 Welcome to part two of Hawaii after COVID-19. My name is Peter Adler and I'm delighted to host two friends and colleagues and to conduct a discussion today on what life might be like as we move past the medical and economic crises that we're in. I am a planner. I'm a mediator. I'm a strategist with a number of organizations. I'm on the board of ThinkTech just to be disclosing of that. And I'm delighted to be here. And I'm looking forward to a terrific conversation. Some of you may have been with us on April 30th for part one of this when we talked about what lies ahead economically and politically and we had two guests then, Colin Moore and Bill Tam, both experts in their respective areas. Today we're going to explore local cultural impacts that we think lie ahead and the quest for long term and scaled up sustainability. And with me are two really great thinkers and doers. These are not just thinkers. They're down on the ground where the goats eat the grass and they're working very, very hard to achieve things. So my friend Dawn Chang is a native Hawaiian lawyer and a social worker by training. She's an expert on land use and state and federal regulatory requirements as they pertain to Hawaii. She's especially well known for brokering, very sensitive to sometimes very sensitive and difficult discussions between developers and native Hawaiians and community groups. Celeste Connors is the executive director of the Hawaii Green Growth Program and the Aloha Plus Challenge, which aims for nothing less than seeing Hawaii become a world class model of sustainability. And Celeste brings a wealth of national and international experience, including work with the White House and the National Security Council and global work. So she's back home where she grew up and it's so good to have both of you on this show. Thanks for joining us. Dawn, I want to start with you and let's dive in. So when the current, I'm looking at my notes here, but when the current medical crisis passes and the state emerges from the kind of economic freefall that we're in, what do you expect will be different in the native Hawaiian community? What's going to be different? Well, generally, I'm a real optimistic person. But your question, my optimism is kind of tempered with the uncertainties of post-COVID and the social unrest by many of the Hawaiians in the Hawaiian community, even pre-COVID. So this is sort of my predictions. I worry there will be a tremendous pressure on the elected officials and regulatory agencies to facilitate economic recovery by either suspending, checking off the box, accelerating public notice, access to information, protection and preservation of cultural and natural resources, and genuine community engagement. Essentially, sort of all of those compromises that have created the environment that we had post-pre-COVID, environment of mistrust, disenfranchisement and lack of transparency and decision making. So I worry that the native Hawaiians in particular will be asked to make compromises for the sake of their jobs and their economic recovery. And because it's been already substantiated that Hawaiians are disproportionately impacted by COVID and the economic recovery. So, unfortunately, when you ask that question, in my view, I think the conditions of native Hawaiians may not be so different post-COVID. But I do feel like there's a potentially a bright spot that we could be different if the community resists the temptation to let the pressure of economic recovery compromise genuine community engagement to determine the future of Hawai'i. If we pay up front, then I think we can, you know, we may be able to change sort of that pessimism that I just shared. So I know that the three of all three of us are relentless optimists, but we're also pragmatic and realistic. And we work in a world that is highly political and economic. And what do you think will happen with the TMT issue as well as the efforts by the legislature, which started, but I think may have stalled out on reconciliation process? We've been hunkered down. Everybody's been hunkered down and sequestered. But we know at some point everything opens up or starts to open up. What happens to those two issues? Okay. When I saw that question, I was like, yikes, it's a little sensitive. So I'm not going to predict the outcome of TMT, but when you asked about what's new approaches, I'm cautiously optimistic that there may be a fresh approach. And I'm not going to go into a lot of details as this show isn't about, this session isn't about TMT or Mauna Kea. So I would just share with you that I've recently been tasked with conducting an independent evaluation of the University of Hawai'i and Office of Mauna Kea Management's implementation of Mauna Kea Conference of Management Plan. Had the opportunity to do that over 10 years ago. But with that independent evaluation is going to be culturally sensitive and robust community engagement process. So I hope that's a different approach. So I, like I said, I can't predict the outcome of TMT, but I think I'm, I'd like to say I'm offering a different approach. When I started out in the life sciences, what feels like 400 years ago, my comparative anatomy professor said, we know the temperature at which water boils, but we never know what molecule boils first. So that's what we, you know, I won't know that. But do you, do you think there will be fresh opportunities for a new kind of dialogue, a different sort of a discussion, a different sort of sensitivity? Yes. I mean, I think that there is a possibility. I think we saw some of that with, right before COVID. So again, my optimism is if we, if we look at really listening to the community and timely considering their concerns, I do believe that that will facilitate private and public development projects by minimizing litigation and protests. So I am optimistic is that if we, if we, rather than just jumping in and let's, let's move things as quickly as possible, let's sit back. Let's, let's not compromise the real, you know, who are the stakeholders here in Hawaii that's going to live here and, you know, talk about sustainable, sustainable Hawaii. Let's really listen to what they have to say rather than disenfranchise them. Good. We'll come back to this. I don't know. We'll come back to this. Excuse me. Celeste Greengrove and Aloha Plus Challenge have an ambitious