 Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart-Turner, and this is Sustainable Hawai'i, airing live from the Dinktak Hawai'i Studio in downtown Honolulu every Tuesday at noon. As many of you know by now, the World Conservation Congress, which is held every four years around the world, will take place for the first time in the United States right here in Honolulu. During the first 10 days of September, we will receive about 10,000 leaders and decision-makers, representing 1,300 government and private conservation organizations from 160 countries. This year's theme is Planet at the Crossroads, aptly named given the climate change impacts we've been experiencing both here and around the world. In May, we had the World Conservation Congress organizers from the IUCN headquarters in Switzerland here on the show. Today, we have the lead Hawai'i organizer, Randy Tanaka, served as Chief Operating Officer for the Hawai'i Host Committee of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC Summit, of 21 countries, which was also held here in Hawai'i for the first time in 2011. Today, Randy is helping plan for the world's largest conservation event, serving as President of the 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress National Host Committee in Hawai'i. Welcome, Randy. Aloha. Thank you, Kristen. That's a mouthful of a title. And you certainly have more than a handful of responsibility. It's tremendous. We're only 15 days away. Who's counting? You, I'm sure. It's very exciting. I want to ask you so many questions about where we're at, but I'd like to go also more in depth in today's show about how we're at, how we're doing the Congress, and how it compares to, for example, APEC in the past. I noticed we've been getting a lot of announcements on TV about road closures and traffic changes. Why is that if we're a conservation Congress this year? Well, part of the, on the operational side, there's some logistic things that we will do to facilitate the smooth operation of the Congress. And part of the lane closures will occur around the Blaisdell because that's where the opening ceremony will occur. There'll be leaders from countries and notables in conservation and the environment. For example, Jane Goodall will be here. Terrific. So it's, you know, it's a name that, you know, is recognized around the world. But we want to facilitate a smooth and safe transition to the Blaisdell and back to the convention center when it's over. So we'll be having some heads of state. I know that one that people discuss might be our very own President, Obama. Yes. What's the status of that? It's still, it's not a yes and it's not a no. Basically the President has an aggressive schedule. We have asked from every point that we can to invite him here. We are hopeful that he will be here, but we don't know yet. Well, I'm sure that keeps you on your toes. You have to have all the contingency plans in place just in case. Well, we fundamentally have one plan. And that one plan says he will be here and we build around that. Well, that's terrific. And that also gives you the added cushion of security for other heads of state that might follow suit if they hear he's coming. Correct. Already the east-west center holds is the secretariat for a meeting called the Pacific Island Conference of Leaders. So we know that they'll be from 10 to 15 leaders or ministerial level folks here for that meeting, which is two days before the IUCN Congress. They'll cross over on the first day with the opening ceremony. So this is one of the kind of benefits that we didn't anticipate when we booked it. But it's a great occasion for people to come together and not only talk about the issues in the Pacific, but how those Pacific issues translate into conservation and environmental issues. And it's really a great buildup that we held the APEC conference here first because that also addressed so many economic development and integration issues for the whole region. Yeah. APEC was an economic meeting. And what we learned from the APEC experience is that 60 percent of the world's economy sits in that Asia Pacific arena. You have to recognize it as the force that it is and how Hawaii plays a role with its Pacific partners. A little different meeting was the president's meeting. And back then we had Senator Inouye to help us along with it. We were clear in the direction. We were clear on who the boss was. Senator had Peter Ho and Tim Johns as the lead of the host committee, two outstanding folks that know their business well and do their business well. So it was a different kind of meeting and it satisfied two real things. One was to let the world know that we can play on that stage. We can conduct global meetings as well as if not better than anyone else. And the second part of it was more an internal one saying, telling ourselves, listen, we can play. So not only on a global scale, but on a local scale that we do an outstanding job in hospitality. So that was the real positive part of APEC. And I'm sure it's going to be the same result this year. One of the things that is extremely gratifying is to know that early on many of the different economic development plans