writing a constitution using tikanga principles.
ELL / ESOL: Use visual system diagrams; pre-teach civic vocabulary (governance, sovereignty, sustainability) alongside Māori equivalents (rangatiratanga, kaitiakitanga, toitū).
Inclusion: Offer design formats across modalities — written, diagrammatic, or oral presentation; neurodiverse learners benefit from structured design frameworks with clear decision points.
Mātauranga Māori lens: Whare as deliberative space — tikanga as constitutional framework. Kaitiakitanga as resource governance. Manaakitanga and whanaungatanga as the social contract. Whakapapa connects people to land and to systems of responsibility.
Prior knowledge: Basic awareness of how governments and economies work; familiarity with New Zealand civic structures.
Curriculum alignment
- Social Sciences — Level 4: Understand how systems of government in New Zealand operate and affect people’s lives.
- Social Sciences — Level 4: Understand how people make decisions about access to and use of resources.