{"id":471012,"date":"2021-11-02T06:49:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T13:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=471012"},"modified":"2025-05-08T20:15:46","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T03:15:46","slug":"achieving-sdgs-like-an-islander","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/achieving-sdgs-like-an-islander","title":{"rendered":"Is the Key to Achieving Global Sustainability to Think Like an Islander?"},"author":5642,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[455201],"tags":[473392,26512,476442,476452,280702],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478682,478462],"esri_blog_department":[478192,478172],"class_list":["post-471012","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-climate-of-change","tag-30x30","tag-climate-change","tag-hawaii","tag-sdg","tag-sustainable-development","esri-blog-category-development","esri-blog-category-viewpoint","esri_blog_department-gis-for-good","esri_blog_department-mapping"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"Hawai\u02bbi Green Growth oversees the Aloha+ Challenge, a set of sustainable development goals the state plans to meet by 2030.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Celeste Connors, executive director of the Hawai\u02bbi Green Growth public-private partnership, draws on local knowledge and traditions to bolster the Aloha+ Challenge, an effort to meet the state\u2019s sustainable development goals by 2030.\r\n\r\nKey Takeaways\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>The Aloha+ Challenge is an effort to meet sustainable development goals in Hawai\u02bbi by 2030.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The initiative uses a GIS dashboard to track progress of island-based climate activism.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Local knowledge and traditions bolster a modern approach to balance and sustainability.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Nobody is immune to the effects of climate change, but for island communities there really is no escape from the rising waters. \u201cIf you try to retreat,\u201d Celeste Connors likes to say, \u201cyou quickly hit the other side of the island.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs executive director of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hawaiigreengrowth.org\/\">Hawai\u02bbi Green Growth Local2030 Hub<\/a> (HGG), Connors is hyperaware of climate impact for the islands. HGG oversees the <a href=\"https:\/\/aloha-challenge.hawaiigreengrowth.org\/\">Aloha+ Challenge<\/a>, a statewide effort to address the United Nations\u2019 call to achieve\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sdgs.un.org\/goals\">sustainable development goals<\/a> (SDGs) by 2030. Aloha+ sets major <a href=\"https:\/\/aloha-challenge.hawaiigreengrowth.org\/aloha-goals\/\">goals<\/a>\u2014involving clean energy, local food production, resource management, waste reduction, and sustainable approaches to education, workforce, and community management\u2014designed to be reinforcing and interconnected.\r\n\r\nTo meet the 2030 deadline, Connors and her team track progress toward the SDGs via a <a href=\"https:\/\/alohachallenge.hawaii.gov\/\">dashboard<\/a> built on a geographic information system (GIS). They use the online tool to monitor Aloha+ Challenge\u2019s objectives in the context of agreed-upon metrics.\r\n\r\n\u201cGIS, to my mind, allows you to reunite the head\u2014the data\u2014with the heart,\u201d Connors said. \u201cYou can add the story and context and values to the science. And when you combine them, that\u2019s when you actually inspire behavioral change.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[471092,471122,471102]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>Island Nations Sound the Alarm<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nThe Aloha+ Challenge is the culmination of more than ten years of climate activism among island nations. In 2005, a decade before the UN finalized its SDGs,\u00a0Palau President Thomas Remengesau Jr. announced his country would commit to conserving at least 30 percent of near-shore marine resources and 20 percent of terrestrial resources by 2020. He challenged other leaders of island nations in the western Pacific Ocean to do the same.\r\n\r\nHis call led to the launch of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.micronesiachallenge.org\/\">Micronesia Challenge<\/a>\u00a0the following year.\r\n\r\nWith the help of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.glispa.org\/\">Global Island Partnership<\/a> (GLISPA), officials from the Marshall Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the Federated States of Micronesia joined Palau in pledging the same goals for marine and terrestrial conservation. They\u2019ve since increased those goals to 50 percent and 30 percent, respectively, by 2030. Last year Palau opened a marine sanctuary that protects 80 percent of the country's national waters, an area larger than the state of California."},{"acf_fc_layout":"quote","image":472422,"text":"We're all islanders on island earth.","author_name":"Thomas Remengesau, Jr.","author_profession_organization":"former president of Palau and founder of GLISPA"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cThe Micronesia Challenge was really transformational, because they had actual numbers and milestones,\u201d Connors said. \u201cThe leaders were saying that regardless of what happens\u2014or, likely, doesn\u2019t happen\u2014in climate negotiations, they would make a commitment to steward their land and water resources.