Staying the green course after World Conservation Congress

Thousands of environmental and conservation leaders from around the globe who gathered in Honolulu for the IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) last month are long gone, but now the real work begins — both locally and globally.

For local sustainability advocates, it was not enough to simply host the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s WCC, which had never been held in the U.S. before the Hawaii gathering. There was a major push for Hawaii to share its conservation efforts, showcase the host culture and forge new partnerships with the world’s experts on key initiatives — from clean energy to natural resource management.

The Star-Advertiser’s editorial board recently spoke with members of the WCC’s Host Committee, specifically the co-chairs of the Legacy Committee, which is now focused on how to move the needle on the most pressing sustainability issues.

“We were actually approached to help focus specifically on what would be Hawaii and IUCN’s collective investment in this congress and how we can use that to advance outcomes in Hawaii,” said Celeste Connors, Legacy Committee co-chair and executive director of Hawai‘i Green Growth, a public-private partnership committed to building a more sustainable future.

Neil Hannahs, founder/chief executive officer of Ho‘okele Strategies LLC and the other Legacy Committee co-chair, noted that Hawaii has positioned itself to be a leader in creating a culture of sustainability.

”When we created the Legacy Committee, we said, … we are going to have 10,000 people here. We need to get answers. We need to figure out who is doing this and really leverage that intellectual capital,” Hannahs said. “The more we go around, we’ve got as many answers as anybody. So we felt, on the one hand good about that, but on the other hand, charged by the opportunity and the need for us to do something about it.”

One call to action is the Aloha+ Challenge, which outlines sustainability goals for the state — from doubling local food production to reducing the solid waste stream by 70 percent — and tracks progress using an electronic dashboard (dashboard.hawaii.gov/aloha-challenge).

Aloha+ Challenge

Connors: I just got back from New York and Washington, D.C., last week and I spoke at a panel of the United Nations with heads of state and environmental ministers. What was the most exciting thing they heard? The Aloha+ Challenge. I’m from Hawaii, but I spent 20 years away working at that national, international level. You have these high-level goals, and … we have to think and act locally to achieve these goals. All these people that negotiate those high-level goals know that the rubber hits the road at the local level. … It’s about getting people to recognize they have to get a seat at the table and they can effect change.

Hannahs: If you do a project you need some kind of mechanism to funnel the finance. Before that happens you’ve got to get people to care and you’ve got to get people to act. It’s one thing for a mayor to say I’m going to tax this and this … some levy to get this done. It’s another thing for Nainoa Thompson to say let’s make the Ala Wai (Canal) awesome. Let’s look at models around the world, let’s look at New York where …young people put a billion oysters into the Hudson (River) to make that livable again, to clean that up.

…

It wasn’t siloed as trying to take care of an environmental issue, it was nested in the advancement of education, advancement of businesses, advancement of our civic responsibilities.

Food Security

Connors: Local food is one of our goals. We’re the most isolated, populated land mass. … Previously we had a more sustainable society, prior to European contact. … It’s important to know our goal is to increase local food. …

We recognize that we need to have a robust agricultural industry to support local food production. In that way, we’re not an environmental advocacy group and we’re not a private sector group. We work to move the middle. Our goal is to increase local food, this is how we’re going to do it. Ma’o Farms is a great example of that.

Hannahs: The GMO shoehorned nicely and efficiently into ag lands in Hawaii because they were industrial in scale. Huge. What we’re going to need for local food is smaller scale. … We’re talking about a different type of agriculture. We’re talking about agribusiness opportunity, we’re talking about value-added industry and so it’s taking some coaxing and re-education of people of Hawaii and especially the youth to really grow the farmers that we need to kind of drive this new system. To me this opportunity is there. You go to the chefs, you go to Whole Foods, you go to Foodland, they all want local product. … A customer will even pay a premium for it. There’s value-add there economically and they’re willing to pay it. … We’re working on a big expansion of Ma‘o farms to get them land.

Invasive Species

Hannahs: You look at rapid ohia death and I’m not sure you could have intercepted that and stopped it. It was a fungus that adapted. But you can educate people. You’re educating all these players. Look at the halau at Merrie Monarch. You educate them. Now you got thousands of hula dancers who understand the issue and are more careful about how they wash their boots and wash their truck tires when they go into the forest. They become allies. …

It’s that kind of approach where you’re engaging the citizens of Hawaii who have some interest or another in these species or in these forests where these species dwell.

Innovation

Connors: We want to do this kind of (sustainability) innovation. … There’s a lot of innovation happening and people want to pioneer things in Hawaii. … It can be one of the growing clusters in Hawaii. It’s related to how we can have innovation home-grown with local knowledge and it stays here.

Hannahs: We’ve learned from our past. We’ve learned that an idea, an aspiration like that takes a certain amount of infrastructure, education infrastructure, real estate infrastructure, finance infrastructure, market infrastructure and so forth. Our efforts taught us that. … When you’re asked to talk to the U.N. and Nainoa is asked to talk just about anywhere on the planet about these kinds of goals and programs and so forth, Hawaii is putting itself on the map … as a place that’s really in a leadership position in terms of creating a culture of sustainability and the metrics to actually achieve that culture and really a marketplace for the innovation that it’s going to take to have those be successful. As Silicon Valley is to the tech industry, as Hollywood is to the movie industry, as Vegas is the gaming industry, why can’t Hawaii be that for sustainability?

Energy

Connors: Again, part of it is we have a diverse board as well. Hawaiian Electric is on our board, Department of Land and Natural Resources. I don’t see NextEra being the end of an era. I think we’re already seeing innovative ideas come forward and it’s part of engaging early in those conversations.

I think part of the challenge that we see over and over again, is that we don’t bring the right stakeholders to the table early and often. … We’ve got this 100 percent goal out there. It attracts a lot of attention and now there’s going to be this pressure to deliver on that through various initiatives and ways of achieving that.

Hannahs: The consumer can help, too. They can do their part with conservation. … I want to give credit to one of our partners here, Blue Planet. They came over to my house and installed technology that is measuring my electric uses within the house. We’ve seen a lot more progress on electricity …. Now my wife and I both have the software on the phone. We know exactly what’s using power, how much power we’re using in our home and where it’s coming from and how it relates to other homes. It’s a tool. If you don’t know what you’re doing, what’s it costing you?

Islands’ Partnership

Connors: We are compelled to act, we have to. I spent my career working on climate negotiations and negotiating global sustainable development goals. If we don’t carry this message forward, if we fail to implement here and with major economies, with provinces in India and China, we’re doomed. We’re the canary in the coal mine for all the front lines. This is the thing: the IUCN was a big invitation for Hawaii to come forward. We really, I would say, helped create the success of that international conference because of what Hawaii is.

The Aloha+ Challenge is built on the bedrock of Hawaiian culture and values. One interesting example, somebody from the Legacy Committee said we don’t like to call ourselves leaders, but basically we’re first responders. … Islands should be the ones who step forward and we have most at risk. …

We’ve already been asked to work through the Global Island Partnership, but also look at major economies. … Hawaii’s been invited to talk about what we’re trying to do here, that’s an invitation that we should embrace. We should feel compelled to accept that invitation.

Hannahs: Hokule‘a has knitted all the island communities of the Pacific. We have 40 years of voyaging. We went to those relationships both from an environmental standpoint and a political standpoint as well as the voyaging community and cultural communities. Now we’re saying we are small island masses that manage big oceans.

When you put this all together, we’re big players on this globe. We look at the importance of the ocean to drive every ecosystem function on this globe, that makes us really, really big players. … They’re relying upon us to really take that leadership.