Renee Raroa

Renee Raroa works at the intersection of whenua, people, and emerging nature economies. She is the Establishment Director of East Coast Exchange (ECX), a Tairāwhiti-based initiative piloting new ways to recognise and sustain regeneration work through locally governed nature markets.

Her mahi is grounded in lived practice on her ancestral whenua of Te Kautuku, a large Māori land block in the Waiapu catchment on the Far East Coast of the North Island. There, restoration, data, and whakapapa meet. Renee works alongside whānau to track contributions to biodiversity, water and soil systems, and the mauri of ecosystems. Connection to place is held as a living relationship, not a service to be extracted.

Through this work, Renee is helping shift thinking from value extraction to value reciprocity, and from payment for ecosystem services to recognition for contribution. Her focus is on designing systems where care for whenua is visible, valued, and sustained as a collective responsibility, accountable to whakapapa and to the living systems that sustain us all.