Megan Parsons
Biographic Data
| ID | 73696 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megan Parsons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megan |
| FAMILY NAME | Parsons |
| SIGNATURE | PARSONS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Auckland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8721-659X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Seeing Sea Country
The idea of the commons – or its tragedy – lies at the heart of many investigations into how to manage global marine and coastal areas. Dominant conceptualisations of the idea of commons – whether relating to unmanaged use or to its collaborative governance – nonetheless revolve around the idea of how to resolve tensions around (primarily extractive) natural resource use. As a form of commons, the marine and coastal estate remains under threat, a…
The public mandate for equitable climate adaptation: Evidence from Aotearoa New Zealand
Rewriting the climate social contract: Adaptation, equity, and indigenous rights in Aotearoa New Zealand
Aotearoa New Zealand’s adaptation policy is shifting toward neoliberal, market-based logic. • This shift erodes the climate-era social contract and burdens vulnerable communities. • Māori leaders and civil society actors advocate for justice-oriented, Treaty-grounded responses. • Neoliberal policies risk violating Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) and deepening climate injustice. • A renewed social contract is essential for equitable, eff…
Gendered social capital and adaptive capacity: Exploring the role of women farmers in climate adaptation in Aotearoa New Zealand
Paradox of socially just transition governance in the Global South: A comparative review of policy articulation and implementation gaps in South Africa, Ethiopia and Bangladesh
Navigating Climate Governance: Intersectional Youth Visions of Just Urban Adaptation
This article investigates climate justice, specifically exploring youth perspectives, gender and intersectionality within urban climate adaptation governance in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Addressing significant gaps in existing research, it focuses explicitly on how young women and gender‐diverse youth perceive climate adaptation, experience participation barriers and envision transformative pathways to achieve climate justice. Our qualitati…
Climate adaptation justice as lived experience: Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand
First empirical study of climate adaptation justice in Aotearoa New Zealand. • Adaptation is a relational process connecting people, place, and ecosystems. • Multiple justice principles are interdependent for fair climate adaptation. • Māori and multispecies perspectives are central to demands for fair adaptation. • A new framework shows justice and resilience are prerequisites for effective policy. Climate adaptation raises profound questions of…
Indigenous knowledge and politics of recognition in the Colonialcene
Climate-induced redistribution of people is not inevitable
Climate-induced redistribution of people is not inevitable, Boas, Ingrid, Sterly, Harald, Farbotko, Carol, Hulme, Mike, Benveniste, Hélène, Schewel, Kerilyn D, Bettini, Giovanni, Borderon, Marion, Hoffmann, Roman, van der Geest, Kees, Durand-Delacre, David, Selby, Jan, Wrathall, David J, Baldwin, Andrew, Benítez Cortés, Ailín, Bukari, Kaderi N, Bunchuay-Peth, Simon, Capisani, Simona, Codjoe, Samuel Nii Ardey, Dahm, Ruben, Dewan, Camelia, Dijstelb…
Participatory approaches to climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation: A systematic review
For decades, social scientists and activists have advocated for equal participation of citizens in decision-making about development and equitable futures. The urgency of this call has intensified with the climate emergency, pushing communities towards resilience. Yet, the concept of participation remains contested. This systematic review examines 187 articles to understand how participatory processes in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resili…
Remembering Wai‐Horotiu: Microhistory, public art, and Indigenous environmental justice in Tāmaki Makaurau
Few people walking along Queen Street in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, realise they are treading above Wai‐Horotiu, a historically significant stream now buried beneath the urban landscape. In this paper, I examine how Wai‐Horotiu, once vital to the socio‐cultural and ecological well‐being of mana whenua, was systematically canalised, polluted, and ultimately hidden underground through settler colonial interventions. Drawing on settler colonial theor…
Advancing Indigenous climate justice: Māori perspectives on managed retreat and climate adaptation policy in Aotearoa New Zealand
As climate risks intensify globally, managed retreat is increasingly proposed as a necessary response to community displacement. Yet without explicit attention to equity and justice, such initiatives risk perpetuating historical and contemporary injustices. Drawing on Māori submissions to government policy-making processes regarding Aotearoa New Zealand's National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and the Inquiry into Community-based Retreat and Climate Adap…
Everyday youth climate politics and performances of climate citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand
Young people around the world are creating their own spaces, strategies, and politics for climate action. In this article we explore the everyday informal politics of climate activism by youth from Aotearoa New Zealand's largest city (Auckland). We examine how young people, frustrated by the lack of global and domestic political inertia, are operationalizing their concerns about climate change into actions in their daily lives directed at mitigat…
Resistance, resurgence, and wellbeing: Climate change loss and damages from the perspective of Māori women
Drawing on ethnographic research with Māori women in northern Aotearoa (New Zealand) I use this paper to encourage reflection on how the loss and damages (L&D) discourse might better engage with Indigenous peoples' lived realities of climate change. I argue L&D scholarship and policy-making is dominated by reductive economic, hazard-focussed, and fatalistic framings of climate impacts and adaptation that are largely misaligned with Indigenous (an…