that were done for Hawaii, including a lot of public input and thinking of the 2050 sustainability plan, prior ones, all identified Hawaii's greatest asset as its knowledge center, as well as its natural resources. So this is bringing both together. Yeah. It's, you know, everything's dynamic. It's constantly fluid. If you kind of anchor your feet on the pavement, that's not how the dynamics of the universe works. So things change on an ongoing basis. And we have this unique opportunity because Hawaii being the furthest from any landmass around the world, we have some unique biodiversity. We have some unique cultural diversity. And we're scalable so we can do some things because of our scale that other places struggle a little bit more to do. So the 2050 goal is a substantial goal when you think about it, to get off petroleum. So we can do those kinds of things here. And we have a good cooperative community. You know, we fight like brothers and sisters, but I think at the end of the day, we know what's the greater good for the community. And that's what we hope to achieve with this Congress. Well, one of the things with the Congress is the number of people that are going to be coming here. And we always talk about the footprint of any development project. We're going to have a lot of feet printing on the ground. How does this compare numbers-wise to APEC? And how are we treating the whole impact of the meeting itself differently? So just from a numbers standpoint, so this Congress is 10 days long. Very unusual. And there's two parts to it. One is called the forum and the other part is called the members assembly. So the forum really is the active discussion within the membership group to talk about the conservation issues around the world. The second part of the meeting is really a parliamentary process. They're a very democratic process. They elect their president, they commissioners, and they talk about what they're going to do for the next four years till the next Congress. So the issues are discussed in the forum brought forth to the members assembly and the members assembly takes up those issues and say, this is what we're going to do going forward. Out of this Congress will come a thing called the Hawaii commitments. And forevermore it will be known as the Hawaii commitments. So we will be part of this organization's history forever. It's like the Kyoto protocols. It was held in Kyoto and from which came these protocols, well, Hawaii will have the commitments that we need to make going forward for the environment and for conservation. And I just want to clarify, these are not commitments just for Hawaii. Oh, no. These are global commitments. Correct. And we'll be the tagline for these global commitments right after COP 21, which makes it tremendously exciting and powerful for the leverage that we're going to be able to have as a state to demonstrate how we can get to some of these commitments. Yeah, you know, it's the actions that we're going to take, that we need to take. So it's a tremendous opportunity. We will forevermore have that mark in the sand that says it started here. And we need to be committed to fulfill those kinds of commitments going forward. It separates us from the rest of the pack. What are some of the things we're going to do to make sure that the Congress itself demonstrates a commitment to mitigating climate change impacts and changing behaviors? And I'm thinking for some simple things, the transportation of people once they're here, for example, and then we'll talk about others. So let's start with that. So anybody within a 20-minute walking distance is going to walk to the convention center. We're not busing them. Anyone beyond that zone, we're using the trolleys that already are operating for other guests, and we transport them to the Alamoano Shopping Center, which is the disembark point, and then they walk to the convention center. We have a no-single-use plastic bottle requirement, so you can't bring in plastic bottles with water in it. Hallelujah. We've done whole shows here about that. And you know, it's a small thing. It's a simple thing, highly executable. We just need to do those kinds of things. With huge impact if we stop using them. So you know, it's those kinds of actions. We have worked with the State of Hawaii Department of Economic Development that has a green program. We've used hotels that have met the green requirement of the state. We have practices on a day-to-day basis. We will have what we call green monitors at each of the receptacles for trash, asking people to separate, and so it helps facilitate on the back end. Food products will be bio-filtered so we can put it back onto the land. That's terrific. I want to take a short break, and then let's go into a little more depth about the food impacts, because that's something we've discussed a lot. We'll be right back with Randy Tanaka at Sustainable Hawaii. Well, that video was a perfect segue to come back and talk with Randy Tanaka, who's running the World Conservation Congress, and that video was from the IUCN and National Geographic did that, correct? Yes, they did an excellent job considering what is compressed and the