sustainability agenda. And I love it. I love the fact that you guys think big and think long and you are helping to catalyze and monitor progress on clean energy, local food production, waste reduction. One, this may be a moment when you can tell us a little bit about it. And, but the same question, what will be different after we come out of the current medical and economic crisis? First, tell us a little bit about it because people need to know. Yeah, no, I think, thank you so much. And so delighted to be here with you and Don and really Mahalo what you said. Very insightful. And I think it mirrors just to your first question, Peter, what we're hearing from our partners in our community. There is a deep concern that people are going to go back quickly to business as usual and not see this as a moment in time to stop and pause and to see how we can build back better. I think there is that desire to do that. And yet we also understand why people are eager to see the economy open up. It's about livelihoods, really. It's about the fact that our economy is suffering. There is high rates of unemployment. The social component, our economy, that's a core pillar of sustainability. And I think when we talk about sustainability, first and foremost, we have to remember sustainability is about economic, social, environmental, cultural well-being. It's the legs of the stool. So I understand the issue of the desire to get back quickly, to have people back in jobs and have the livelihoods restored. And I think like everything in sustainability, it's a question of how, how we do it. We want an outcome of economic prosperity. How we do it is critically important. And I think the different phases that we've heard, Alan Oshima as the appointed navigator and the COVID committee layout, there's a sequence to that of stabilization and recovery and resilience. And I think at some point, as sustainability practitioners, as people that were looking at the long game, there will be a pivot at some point, but it's to make sure that we build in thoughtfully at those moments. A pivot won't happen immediately overnight and at one moment. So how are we being mindful of the decisions that we make in the near term as we think about stabilization with a view to actually securing a more resilient future for Hawaii? You know, and if you ask about Hawaii green growth, I've been reflecting on this a lot as well, you know, having grown up here, but spent most of my time professionally away from home, working on sustainability, green growth policies. I was reminded that green growth, Peter, is actually an economic recovery strategy that emerged from the last financial crisis in 2008. And in fact, it was the leaders of the Organization of Economic Cooperation Development France, Germany, the United States under Obama's President Obama's leadership that came together as leaders and a leader statement about green growth and said that it's an economic policy, right? It's to pursue these, how you can have actually prosperity by pursuing one of green growth, green economy and green jobs. So that I think is actually very exciting. Now, this green growth policy was then further embraced by the APEC leaders when they convened here in 2011 and the APEC leaders of a regional trade group. So again, this is all through an economic lens, further committed to a green growth recovery strategy. It was that which inspired a group of really enlightened individuals prior to my returning home to come together and say, how can Hawaii get in a green growth strategy? So it was a green growth policies, economic policies that inform this. But at Tom's earlier point, though, there was a much longer history of inspiration in the Malama, Hawaii, and former Senator Kenny Brown's speech of how you can pursue economic development through a Malama lens. So I would say predicting or previewing what I'll say next is how do you actually pursue what we want to do through values, values-based conversation. And I am a pragmatic optimist too. I think we will achieve this, but it will take engaging the community and it will be looking at all of those different ways that we can do it as a collective effort. I noticed you had on the screen the dashboard just further background what we do is we over the last 10 years, or excuse me, at least six years have actually been tracking progress on these six statewide sustainability goals. And you can actually look at this on the state.gov website and 365 days out of the year. You can look to see how we're doing on our clean energy commitment, how we're doing on local food. And this has really now been recognized by the United Nations as Hawaii is being a model that can emerge from a crisis through a systems-based approach. Part of the, these track with the United Nations sustainability goals. And we have an, I think we have an unusual opportunity here to serve as a model that's exportable, not just other Pacific islands, but globally on how you actually do the mechanics. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what's so exciting to me. I think that islands emerge as leaders in this, as inherently systems thinkers that build on a thousand years of knowledge. Hawaii in particular are leading on that. And again, it's not really what Hawaii aspires to do, which is what got the United Nations to recognize Hawaii as a model for sustainability. It's what Hawaii and the community together with our civil society partners or government or business are already doing together. And as the world, you know, they have these United Nations sustainable development goals that I personally helped negotiate. So I feel very strongly about the SDGs. I'm even more excited that Hawaii has a local framework for SDG implementation that is bottom up. That was a process of collaboration to Don's point with the community, because they say you measure what matters. So first you have to go into the community, discuss what matters, and then to be able to track that on the state.gov website as a benchmark with co-develop metrics, right? Time bound against the 2030 framework. It's hugely exciting. So the international community is looking for examples on how they can build that better. And Hawaii is very well positioned to lead that based on the social infrastructure we have in place. And that's where my optimism comes in. And your pragmatism too, because you were