Putting human rights in the centre
Indigenous perspectives on climate mobility justice and displacement-mobility-immobility continuum
For millennia, Indigenous Peoples around the world have prepared for, coped with, and survived disasters and environmental change, and human-induced events. Along the way, these experiences – and a keen understanding of the environment in which they live – have borne what we refer to today as Indigenous Knowledges. Among the most significant of the human-induced events, colonization has disrupted Indigenous strategies of self-determination and re…
Governing with care, reciprocity, and relationality: Recognising the connectivity of human and more-than-human wellbeing and the process of decolonisation
In this dialogue, wellbeing-led approaches to governance are situated within broader conversations occurring between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars about decolonisation, climate change, and practices of cultural resurgence. I highlight how Indigenous peoples around the world are challenging the marginalisation of Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and practices and seeking to reassert and enact care-filled, kin-centric, and reciprocal …
Adaptation at whose expense? Explicating the maladaptive potential of water storage and climate-resilient growth for Māori women in northern Aotearoa
Methodological lessons for negotiating power, political capabilities, and resilience in research on climate change responses
Decolonizing ocean spaces: Saltwater co-belonging and responsibilities
Oceans in the colonial Anthropocene are haunted by the brutal racial logics of slavery, indenture, plunder, violence, death, and multispecies extinction. This brutality manifested through uneven burdens of climate extremes, global warming, ocean acidification, sea level rise, pollution, and threats from offshore energy extraction, chokes the “life force” of oceans that sustain planetary belongings and futures. Global agreements on climate change,…
Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship
Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience…
Indigenous climate change adaptation: New directions for emerging scholarship
Although Indigenous peoples' perspectives and concerns have not always been accommodated in climate change adaptation research and practice, a burgeoning literature is helping to reframe and decolonise climate adaptation in line with Indigenous peoples' lived experiences. In this review, we bring together climate adaptation, decolonising and intersectional scholarship to chart the progress that has been made in better analysing and responding to …
Situating climate change adaptation within plural worlds: The role of Indigenous and local knowledge in Pentecost Island, Vanuatu
Scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers are increasingly recognising that Indigenous knowledge can play a significant role in facilitating adaptation to climate change. Yet, adaptation theorising and practises remain overwhelmingly situated within Euromodern ontologies, and there remains limited space, at present, for plural ontologies or alternative ways of being and knowing. In this paper, and using the Pacific as our case study, we presen…
Exploring the use of the Quake Safe House video game to foster disaster and disaster risk reduction awareness in museum visitors
Engaging Indigenous perspectives on health, wellbeing and climate change. A new research agenda for holistic climate action in Aotearoa and beyond
Existing frameworks for interpreting and acting upon the health consequences of climate change fail to engage with the multiple and complex forms of loss and damage that Indigenous peoples experience to their health and wellbeing in a changing climate. Using a case study of Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, we call for a new research agenda that foregrounds Indigenous peoples’ collective, relational perspectives on health and wellbeing in order to b…
The role of culture and traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation: Insights from East Kimberley, Australia
Disrupting path dependency: Making room for Indigenous knowledge in river management
Alternative approaches to co-design: Insights from indigenous/academic research collaborations
Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship
Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience…
Decolonizing ocean spaces: Saltwater co-belonging and responsibilities
Oceans in the colonial Anthropocene are haunted by the brutal racial logics of slavery, indenture, plunder, violence, death, and multispecies extinction. This brutality manifested through uneven burdens of climate extremes, global warming, ocean acidification, sea level rise, pollution, and threats from offshore energy extraction, chokes the “life force” of oceans that sustain planetary belongings and futures. Global agreements on climate change,…
Historical analogies as tools in understanding transformation
Adaptation at whose expense? Explicating the maladaptive potential of water storage and climate-resilient growth for Māori women in northern Aotearoa
Methodological lessons for negotiating power, political capabilities, and resilience in research on climate change responses
Situating climate change adaptation within plural worlds: The role of Indigenous and local knowledge in Pentecost Island, Vanuatu
Scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers are increasingly recognising that Indigenous knowledge can play a significant role in facilitating adaptation to climate change. Yet, adaptation theorising and practises remain overwhelmingly situated within Euromodern ontologies, and there remains limited space, at present, for plural ontologies or alternative ways of being and knowing. In this paper, and using the Pacific as our case study, we presen…
Indigenous climate change adaptation: New directions for emerging scholarship