visuals in there and the impact. It's a great awareness video that they put out. It's online. I'm hoping that people that come here are as aware of the impacts they're making to our island as they are of the worldwide impacts that we need to keep in mind when we're conserving our natural resources. How are we making them aware? You mentioned the sorting waste stations. Will they actually have people at those waste stations? Yes, volunteers. Oh, that's awesome. Volunteers? Yes, we have about 560 volunteers. Oh, wonderful. That will be participating not only in the hospitality side but at the Congress, helping people get involved and sharing some of the things from a cultural basis also. Indigenous knowledge. We have Dr. Kanahele, Poulani Kanahele from Hawaii Island, involved in the spiritual discussions about how religion and conservation play a role in the whole conservation process. Well, I love hearing that because my husband is a pastor and he preaches about that all the time. Are we going to have different faiths represented as well? Yes, we actually have someone from the Vatican coming. Oh. Yeah, so it's a major league. It's called a high-level dialogue, and it's so appropriate to have Dr. Kanahele being the convener. Absolutely. And so she not only brings that Western education but the cultural base because at the end of the day, those two things have to get together to make us effective in managing our resources. This is also extremely timely after the Pope's, I forget the name of the treatise that he put out specifically focusing on sustainability after COP 21. Yes. I think, you know, our goals for this Congress was really to showcase Hawaii as the place where we understand the environment, where we care for it, and we need to build capacity, the knowledge capacity for it. We need to build awareness for what's happening on a global scale. And the Hokulea going around the world, Malama Honua, is a demonstration of that. So all these things kind of come to this intersection, this crossroad. Right here. In the middle of the Pacific. First time in the U.S., and so this is not the end. It is the beginning of what we need to do going forward. That's very exciting. What are some of the ways in which you're handling procurement for the convention for the Congress and making that sustainable or more sustainable? So this is also a paper-low Congress. You know, usually you go to Congress, you get this thick book of all the sessions and all of that. That does not exist in this Congress. It's a mobile app. So it's all there. We're trying to source mostly local foods. The paper products are all biodegradable. So all those, when you look at that collective list, we're aiming for a zero-waste Congress. The opportunity going forward is now we have the library of resources. Now we have the actions that you need to take. So all the Congress is coming forward, all the conferences coming forward have the blueprint for that. And we encourage everyone who not only meets here, but every place else around the world to focus on those kinds of issues. Now one thing we always get is pushback on price. Are you finding that that's actually the case that it's becoming more costly because you're instituting these measures? There's some costs, but you know, when you meter out that cost over its impact to the environment, what goes into the landfills, it's not, it's still good economics because you have to allocate those costs beyond just that product. You have to meter it back into what we have to do. And when you do those things, the economics work, and then you have to have the commitment to do it. And you have to have sharp people like yourself and the other planning committee members understand that those long-term impacts come with costs that we're eventually going to pay for. Right. In the past, as we haven't looked down the road to see how costly things are if we don't invest now. Right. If you allocate the cost properly, then it's a no-brainer. And we have good people in D-Bed managing the green program. We have great people in D-Len, Susan Case and her team. We've got a governor that's committed. We had a governor before that, a governor, Abercrombie, that made this commitment. So he had the vision, and Governor Ege is executing the plan. So it'll set a new standard for not only the state, but we'll use this as an example of how it should be done. And is the Swiss headquarters for IUCN taking notes? Are they here on the ground already and working with you and saying, wow, we're going to really take this forward? Absolutely. I think. We should know our closest competitor for this Congress was Istanbul. And one of the gentlemen, Enrique Laman, who is a global director, we've become friends. He's a Costa Rican, a scientist in his own right. We talked about why Hawaii. He said not only the biodiversity of the state, but it's the cultural commitment. When you look at what the Hawaiians were doing way before sustainability became a word, they were already practicing sustainability, the concerns for the reef, and when the kapu, when you fish and you don't fish, was already in practice. So we're kind of taking two steps back to go forward. So it's a