Ridge-to-Reef Commitment to Climate and Culture in Hawai’i | Article

The Ko'olau Mountains on Oahu Island in Hawai'i puncture the sky with a jagged, bright green ridge. The peaks top out at 3,150 feet above sea level before descending rapidly over a few miles, past the outskirts of Honolulu to the city’s center by Māmala Bay.

A cross-section of this landscape, including most of Honolulu, is within the Waikīkī ahupua'a (land division), also known as the Ala Wai watershed. Because the mountains are so steep and much of the lower land is built up, the low-lying urban areas are especially vulnerable to flooding when it rains. Eroded soil and pollutants like fertilizers and heavy metals also wash into the water easily. As storms become more severe due to climate change, these communities are increasingly susceptible to flooding and water pollution.

Map of the Ala Wai Watershed (in purple)

The Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration, a network of regional stakeholders coordinated by a United Nations Local2030 hub called Hawai'i Green Growth, aims to address these threats all at once. It is taking a holistic ridge-to-reef approach to examine community needs and systematic solutions across the entire watershed of roughly 100,000 people.

A core mission of the Collaboration has been to align projects with both Hawai'i’s climate and sustainability goals and Native Hawaiian cultural values. With this perspective in mind, the Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration partners hope to move the state towards a future guided by ʻāina aloha, a deep and abiding love for Hawai'i’s communities and natural environment.

Tracking Climate and Sustainability Commitments

Hawai'i faces numerous climate threats. Surface air temperatures are increasing at four times the rate that they were 50 years ago. Ocean temperatures have been rising too, which could lead to about 3.2 feet (or more) of sea level rise by 2060. This may cause saltwater contamination of low-lying agricultural lands and water sources.

Water patterns are changing in other ways across the islands. While Hawai'i is becoming dryer overall, when it does rain, it comes as a torrent, leading to devastating floods and landslides. This is a big worry within the Ala Wai watershed, explains Shelley Gustafson, operations and strategy director at Hawai'i Green Growth. “One large 50- or 100-year storm event could cause millions of dollars in damage and have major consequences for communities and local businesses,” she said.

To avoid the worst effects of these threats, Hawai'i has an ambitious set of climate and sustainability goals. Many of these were first laid out in 2014 in the Aloha+ Challenge, a statewide commitment to action in six priority areas that are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Aloha+ tracks 37 targets and over 200 indicators across these six areas—clean energy, local food, natural resource management, waste, sustainable communities, and green jobs. These priorities also work in tandem with bills passed by the state legislature. For example, the state passed a law in 2015 directing utilities to only sell renewable energy by 2045.

A primary focus of Hawai'i Green Growth is to catalyze island-led solutions to drive concrete action. A working group within Aloha+ is tracking progress on the targets by assessing the work done by local organizations, like those associated with the Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration. As part of their 18-month-long feasibility study, the Collaboration analyzed eight partner-led projects throughout the watershed, assessing how each contributes to the six Aloha+ priority areas.

One of the assessed projects seeks to control albizia, a non-native plant that was introduced to Hawai'i 100 years ago from Indonesia. A fast-growing tree, albizia can grow up to 15 feet a year, outcompeting local flora. Trees that are three years old or above can no longer be hand-pulled, and cost $3,000 to $10,000 to remove. One of the biggest problems with albizia is that the trees are weak and brittle, which means that in large storms they can fall and damage critical infrastructure—a scenario that played out in 2014 with Hurricane Iselle. In the Ala Wai watershed, albizia trees that fall in the mountains can be washed down into and clog the waterways below, increasing urban flood risk. The organized effort to control the number of albizia trees reflects the interconnected nature of the watershed, where events upstream are integral to the health of ecosystems and communities downstream.

Large albizia trees block roads following Hurricane Iselle in 2014.

Along with exploring technical feasibility, the Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration also assessed how each project aligns with Native Hawaiian values and meets community needs in an equitable way. To do that, they partnered with ʻĀina Aloha Economic Futures (AAEF), a coalition formed by 14 Native Hawaiians in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The group saw this as a time to introduce a new strategy to guide Hawai'i towards an economy that is “less extractive, more generative, more circular, and grounded in ancestral Hawaiian place-based values,” according to Mahinapoepoe Paishon-Duarte, one of AAEF’s founders.

Creating a Future Grounded in Ancestral Hawaiian Values

For the Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration feasibility study, AAEF created a version of their assessment scorecard called the Mālama Implementation Tool. It looks at three major areas: community engagement, green jobs, and the active and respectful application of Hawaiian cultural values and knowledge. The goal, explains Paishon-Duarte, is to “take conceptual, philosophical values and apply them in operational, tactical ways that are useful to engineers, architects, and project managers.”

Expanding the use of this tool across projects and sectors can help spur climate action in Hawai'i while ensuring that Native Hawaiian voices are at the center of the process. “We have finally reached a moment where Indigenous values here in Hawaii are being honored, being recognized as important and central for how we better care for our environment and community,” Paishon-Duarte concluded. “It has been a long time coming.”

The Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration will be wrapping up the feasibility study in June 2022. A main conclusion that has already become clear, Gustafson said, is that “there is no silver bullet to a problem that is this complicated and multifaceted. All of these pieces are important and not one is going to do the trick.”

Despite the complexity, these efforts show that intentional work guided by climate commitments and Native Hawaiian values can bring the state closer to a just economic and energy transition through ʻāina aloha.

“If we do our work well,” Paishon-Duarte reflected, “then we will ensure that our environment is protected for future generations and that Native Hawaiian culture and vulnerable communities are cared for.”

Author: Emma Johnson