Although Indigenous peoples' perspectives and concerns have not always been accommodated in climate change adaptation research and practice, a burgeoning literature is helping to reframe and decolonise climate adaptation in line with Indigenous peoples' lived experiences. In this review, we bring together climate adaptation, decolonising and intersectional scholarship to chart the progress that has been made in better analysing and responding to …
Resistance, resurgence, and wellbeing: Climate change loss and damages from the perspective of Māori women
Drawing on ethnographic research with Māori women in northern Aotearoa (New Zealand) I use this paper to encourage reflection on how the loss and damages (L&D) discourse might better engage with Indigenous peoples' lived realities of climate change. I argue L&D scholarship and policy-making is dominated by reductive economic, hazard-focussed, and fatalistic framings of climate impacts and adaptation that are largely misaligned with Indigenous (an…
River Co-governance and Co-management in Aotearoa New Zealand: Enabling Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being
Legislation emerging from Treaty of Waitangi settlements provide Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, with new opportunities to destabilize and decolonize the colonial knowledge, processes and practices that contribute towards negative material and metaphysical impacts on theirrohe[traditional lands and waters]. In this article we focus our attention on the Nga Wai o Maniapoto (Waipa River) Act 2012 and the Deed of Settlement sig…
Technically political: The post-politics(?) of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme
Indigenous peoples and transformations in freshwater governance and management
Governing with care, reciprocity, and relationality: Recognising the connectivity of human and more-than-human wellbeing and the process of decolonisation
In this dialogue, wellbeing-led approaches to governance are situated within broader conversations occurring between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars about decolonisation, climate change, and practices of cultural resurgence. I highlight how Indigenous peoples around the world are challenging the marginalisation of Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and practices and seeking to reassert and enact care-filled, kin-centric, and reciprocal …
A crack in the automobility regime? Exploring the transition of São Paulo to sustainable urban mobility
Lived Experiences at the Intersection of Sediment(ation) Pollution, Gender, Ethnicity and Ecosystem Restoration from the Kaipara Moana, Aotearoa New Zealand
In settler-colonial nations such as Aotearoa, New Zealand, ecosystem degradation and restoration of coastal estuaries and their catchments are typically framed through a scientific lens and often privilege patriarchal beliefs and epistemologies. A consequence of colonization in Aotearoa is that sediment(ation) pollution is deemed undesirable, and science is needed to control and solve such ecosystem challenges. However, there remains a tendency t…
Historical smellscapes in Aotearoa New Zealand: Intersections between colonial knowledges of smell, race, and wetlands
Holistic approaches to river restoration in Aotearoa New Zealand
Beyond Stop Disasters 2.0: An agenda for exploring the contribution of video games to learning about disasters
With the increasing popularity of video games over the last few decades, a significant research area for disaster studies has presented itself. Preliminary disaster video game research deconstructed a multitude of disaster video games from various international organisations (e.g. UNESCO, UNISDR), governments (e.g. Canada), non-government organisations (e.g. Save the Children, Christian Aid), researchers and mainstream disaster video games. This …
Defining disease, segregating race: Sir Raphael Cilento, Aboriginal health and leprosy management in twentieth century Queensland
In Australia, as elsewhere, modern scientific studies of leprosy were firmly located within contemporary race-based and climatic medical theories, and were closely aligned to the discipline of tropical medicine. 1 During the interwar period the race-based leprosy theories of doctors Cecil Cook and Sir Raphael Cilento directly informed leprosy management strategies in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. 2 In the Queensland co…
The role of culture and traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation: Insights from East Kimberley, Australia
Ma‘i Lepera: Disease and displacement in nineteenth-century Hawai‘i
Historians have long been fascinated by the ways in which different societies have perceived, reacted to and treated leprosy. Introducing Ma‘i Lepera, Kerri Inglis explains her intention to ‘bring
Destabilizing Narratives of the â Triumph of the White Man over the Tropicsâ
Alternative approaches to co-design: Insights from indigenous/academic research collaborations
Historical analogies as tools in understanding transformation
Beyond Stop Disasters 2.0: An agenda for exploring the contribution of video games to learning about disasters
With the increasing popularity of video games over the last few decades, a significant research area for disaster studies has presented itself. Preliminary disaster video game research deconstructed a multitude of disaster video games from various international organisations (e.g. UNESCO, UNISDR), governments (e.g. Canada), non-government organisations (e.g. Save the Children, Christian Aid), researchers and mainstream disaster video games. This …
The Role of Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge in Ecosystem-Based Adaptation: A Review of the Literature and Case Studies from the Pacific Islands
Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) is increasingly being advocated as a climate adaptation approach that can deliver multiple benefits to communities. EbA scholarship argues that community-based projects can strengthen those ecosystems that deliver critical services to communities and in doing so enhance community resilience. In particular, the inclusion of indigenous and traditional knowledge (ITK) into community-based EbA projects is positioned a…
