Dr Catherine Knight - An Uncommon Land

Dr Catherine Knight is an award-winning author, environmental historian, and policy expert with extensive experience in both strategic and operational environmental governance. Currently working in strategic policy in the government sector, Catherine is also an Honorary Research Associate at Massey University’s School of People, Environment and Planning. Her writing on wellbeing, post-growth economics, and environmental policy frequently appears on platforms such as Newsroom, The Spinoff, and Substack.

Catherine has authored several acclaimed books exploring the relationships between people, nature, and politics, including Nature and Wellbeing in Aotearoa, which we explored with her in a previous podcast episode. Her latest work, An Uncommon Land, is her most personal to date, tracing Aotearoa’s environmental and social history through the lens of her own ancestors. It explores powerful themes like enclosure, colonisation, and the gradual denaturing of landscapes.

In this episode:

• Her background in policy and current work beyond authorship
• Auckland’s lost tram network and the role of holistic city design
• Rethinking the economy to serve both people and planet
• What inspired Catherine to write An Uncommon Land
• The personal journey of understanding her ancestors to shape present-day insights
• The vulnerability of writing a deeply personal book
• The concept of The Commons—its historical significance and near-erasure in modern Aotearoa
• Debunking the myth of the "tragedy of the commons"
• How the shift to enclosure and private property continues to shape society today
• The enduring systems of war, colonisation, and environmental degradation—and their modern parallels
• Our complicity in an economy driven by exploitation and consumption
• How New Zealand’s celebrated progress has often depended on the extraction of resources and environmental destruction
• Envisioning alternative futures: post-growth models, food security, and land as a shared inheritance
• Why we must redirect public investment toward collective wellbeing
• What Catherine and her daughter learned from travelling together in the process of researching this book.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

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