THE CRUCIAL DECADE

Paora (Paul) Tapsell (Te Arawa, Tainui) was raised in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato, where his customary Māori knowledge was passed to him by his tribal marae elders. He has been a senior lecturer in Museums and Cultural Heritage at University of Auckland; Dean, Professor and Chair of Māori Studies at University of Otago; and the Director and Professor of the new Indigenous Studies Program at University of Melbourne. Recently Paul became Principal at Takarangi Research, leading five Aotearoa–Australian socially responsible research projects. Outside of his professional life, he has found time to balance fatherhood, sports, voluntary and tribal duties, as well as establishing Maorimaps.com, digitally relinking thousands of disconnected Māori to their tribal home communities.

Kera Sherwood-O’Regan (Kāi Tahu) is the impact director at social impact creative agency, Activate Agency. With a background in political science and public health, Kera has over 15 years’ experience in climate campaigning. She is a Climate Reality Leader, founding member of SustainedAbility, and former board member of OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council. Kera works annually at the United Nations Climate Negotiations supporting the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change. As a proudly disabled and Indigenous woman, Kera’s work centres on structurally oppressed communities in social change, and crosses the intersections of Indigenous & disability rights, health and climate change.

Dave Lowe is an atmospheric chemist and a lead author of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on climate change. In the early 1970s he set up a monitoring station at Baring Head to provide the world’s first evidence of rising atmospheric CO2 in the southern hemisphere mid-latitudes. He has worked in laboratories in the US, Germany and Aotearoa and has taught atmospheric chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington, where he is an adjunct professor. Today, Dave runs an independent business focused on science education and sustainability. He is one of the last surviving attendees of the world’s first atmospheric CO2 conference, in 1975.

Mike Joy is an outspoken advocate for environmental protection in Aotearoa. He researches ecological modelling, bioassessment, environmental science, environmental policy and energy futures. He has received numerous recognition for his work, including the inaugural New Zealand Universities Critic and Conscience Award in 2017. He is based at the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington – Te Herenga Waka, where he is researching the interface between science and policy. Follow him on Instagram @m.k.joy

Kim Hill is an Aotearoa broadcaster who currently presents the programme ‘Saturday Morning’ on RNZ. Her early career included stints working for radio and newspapers in Nelson, Greymouth and Gisborne, before moving to Radio New Zealand in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellignton and starting on the programme ‘Checkpoint’. From 1993 to 2002 she was the host of the daily morning ‘Nine to Noon’ programme. Notable interviews from this time included the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Jeffrey Archer, and Monica Lewinsky. In April 2002, Hill began hosting ‘Saturday Morning’. She was named International Radio Personality of the Year in 2012.