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn 2008, 11 Caribbean countries launched the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caribbeanchallengeinitiative.org\/\">Caribbean Challenge Initiative<\/a>, pledging similar goals.\r\n<h3><strong>An Extended Sojourn<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nDuring that same year, Connors began working in the new administration of President Barack Obama. As the director for climate change and environment at the National Security Council, she helped develop the SDGs, and was also involved in preparations for the US to enter the Paris Agreement climate change treaty.\r\n\r\nIt was all part of an extended journey away from Hawai\u02bbi, where Connors had grown up before she left to attend Tufts University in Massachusetts. Before reaching the White House, she was New York City\u2019s foreign affairs officer and did diplomatic work for the US State Department that led her to Greece, Germany, and Saudi Arabia.\r\n\r\nAfter leaving the administration near the end of President Obama\u2019s first term, Connors taught at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and cofounded a sustainable infrastructure consultancy.\r\n\r\nAround that time, leaders of the GLISPA were thinking of their next steps in response to climate change and biodiversity loss. Involving Hawai\u02bbi would build on the Micronesia and Caribbean efforts, while connecting them with the broader industrialized world.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Aloha+ Challenge was the US and Hawai\u02bbi response to helping build a model for sustainability,\u201d Connors said. They offered Connors the job of leading it. After 20 years away, she was eager to come home and contribute to Hawai\u02bbi\u2019s future."},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[471082,471112,471072]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>Systems Instead of Silos<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nThe \u201c+\u201d in Aloha+ Challenge is significant, representing an effort to create a holistic approach to sustainability, much like the UN\u2019s objectives with the SDGs. \u201cDespite our name, Hawai\u02bbi Green Growth is not an environmental group,\u201d Connors explained.\r\n\r\nAlong with environmental goals, the Aloha+ Challenge involves hitting benchmarks related to equity, economic prosperity, affordable housing, and education. \u201cI think the SDGs are the new economic, social, and political framework,\u201d she said. \u201cClimate change is the force multiplier, exacerbating broader tensions. It shouldn\u2019t be seen as an individual silo.\u201d\r\n\r\nIt wasn\u2019t until Connors had returned to Hawai\u02bbi that she realized this philosophy, deeply ingrained in her upbringing, was part of what led her back home. \u201cIt was like, of course we need a systems approach,\u201d she said. \u201cSilos make no sense when you grow up on an island, because you know what happens in your upper watershed affects your coral reef and everything in between.\u201d\r\n<h3><strong>A Crucial Balance<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nA clue to the deep local origins of that philosophy lies in one aspect of the Aloha+ Challenge\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/aloha-challenge.hawaiigreengrowth.org\/aloha-goals\/smart-sustainable-communities\/\">smart, sustainable community<\/a> goal: connection to place. Explanatory text on the GIS dashboard reads \u201cAhupua\u02bba Managed With Community-Based Plans.\u201d\r\n\r\nUntil King Kamehameha III instituted a universal system of private land ownership in the mid-19<sup>th<\/sup> Century, every island in the Hawaiian Kingdom was divided into many semi-communal <em>ahupua\u02bba<\/em> (ahu-pu-AH-ah). An ahupua\u02bba was a slice of land that typically extended from a mountaintop to the coast.\r\n\r\nEach ahupua\u02bba was, to some degree, a closed system, encompassing within its borders every kind of local climate and terrain, and therefore capable of producing everything its residents required to live. Subjects paid taxes to a local chief for the right to farm, hunt, or harvest fish.\r\n\r\nThe Hawaiians believed the relative self-sufficiency of the ahupua\u02bba maintained a crucial balance and interconnectedness. A problem in any one section affected every person\u2019s ability to have access to life\u2019s necessities.\r\n\r\nIntegral to the system was a concept called <em>kuleana<\/em> (koo-lee-AH-na), which translates as \u201cresponsibility\u201d but refers specifically to a reciprocal relationship. People were responsible for caring for the land, which in turn was responsible for producing necessities of life.\r\n\r\nKuleana even extended to social relations. In return for the taxes paid to work the land, the chief was expected to maintain harmony.\r\n\r\nKuleana, Connors realized, was a local value she had internalized as a child and held close throughout her life. \u201cGrowing up here, whether you\u2019re native Hawaiian or not, it\u2019s just something you\u2019re taught,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat people call a circular economy, we call an island economy.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[471062,471052,471142,471152]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>A Dashboard Story<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIn its own way, the Aloha+ Challenge dashboard provides an outlet for a geographic approach as vivid as any map. With the ahupua\u02bba system in the distant past, the dashboard treats the state of Hawai\u02bbi as a kind of single massive ahupua\u02bba. To look at the dashboard\u2014to see the goals and the progress made\u2014is to witness an island community striving to create and maintain balance.