down on the ground where you have to actually do things and then you're monitoring a question for both of you. There are different ways that the recovery could unfold over the next couple of years. And there will be a pent up push certainly coming out of much of the travel industry and other, you know, the restaurants and so on, to go right back to the mean of where we were before, to the average, the drift to the back to the mean. And so the question is, will that, you know, depending on the scenarios, do you think that the recovery will accelerate or hinder the sustainability goals and the dialogue that we need to have, a better dialogue that we need to have with the native Hawaiian community? What's your thoughts on that? Let me, I'll just kind of chime in. I think, you know, Peter, that is, I guess for me, where I'm really anxious, because when you think it, when you look at who's disproportionately affected by the tourism industry, I mean, the unemployment, a lot of it, Native Hawaiians are people who are on the lower rung. So they need their jobs back. But I think if we can demonstrate, you know, leadership by saying, hey, let's really think about who do we want to attract? What is it going to take for us to, especially hearing from the Hawaiian community as to how do we protect these resources, both Celeste and I were talking about places that we remember going hiking, that we don't even do that anymore. But I think for me, a lot of that is education. If we don't want someone to do something, we've got to tell them why it's kapu, what's happened. So I think, and you know, Hawaiians have kind of done this for what, just centuries. But I think if we can utilize the motto, the ahupua'a motto, but using more education, when you get on an airplane, there's a book you got to read about why you kind of do these kind of things. And you know, let's give people information so they can make an informed decision. That's my optimism, but I worry about that. So. So that's thought. Yeah, I agree with Don. I think it's about education and sharing, really inspiring other people to steward their place when they're inspired by what we can do here in Hawai'i. With tourism, you know, it's interesting, and it's islands across the world are heavily affected with this disruption. COVID is inherently about disruption, and this won't be the first time or the last that we're going to be experiencing disruption. Just to go back to my further observation about green growth strategies emerging from the last financial crisis, one observation is that maybe that crisis wasn't big enough. It just actually wasn't at the scale that we finally need to get on a different pathway. And this might just be that because it is so global universal. But with the tourism component, I'm actually I was very impressed with the the recognition prior to COVID that we weren't on a sustainable path, that the numbers that we were seeing were not acceptable to the community. It was undermining our natural environment, our ecosystems, and then actually seeing the Hawai'i tourism authority in their strategic plan that they released in January this year was predicted that. In other words, they they were ahead of the curve, but with COVID the curve just tightened. So if you read the strategic plan, it is based in malama values, the malama mandate is in the back of that. It also looks at engaging the community constructively in shaping that tourism future. So I think that we I think that's a great state plan that has emerged from that. And let's just see how we can all come together to help implement that. I also on the education point and Don mentioned the ahupua'a. Again, this is another area that as we think about new opportunities for Hawai'i, as we diversify our economy, look for education opportunities, Hawai'i continues to be a place that can inspire and really I would like to bring the, you know, a youth voice into this conversation of how we're engaging Hawai'i's, you know, future leaders in being actively involved in that conversation. Because if you grow up in an island economy, you're very aware that what you do in your upper watershed affects your coral reef. And that might be an awareness that not every community benefits from. And that's another area that we should be looking at as we think about our future tourism economy and having that community engagement. So in crisis there is danger, but there is also opportunity. And we are at one of those interesting moments to think about pivots, to think about a reset. Now imagine that we had Governor Ige, Alan Oshima, the Senate President Pochi and the Speaker Psyche and all the other important people who control the levers, at least or influence the levers of power. What would we tell them to do more specifically, both on Native Hawaiian issues and on sustainability? So you could see the linkages between the two conversations, because they're very linked in my mind. But what would we tell them, you know, down on the ground where the chickens and the minor birds are and where, you know, where the grandkids run around in the grass? What would we have them do? What would we brainstorm and propose to them? Well, this is, if you ask me, I guess, Peter, this is what I would say. I would say leadership is recognizing and acknowledging that your community has the capacity to do a lot of that without you having to direct how we communicate, how we do this reconciliation, let the community actually come up and generate some concept and some ideas themselves. Don't, you know, don't tell them what they should be doing, but rather let's really listen to them and let's really ask the community what's best for you. You know, we're kind of caught in this Western world where everything is monetized. The more you pay, the more value you think. So if you got to pay more money to go into the low e-patch and work, maybe that's the kind of tourism or economy we want to start looking at. We don't want to. So there's something about that kind of very deep, and I know you're an expert on this and you practice it as well as Celeste, and I do a lot of that too, that kind of very deep consultation and engagement to solicit the specific ideas out of people where they live, where they live. And we know that we're very diverse here. The districts are not all the same. The islands are not all the same. The cultures are not