Taui’anga tuatau | Changing times : the ambivalent relationship between land tenure and tourism development on Rarotonga, Cook Islands : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Development, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Tourism is the primary economic driver of the Cook Islands, and its expansion has significantly reshaped land use in Rarotonga, where customary and legal land tenure systems intersect. Despite this, the relationship between land tenure and tourism development remains under-examined in the Cook Islands. This thesis addresses this gap by examining how tourism development has shaped land tenure over the past twenty years, how land tenure has influenced tourism development, and how landholders on Rarotonga navigate change within dual governance systems. The research adopts a culturally embedded, actor-oriented approach, using ‘akapapa‘anga as both a theoretical and analytical framework to examine development interactions between landholders, land, and tourism. Drawing on qualitative methods grounded in landholder experiences; the study explores how customary and legal tenure systems operate in practice under tourism-led economic pressure. Findings indicate that customary and market-based systems operate in a relationship of complementary competition, at times reinforcing one another while also generating tensions. This produces a reinforcing cycle in which tourism development expands leasing, leasing enables access to finance, and finance facilitates further development. These processes have shifted the value of land in people’s minds towards economic uses, intensifying leasing and financialisation. At the same time, land continues to be understood through relational frameworks, with commercial use negotiated alongside responsibilities to families, place, and shared authority. Enduring ancestral connections and communal governance therefore remain central to how people value and manage land, generating ongoing tensions between economic imperatives and cultural responsibilities. The thesis demonstrates that landholders actively negotiate tourism development rather than passively absorbing its impacts. Drawing on Pacific land–tourism scholarship, it highlights the importance of development pathways that respect customary governance, support collective agency, and safeguard the cultural and environmental foundations of community wellbeing and sustainable tourism. The thesis also contributes to wider discussions on Pacific-led development within a globalised economy