New Zealand’s Rivers: can we learn from history?

UC Connect public lecture: New Zealand’s Rivers: can we learn from history?

Rivers have become a contentious election issue, attracting significant controversy, reflecting the sense of urgency that many New Zealanders feel about the perilous state of many of our waterways.

In an upcoming UC Connect public lecture, New Zealand’s Rivers: can we learn from history?, Dr Catherine Knight, author of New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history, will provide important context to this debate by exploring some of our complex – and often conflicted – history with rivers since humans first settled in Aotearoa New Zealand. She will argue that knowing our history is an important foundation to forging a better future, both in terms of our environment and our socioeconomic wellbeing.

Catherine Knight is an environmental historian. New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history (Canterbury University Press, 2016) was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2017 and was selected as one of theNZ Listener’s Best Books for 2016.

Her previous book, Ravaged Beauty: An environmental history of the Manawatu(Dunmore Press, 2014), won the JM Sherrard major award for excellence in regional and local history, and Palmerston North Heritage Trust’s inaugural award for the best work of history relating to the Manawatu. Knight is a policy and communications consultant and lives with her family on a farmlet in the Manawatu, where they are restoring the Tōtara forest.

UC Connect public lecture: New Zealand’s Rivers: can we learn from history? – environmental historian Dr Catherine Knight, 7pm – 8pm, Wednesday 20 September at the University of Canterbury.

Register to attend at: www.canterbury.ac.nz/ucconnect

ENDS

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