Air New Zealand First MAHI Funder In Tairāwhiti Co-Investment Pilot

28 October 2024

The MAHI pilot at Te Kautuku is a globally innovative, cross-sector financing initiative which demonstrates the use of digital public infrastructure to directly fund regenerative land-use.

The Toha Network is proud to launch this unique co-investment pilot in Aotearoa New Zealand which combines public and private sector funding to support nature-positive actions and outcomes on whenua Māori.

The first MAHI funder is Air New Zealand, the national carrier airline of Aotearoa, via its Climate and Nature Fund. Te Puni Kōkiri, the Government's principal policy advisor on Māori wellbeing and development, also contributed regional development funding directly to the Te Kautuku Ahuwhenua Trust. This combined funding goes to frontline communities in Te Kautuku to enhance landscape resilience and contribute to the post-cyclone recovery in Tairāwhiti. The transaction is facilitated by the East Coast Exchange, a regional venture powered by Toha that is facilitating a community-led, adaptive response.

Te Kautuku is a 930 hectare Māori land block in Tairāwhiti on the far East Coast of the North Island. Its natural ecosystems range from lowland forests to dunelands, with wetlands and river systems connecting directly to the Pacific Ocean. The landowners have aspirations to transition from pastoral farming toward regenerative land uses that enhance native biodiversity. The devastating impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle have reinforced the importance of landscape resilience. However, access to finance is an ongoing barrier for whenua Māori, which prevents such aspirations from being realised.

The key to unlocking momentum for Te Kautuku has been MAHI, a digital token which will represent a unit of work in service to nature. Through the funding of MAHI, which will happen via Toha’s test software network, payments can be made directly and securely for actions that restore and regenerate the landscape. This is a vital part of the digital public infrastructure that Toha is building to enable new forms of collaboration across the private, public and community sectors to address climate change and biodiversity loss.

Air New Zealand’s Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer, Kiri Hannifin, says: ‘Addressing emissions and moving away from fossil fuels is the greatest challenge we face as an airline. It’s not enough just to wait and see what the future holds, particularly when the impacts of climate change are so visible and happening right now. Investing in Te Kautuku via the East Coast Exchange and the Toha Network gives us an opportunity to support local communities and contribute to greater resilience and native restoration in the short-term, but also to support innovation that could help develop a biodiversity market in Aotearoa that others could use in the future.’

The word mahi in te reo Māori, the Indigenous language of Aotearoa New Zealand, refers to work, labour and accomplishment. At Te Kautuku, this nature-based work includes natural habitat regeneration, biodiversity enhancement, waterway restoration, erodible slope stabilisation, native nursery development, and the restoration of ancestral trails. Each MAHI will hold verifiable data to prove that its sale is supporting frontline activities, and in future will create access data for claimable impacts such as biodiversity uplift, climate risk reduction and carbon sequestration.

Consequently, the MAHI pilot at Te Kautuku answers the call of the 2023 report, Outrage to Optimism, by the Ministerial Inquiry into Land Uses in Tairāwhiti and Wairoa. The report offered a vision for the East Coast as ‘a living laboratory, providing evidence and lessons for adapting to a climate-changing world.’ In particular, it recommended that the New Zealand Government should partner with the East Coast Exchange to create ‘a proof-of-concept co-investment arrangement’ for whenua Māori ‘to transition to a mosaic of high value land use and biodiversity’ (R.31–33). The MAHI pilot at Te Kautuku delivers on these recommendations and lays the foundations for nature payments which could support resilience-enhancing activities around the country.

The East Coast region is the first in Aotearoa New Zealand to see the sunrise. After Cyclone Gabrielle and other extreme weather events, it is also ahead of many regions in experiencing the climate-related disruption that every region will be increasingly exposed to. But the East Coast can also be a test-bed for innovation, a place where new solutions are developed to increase carbon removals, enhance biodiversity, and uphold data sovereignty for all.

We are excited to launch our inaugural impact sale with the support of our first market participants, including Air New Zealand and Te Puni Kōkiri. This impact sale demonstrates the potential of digital public infrastructure to enable new forms of collaboration and co-investment into climate action and the regeneration of nature.

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