all the same. Within the Hawaiian culture, there are many variations. And so your notion is, got to get down on the, get down on the ground and talk to people and ask them and collect those ideas up. Celeste, do you have other thoughts? What would we do down on the ground if we're talking to the important people here, the big leaders and all that stuff? And by the way, I give them credit because they are trying to do some of this. So I don't mean this as a criticism. But what would we have them do? Yeah, and I agree with you, Peter. I give them a lot of credit with the work that the governor and Allen and the Senate president and speaker are trying to do. Myself, having been in government for over a decade, it's a tough job. And it's about accountability and ultimately needing to make tough decisions. So I think, you know, first of all, I would give them empathy and thank them for showing leadership in this. And to Don the point too, as Mary Robinson actually said something in an interview this morning, what can, exactly your question, what can the individual do during this time of COVID? And she said, well, the individual is a consumer. The individual is a voter. The individual has agency in these different ways. And so I think it just goes to that sense that I embrace of collective responsibility, what we can do at the individual level, what we can do in the private sector in the community and in government being one ecosystem. And so, but, but, you know, I also want to acknowledge those exact leaders for this time last year, actually reaffirming their commitment to sustainability by signing the, you know, acknowledging the five year anniversary of the Aloha Plus challenge and signing on to the local 2030 commitment statement where they are committing to be a model for sustainability. So that takes leadership to come together. I think this will come down to implementation and action, as you noted. So if the final slide I would show that I sort of put forward here that I'm excited about is one about this survey. So again, everybody trying to do the part, what we as a network based organization with a diverse group of partners, over 100 individuals and institutions together said, how do we bring our collective voice and ideas to this? We ran a survey, as you can see, we had over 300 participants and responses with diversity sectors was very exciting. Then we actually had a conversation recently about this. We've just the survey is still open, but we are able now to see some of the actual projects that would connect green growth policies to action. And these are very innovative. It's how do we support our farm to school programs that so many folks in government and out of government are working on together as both immediate job opportunities, but getting us on that longer term resiliency pathway. Kevin Chang and Miwa from Kua wrote a really exciting op-ed over the weekend laying out their vision for what this could look like with investments in food security resilience. And then we also have some interesting projects that people put forward in the creative industries that we have, you know, university professors working with students in animation and these are types of jobs that you could actually do remotely. So I would love to draw attention to the survey and how we hope with Alan and others to share this data, connect the resources that we anticipate will be coming into the state to specific projects that provide employment livelihoods and build resilience. Perfect. You know, we only have a couple minutes left, but both of you have been leaders in different ways in different sectors at different times. The best definition of leadership I ever heard was what Winston Churchill said. He said leadership is just moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm. And really that's what is needed, this kind of core optimism, but really with the pragmatic look, the kinds of projects that are generated that sort of have that economic environmental job, you know, that they have a certain prospect that cuts across the usual domains that get in the way of the usual fights. So I'm very optimistic. I'll give you a one minute each just to kind of sum up any final thoughts or benedictions that you might want to add to this conversation. So Dawn over to you. But like I said, I am an eternal optimist. And I can I do, I mean, I think all of us have if we take this opportunity during this pause and really reflect what kind of a community do we really want and and really try to do something to make that happen, that we're not all caught in the hustle and the bustle. But let's really think about what kind of future do we want, not only for us, but for future. So I am hoping that as you say, we take this as an opportunity to self reflect, and then sort of do like what Celeste is saying, what can we all individually do. So I will continue to be that optimism. But again, thank you, Peter and think back. Celeste, any final thought, we still got a minute left. Yeah, no, as I said, I think this is really the discussion that we have to have today. How do we really make a commitment to build back better, a more prosperous future for Hawaii. And I do believe in Hawaii. And I believe that we are all trying to paddle in that direction. We might have a diversity of opinions at times and how we get there. But if we're coming together under that broad umbrella of wanting to do that, I would also say, you know, from a green growth perspective, we have the policies, we know what the green growth policies can be. We're now connecting them to the actual projects. I think it comes down to acting and implementing an action at this point, and then recognizing that again, it's the diversity of players that will come together to make that happen. So I would like to think about this as really acting on the things that we know, building on the many, many, a thousand year knowledge and history that Hawaii has that has been recognized. And other people are really wanting to support Hawaii's success in this and support the innovations that will emerge from Hawaii. Terrific. Thank you so much. You are both catalytic converters, and we're on the way. So thank you so much for joining us today. And we'll sign off. And best of luck, you know, all of your endeavors. Thank you very much. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Don.