tremendous moment for the state. I think it's also a tremendous opportunity for communities outside of Honolulu, outside of the hotels and the convention center operators, because there are many field trips that are being taken and people get a chance to showcase what they're doing. Can you highlight just a few of those? So on every island, Hawaii Island, Maui, and Kauai, they're all excursions, field trips that engage some aspect of what we're doing on the ground. There's workshops going on, Maui has a whole series of food sustainability programs. Kauai's feature event is at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. Chip Wickman was absolutely central to getting the Congress here. Yes. And so by demonstration, they're showing people this is how we do it. It may have a different application to where you are, but let's work together to help you. There was a gentleman from Pakistan. And before he came here, he's part of the preparatory committee, he had reached out to us to try to understand what we were doing with the 2050 initiative. So we hooked him up with DBET on how we went about doing this, getting buy-in from a county level, from a constituency level, from a government level. So he was very enchanted with that. We also introduced him to the Hawaii Legacy Hardwood guys who have planted 3,000 acres in native species, co-species. They want to re-forced over a million acres in Pakistan. So that's the intellectual and technical export that we can provide to the rest of the world. As we bring them in on airplanes, move them around in mostly gasoline-powered vehicles, and then we take them to the neighbor islands again on airplanes using jet diesel, how are folks individually or are we as a state going to be mitigating those impacts? There is a carbon offset program, voluntary by the members of IUCN. So there's a carbon offset program that's in place to help mitigate some of that. And what are the details of that program? I don't have the specific details, but you can go online and you can get credits, my credits for that. Okay. So go to IUCN.org. Terrific. I'd be very interested to know, are we planting trees elsewhere or in Hawaii in order to do those offsets or where are those, where's that from? It's mostly on a global level. Which is appropriate. Yeah. Well, and we hope out of this, the hardwood legacy guys have done an amazing job. And it's no longer just core, they're talking sandalwood, they're talking more acreage. So it's restoration also, conservation and restoration go hand in hand. Well, in the last three minutes that we have, I'd like to focus exactly that on what is the legacy going to be for this Congress when everybody leaves? What are we left with and how are we making sure we leverage that for a sustainable future? Well, like I said, it's not the end, it's the beginning. And how we've envisioned this is a year from now, if we're all sitting down and say, okay, we pulled it off all good a year from now, what have we claimed as a win? The way we see it now, we've won the game. That's not the issue. It's running up the score. So our goal is we have advanced the green growth initiative for the state. We have advanced the Alloa Plus challenge because that's the vehicle. You need to measure our success. We need to talk. Coupu has an outstanding education program with students. There's a student day on September 6, we're design thinking. So you've got to engage the community. We have to build capacity. We're all going to experience some frustration, but we've begun taking the steps to build that capacity because we need to be aware that we want to help the next generation but we have a responsibility to our own generation to leave behind or that inheritance we give the next generation is better than what we got. So essentially what we're going to be doing is engaging with congress members here and then building on the knowledge learned and we go forward. Are there any actual concrete or physical projects that are going to be left as well? So the biggest one that was a complete surprise to us, there's a gentleman at the University of Hawaii, his name is Ken Kanashiro. He's a biologist. And he's been on ThinkTech many times. We love Ken. And he was involved in the eradication of the mosquitoes, not mosquitoes, but the fruit fly in Okinawa. So I go to Glenn Switzerland and I meet this guy named Simon Stewart, who is of the Protected Species Commission. He says, Randy, we're thinking about how we eradicate mosquitoes in Hawaii. He said, really? I got a guy you got to talk to in Hawaii, Ken Kanashiro. So they've been talking. They're holding a congress workshop on Hawaii Island September 6 and 7 to talk about mosquito eradication in the state of Hawaii. So understand the implications, not only from a public health standpoint, from an endangered species standpoint, but just the benefit for our community. And you need to realize that mosquitoes are an introduced insect to the state of Hawaii. So we will be eradicating invasives permanently, hopefully, as the legacy project for the World Conservation Congress. Well, I know we're in good hands. Thank you so much for joining us, Randy. Thank you very much. Aloha.