\r\n\r\nSo far, according to the dashboard, environmental goals, especially <a href=\"https:\/\/alohachallenge.hawaii.gov\/pages\/clean-energy-transformation\">clean energy transformation<\/a>, are where the state is making the most progress. Benchmarks for renewable electricity, average fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, and overall fuel use are on track for the 2030 goal. For the <a href=\"https:\/\/alohachallenge.hawaii.gov\/pages\/natural-resource-management\">natural resource management<\/a> goal, the amount of watershed forest area is already nearing the target, though water conservation and reuse measures need improvement.\r\n\r\nThe more human-centered parts of the dashboard, particularly those measuring <a href=\"https:\/\/alohachallenge.hawaii.gov\/pages\/smart-sustainable-communities\">livability and resilience<\/a>, reveal the elusiveness of kuleana in a complex global economy; not surprising in a state with one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/2019\/09\/high-costs-make-hawaiis-poverty-rate-higher-than-u-s-average\/\">highest<\/a> supplemental poverty rates (a metric that weighs cost of living) and the nation\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/ltgov.hawaii.gov\/homeless-in-hawaii-facts-and-resources\/\">largest per capita unhoused population<\/a>.\r\n\r\nLook closely, and the dashboard even tells stories about Hawai\u02bbi\u2019s history. The goal of increasing agricultural acreage and <a href=\"https:\/\/alohachallenge.hawaii.gov\/pages\/local-food-production-and-consumption\">doubling local food production<\/a> has lagged. The reasons are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/best-states\/articles\/2018-11-19\/where-does-hawaii-get-its-food\">complex<\/a>, but partially reflect the many decades when most farmland was owned by a few large companies producing commodities, such as sugar and pineapple, primarily for export.\r\n<h3><strong>Islands of the World Unite<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nIn 2018, a few years after the finalization of the SDGs, the UN decided a local approach was the best hope for achieving the goals by 2030. In the same way that island nations had set their own benchmarks years before the SDGs, it was important to let localities take the initiative in helping to reach global goals.\r\n\r\nTo highlight places where this approach was yielding strong dividends, the UN designated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.local2030.org\/local-action\">Local2030 hubs<\/a> around the world, including cities in Sweden, Brazil, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Hawai\u02bbi Green Growth is the only Local2030 hub among North American nations, and the only island hub in the world.\r\n\r\nHGG is currently helping to link islands across the globe, from Guam and Puerto Rico to Ireland and Grenada, as part of the Local2030 Islands Network. The goal, Connors explained, is \u201cto see US leadership through an island lens.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn 2014, the UN honored Thomas Remengesau, the Palau president whose example sparked the global island activisim that continues today, with its highest environmental accolade, the Champion of the Earth award.\r\n\r\n\u201cTo solve the SDGs, I believe you need to think like an islander,\u201d Connors said, before quoting an aphorism she attributes to Remengesau: \u201cwe\u2019re all islanders on Island Earth.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nLearn more about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/sustainability\/sustainable-development\/goals\">GIS connects society, environment, and economy to advance SDGs<\/a>."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h2><strong>Countries Gather to Address Climate Change<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n<p class=\"mt-5 pt-3 normal-line-height\">The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (<a href=\"https:\/\/ukcop26.org\">COP26<\/a>)\u00a0began this week in Glasgow. For many of us, the existential crisis of climate change remains something of an abstraction. For the small island developing states scattered across the Pacific Ocean, it already threatens their existence.<\/p>\r\nThese countries face rising seas, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, coral reef destruction, coastal erosion, and other threats to both lives and livelihoods. They face daunting infrastructural challenges and limited funds to surmount them.\r\n\r\nTuvalu is one of just four Pacific Island Countries\u2014along with Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Palau, represented at COP26. The countries\u2019 representatives are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/politics\/story\/2021-10-31\/climate-change-pacific-islands-u-n-summit-cop26\">struggling<\/a> to make their voices heard, but larger industrialized nations would do well to listen. These islands are on the frontlines of climate change and offer a chance for the world to study and provide solutions. Any climate lessons learned there will be needed soon everywhere as climate impacts compound.\r\n\r\nTime is running out. Tuvalu, a country with a topography that places most of it just a few meters above sea level, is disappearing by the day.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hawai\u02bbi Aims to Achieve SDG\u2019s By 2030 By Thinking Like an Islander<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hawai\u02bbi Green Growth administers the Aloha+ Challenge, a set of sustainable development goals the state plans to meet by 2030.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/achieving-sdgs-like-an-islander\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is the Key to Achieving Global 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