Technically political: The post-politics(?) of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme
Disrupting path dependency: Making room for Indigenous knowledge in river management
On the use of participatory methodologies for video game research: Exploring disaster risk reduction in video games
Video game scholars examining the shortcomings of previous video game research reference the need for new and innovative methodologies. Existing video game research seemingly inhibits organic learning experiences by setting specific research targets or providing players with gameplay instructions, hence utilising methodological approaches that study the learning process from the outside. With the increasing popularity of both serious and mainstre…
‘Serious’ Disaster Video Games: An Innovative Approach to Teaching and Learning about Disasters and Disaster Risk Reduction
Scholars, practitioners and educators propose video games as innovative teaching methods to engage geography students. A methodological framework, informed by constructivist learning theory, explored the ability of ‘serious’ disaster video games to foster student participation in learning within four New Zealand schools. The findings indicate the utilization of video games within the classroom requires further consideration of the teaching and le…
Indigenous peoples and transformations in freshwater governance and management
Holistic approaches to river restoration in Aotearoa New Zealand
A crack in the automobility regime? Exploring the transition of São Paulo to sustainable urban mobility
River Co-governance and Co-management in Aotearoa New Zealand: Enabling Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being
Legislation emerging from Treaty of Waitangi settlements provide Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, with new opportunities to destabilize and decolonize the colonial knowledge, processes and practices that contribute towards negative material and metaphysical impacts on theirrohe[traditional lands and waters]. In this article we focus our attention on the Nga Wai o Maniapoto (Waipa River) Act 2012 and the Deed of Settlement sig…
Exploring the use of the Quake Safe House video game to foster disaster and disaster risk reduction awareness in museum visitors
Engaging Indigenous perspectives on health, wellbeing and climate change. A new research agenda for holistic climate action in Aotearoa and beyond
Existing frameworks for interpreting and acting upon the health consequences of climate change fail to engage with the multiple and complex forms of loss and damage that Indigenous peoples experience to their health and wellbeing in a changing climate. Using a case study of Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, we call for a new research agenda that foregrounds Indigenous peoples’ collective, relational perspectives on health and wellbeing in order to b…
Decolonising the medical curriculum: Psychiatry faces particular challenges
Colonial thinking runs deep in psychiatry. Recent anti-racist statements from the APA and RCPsych are to be welcomed. However, we argue that if it is to really tackle deep-seated racism and decolonise its curriculum, the discipline will need to critically interrogate the origins of some of its fundamental assumptions, values and priorities. This will not be an easy task. By its very nature, the quest to decolonise is fraught with contradictions a…
Lived Experiences at the Intersection of Sediment(ation) Pollution, Gender, Ethnicity and Ecosystem Restoration from the Kaipara Moana, Aotearoa New Zealand
In settler-colonial nations such as Aotearoa, New Zealand, ecosystem degradation and restoration of coastal estuaries and their catchments are typically framed through a scientific lens and often privilege patriarchal beliefs and epistemologies. A consequence of colonization in Aotearoa is that sediment(ation) pollution is deemed undesirable, and science is needed to control and solve such ecosystem challenges. However, there remains a tendency t…
Hegemonic masculinity and femininity in the ‘backblocks’ of the Waikato and King Country 1860s–1930s
Through the medium of archival and visual sources, as well as oral histories, this study explores the transformation of one freshwater place, the Waipa River located within the Waikato and King Country districts of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, from the 1860s through till the 1930s. This article addresses the neglect of gender within existing environmental history and historical geography literatures on settler colonial societies, and…
Historical smellscapes in Aotearoa New Zealand: Intersections between colonial knowledges of smell, race, and wetlands
Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship
Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience…
Indigenous climate change adaptation: New directions for emerging scholarship
Although Indigenous peoples' perspectives and concerns have not always been accommodated in climate change adaptation research and practice, a burgeoning literature is helping to reframe and decolonise climate adaptation in line with Indigenous peoples' lived experiences. In this review, we bring together climate adaptation, decolonising and intersectional scholarship to chart the progress that has been made in better analysing and responding to …
Situating climate change adaptation within plural worlds: The role of Indigenous and local knowledge in Pentecost Island, Vanuatu
Scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers are increasingly recognising that Indigenous knowledge can play a significant role in facilitating adaptation to climate change. Yet, adaptation theorising and practises remain overwhelmingly situated within Euromodern ontologies, and there remains limited space, at present, for plural ontologies or alternative ways of being and knowing. In this paper, and using the Pacific as our case study, we presen…
Political science (30 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Indigenous (22 works) · Ecology (20 works) · Aotearoa (17 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (15 works) · Climate change (14 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Geography (14 works) · Psychology (14 works)