Coalescing the Chaos for Catchment Connections: A Framework Inspired by Wānaka for Catalyzing Community Action for One Health

Across the globe, ecosystems are degraded and humanity is impacting the biosphere amongst multiple domains, exceeding sustainability boundaries, in, for example, biodiversity loss and air pollution. To address this issue, people are calling for a socio-ecological systems approach. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how we used our experience to develop a catchment approach to planning and on-ground intervention, using the Upper Clutha catchment in the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand to demonstrate and report the importance of collaboration in achieving coordinated catchment management. This experience can be represented by the culmination of multiple workstreams that make up the Wānaka Way Framework—a prototype in action of how we work as a community to pursue One Health. Here, we demonstrate that this is achieved through trusted relationships, the co-design of tools, and knowledge creation and sharing. We highlight how the learnings from this catchment management approach can be applied more broadly.