Investors as Kaitiaki: Meeting the Earth Day Challenge
As we mark Earth Day 2025, the 55th anniversary of the world's largest environmental movement, we invite all investors to ensure their investments serve as a force for good by positively impacting environmental, social, and economic challenges through investing in more ethical funds and businesses.
What began on April 22, 1970, with 20 million Americans demanding action against pollution has evolved into a global call for climate action, ecological justice, and planetary care. Meeting these challenges requires a fundamental shift in both individual and collective consciousness, and investors can be catalysts in creating it.
Defining your investment purpose and principles can be a starting point for creating a strategic investment plan and portfolio to achieve your goals. For ethical investors, this purpose often includes being stewards whose investments are grounded in the well-being of current and future generations—a legacy-focused approach that makes sense for anyone concerned about their true impact.
Many ethical investors have embraced the indigenous concept reflected in the Māori ethic of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) as their guiding purpose and a key principle. This approach is reflected in key financial institutions: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand notes that "the very top lines of our logo embody kaitiakitanga— guardianship of the financial ecosystem," while the New Zealand Superannuation Fund states: "Guardianship, or kaitiakitanga, is about looking at the very long term, across generations, and asking what investments will do the best job for us."
Investors seeking to be ‘kaitiaki’ can deepen their understanding by learning more about the indigenous standpoint. Without in-depth consideration, the use of the term "kaitiakitanga" by non-Indigenous investors risks being seen as a buzzword rather than a transformative principle.
To support this learning journey and to honour Earth Day 2025, I'm excited to share our latest contribution to furthering an indigenous perspective within ethical investment and business. Together with Professor Chellie Spiller and Dr. Amber Nicholson, I've co-authored:
"Consciousness-Centered Stewardship: An Indigenous Standpoint"
Published in a special Earth Day issue of the highly respected Humanistic Management Journal, our article explores how Māori philosophy — especially kaitiakitanga — can reshape investment approaches, leadership, and sustainability practices. It challenges conventional thinking about the environment by contrasting two approaches:
A key insight from our article explains:
"A pivotal consideration distinguishing a consciousness-centered approach from a dominion-driven approach to stewardship is that we must also examine ourselves rather than simply externalising problems as ‘out there’ in the environment that must be fixed. The preponderance of solutions based on a scientific “data-driven landscape” (Waldmüller et al. 2022 p. 471) compounds an externalising of problems and placing that which is to be fixed in the world or other people. We argue that development is not simply out there in the world external to us but must also be incorporated internally to ensure a level of consciousness that takes responsibility for human-created problems and associated solutions. To move beyond the ineffectiveness of whack-a-mole fixing of environmental issues as they pop up, we must consider our own involvement and development.”
We also highlight that:
A kaitiaki goes beyond the limiting notion of a ‘now’ self and embraces the idea of an intergenerational self that reflects ancestors and descendants and, thus, is part of a movement through time. Speaking to Kereopa, a Māori tohunga, expert in sacred lore, spiritual beliefs, traditions, and genealogies, Moon (2003 pp. 131–132) gathered his advice for people wanting to understand how they can become a kaitiaki:
“When one considers kaitiaki, you have to consider for what purpose it is being used … So it is about knowing the place of things in this world, including your place in this world. When you get to that point, you realise that thinking of all things is the same … if you are fully aware of the world you live in, what you do to a tree is what you do to yourself. So when you are a guardian … you are actually looking after yourself.”
To be effective, as Kereopa instructs in the quote, kaitiaki are encouraged to know their place intimately and, at the same time, maintain a perspective of the whole. Being a kaitiaki is a time-honoured, culturally steeped tradition that occurs through collective community recognition. Cultural pockets worldwide are home to these rare people who are caretakers and warriors for some of the last vestiges of genuinely biodiverse ecologies the planet has left.
From Caterpillars to Conscious Investors and Catalyst Leaders
In a previous blog, ‘Introducing The Inner Development Goals’, a global initiative aiming to further action towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, I referenced Harvard’s Bob Kegan, who speaks about the need for people to develop from being ‘socialised’ to ‘self-authoring’ and ultimately ‘self-transforming’. Kegan maintains that only 1% of people are at the ‘self-transforming’ level. He highlights the imperative for a growth in consciousness:
“We are built to grow. It is our destiny to grow. A caterpillar is not supposed to die as a caterpillar. Its destiny is to grow wings and fly. And as Einstein said, we are never going to solve our problems with the same order of consciousness that created them.”
This philosophy aligns with the ethic of kaitiakitanga - true guardianship begins with our own conscious awareness and agency. The challenge is to become self-transforming.
Chellie offers unique leadership development guidance for individual leaders, teams, and organisations wanting to become more effective kaitiaki. Her credentials include: Author of Wayfinding Leadership and The Catalyst’s Way; Fulbright Senior Scholar at Harvard Kennedy School; Professor of leadership and indigenous business expert at the University of Waikato; and Global thought leader and facilitator of leadership development.
Four Opportunities for Earth Day
This Earth Day, we invite you to consider four actions that can enhance both your investment outcomes and your impact:
1. Learn more about Catalyst Leadership
We're offering free access to Chellie’s latest book: The Catalyst's Way, along with The Storyteller’s Companion Guide, and the Catalyst Workbook. These resources support the personal and professional development and growth required for transformational change by individual and institutional investors and the businesses they invest in. You can also request from Money Matters access to watch Chellie’s presentation of The Catalyst’s Way at the most recent Money Matters client event.
2. Learn More About Ethical Investment
Watch my recent webinar ‘Aim Higher’ that includes:
Transformation of investment and business ‘as usual’
Ethics that underpin excellence
How taking a wider, longer, deeper, and lighter view can increase wealth and well-being
Applying the Four P’s: Purpose, Principles, Practices, and Performance Measurement
The value of an adviser
Watch the webinar ‘Wayfinding for Ethical Investment’ by Chellie and me, and read my blog about this. We explore:
What is Wayfinding
The Five Wellbeings approach from Chellie’s PhD: economic, social, environmental, cultural and spiritual wellbeing
Applying an ethic of care (manaakitanga)
Wayfinding practices to help investors and business leaders
Performance measurement across the five wellbeings
Read our groundbreaking Journal of Business Ethics articles based on our respective PhD’s - Chellie’s co-authored ‘Relational Well-being and Wealth: Māori Business and an Ethic of Care’ (2010) and my Journal of Business Ethics article ‘Ethical Business and Investment: A Model for Business and Society’(2000). You can request these from Money Matters.
3. Schedule Your Financial and Ethical Investment Health Check-Up: An Independent Expert Review of Your Money Matters
If you're ready to aim higher with your investments and meet the Money Matters minimum investment criteria, book a time with me for an independent expert financial and ethical examination of your plan and portfolio. We can check for greenwashing and show you what more is possible for investors seeking to be Kaitiaki applying consciousness-centered stewardship. There is no cost for the initial meeting and preliminary assessment.
4. Share this blog to spread the word and help others learn more about being a catalyst leader and an ethical investment leader.
This Earth Day let’s aim higher. Let’s take up the challenge of attending to inner development, aspiring to be self-transforming kaitiaki. As we do this, we can better be catalysts whose money matters in bringing about the sustainable development changes required with solutions for environmental, social, and economic problems. Let’s become more effective kaitiaki—the world needs us.
Read the Full Article (Free Access)
“Consciousness-Centered Stewardship: An Indigenous Standpoint”
Co-authored by Chellie Spiller, Amber Nicholson, & Rodger Spiller
For a PDF version or to explore these themes further, contact Money Matters.