Hawai‘i has significantly increased momentum on sustainable development locally and globally since hosting the 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress, when the IUCN adopted WCC-2016-Rec-109 “Aloha+ Challenge Model for Sustainable Development.” In 2017, Hawai‘i became the first state in the US to enact legislation aligning with the Paris Agreement on climate change; the legendary Polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a completed the Worldwide Voyage across the earth’s oceans with the message of “Mālama Honua, To Care for our Earth”; and island communities used the Aloha+ Challenge as a model for place-based initiatives on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Hawai‘i has a deep understanding of sustainability, grounded in a legacy of Native Hawaiian culture and nature-based innovation. Hawai‘i’s systems approach to resource management – mālama ‘āina - is embodied by the global SDGs and balances focus on environmental, social, and economic priorities. It is both a responsibility and privilege for Hawai‘i to partner with communities across the globe to collectively build a more sustainable future for “island earth”. WCC-2016-Rec-109 provides a platform to share lessons learned and scale models that can support implementation of SDGs that are aligned with local values, cultures, and contexts.
Through work on the Island Resilience Initiative with the Global Island Partnership, IUCN members and offices, and other entities, at least three other islands are utilizing the Aloha+ Challenge as a model to inspire and support work on SDGs in their specific context. The pilot initiative with IUCN Members Fiji, Palau, and the Republic of Marshall Islands catalyzed further collaboration across sectors, silos, and stakeholders on sustainable development, and identified initial local priorities that aligned with the SDGs. This has helped increase local capacity to implement the SDGs, and created an initial peer-to-peer network that support long-term action by and with IUCN members. Building on this initiative, Hawai‘i is engaged in dialogue with international partners to catalyze a resilience and sustainable development project pipeline, specifically focusing on vulnerable, urban areas. Hawai‘i’s capital Honolulu was selected to as part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Network, to share best practices and scale models, including on the Aloha+ Challenge and resilience strategy development. The Julie Anne Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) Arizona State University partnered with HGG to study Hawai‘iʻs Aloha+ Challenge as a global sustainability model, and continues to be a partner to engage students on scaling sustainability solutions.
The completed Aloha+ Challenge Dashboard is a statewide accountability mechanism that further advances WCC-2016-Rec-109. The Dashboard serves as a model to track SDG implementation, and lays a foundation for community-driven data initiatives that can be scaled with other islands, communities, and regions. This platform continued to be a key element in the Island Resilience Initiative, and supported IUCN member partners in identifying potential mechanisms to track progress on localized goals. In Hawai‘i, development of the Dashboard involved several hundred stakeholders and built stronger partnerships statewide; it serves as a long-term mechanism to provide statewide political coherence on 2030 goals, ensure transparency and engage communities.
In addition to partnering internationally, Hawai‘i advanced WCC-2016-Rec-109 locally through collaborative partnerships to ensure the Aloha+ Challenge accelerated tangible action. In order to be successful in scaling models, it is critical for Hawai‘i to ensure the Aloha+ Challenge continues to have strong momentum through public-private leadership and advances tangible action. As part of this effort, HGG serves as the backbone organization for the Aloha+ Challenge, and catalyzes action across a network of government, private sector, and civil society partners to drive sustainable development outcomes. Through collaboration across diverse sectors in 2017, the partnership demonstrated considerable results in kick-starting implementation on WCC-2016-Rec-109.
HGG partners launched two major public-private initiatives after the IUCN World Conservation Congress – the Sustainability Business Forum and the Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration. The Ala Wai Watershed Collaboration is comprised of diverse public, private, and NGO partners committed to formed to address environmental, disaster and economic risks and build community resilience in Hawai‘i’s most densely populated and polluted watershed. The Ala Wai Watershed, which includes global tourism destination Waikīkī, generates approximately 8 percent of Hawai‘i’s GDP, 7 percent of the state’s employment, and 9 percent of state tax revenues. The area is highly vulnerable to sea level rise, climate related severe weather events and catastrophic natural disasters, including hurricanes and floods; a single category 4 hurricane cause an estimated $30 billion in direct economic losses. The group successfully formed a multi-stakeholder initiative to restore the watershed and initiated development of an innovative public-private partnership, such a new Watershed Improvement District and Community Investment Vehicle (CIVic), to holistically manage the watershed and generate new revenue for climate resilience. This can watershed-based model can be applied to other cities and communities around the world.
The Sustainability Business Forum (SBF) brings together private sector CEOs of Hawai‘i businesses that are committed to triple bottom-line values to advance the Aloha+ Challenge. The diverse forum of private sector leadership agreed to a shared vision, mission, major priorities to advance the Aloha+ Challenge. The group advanced early action on establishing market-based mechanism approach to mitigating carbon, commissioning key reports to evaluate policy, financing, and potential pilot projects to inform a carbon-based market in Hawai‘i. These initiatives are part of an effort to build a long-term pipeline for innovative financing and sustainable development projects that can support implementation of the Aloha+ Challenge and SDGs (WCC-2016-Rec-109) by providing tangible examples for other islands, communities, and other sub-national contexts.
HGG convened set the following 2018-2020 priorities for joint action to guide implementation on the Aloha+ Challenge through 2020, looking to the next IUCN World Conservation Congress as a key milestone: 1) catalyze at least two major cross-sector initiatives that help achieve sustainable development goals; 2) engage communities and students through the online open-data Dashboard to empower and accelerate statewide action; 3) build pathways to cultivate next generation local and global leadership on sustainability solutions grounded in systems-thinking and traditional knowledge; and 4) increase Hawai‘i’s resilience to climate change and natural disasters to meet the Paris Agreement, and develop an innovative and holistic resiliency model in the Ala Wai Watershed.
