 I'm Sunny Honolulu, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii. We come to you sort of all the way from the exotic South Seas, where there's just a wee bit of effect from climate change. And that is what we will be talking about today. Our distinguished guests are Dr. Kail Grabowski and official title is Executive Director, UN Cyphal Honolulu Office. This is a part of a United Nations office. And just by the by, she also is the Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Shyamunad University. She's coming to us from the exotic Kaimaki. And a lot of us have certainly noticed an increase in the population of people from Micronesia and other South Seas. And there's a bunch of reasons for this migration from that little bit of paradise in the South Seas. And that is exactly what we will be discussing because it relates to climate change. So Dr. Grabowski, why don't you take, oh, I forgot to mention, we are distinguished other guests is Rhea Alexandria grad student at Shyamunad University and perhaps Dr. Grabowski's number one star pupil be from the area. So welcome Rhea and Dr. Grabowski, why don't you take it away? Give us some background about what Seafold is all about and what you're trying to do. Yeah, thank you Howard. That was wonderful. Rhea is one of our star students and she just graduated with a degree in English and environmental studies. So she's a great communicator and she's also from the Pacific Islands, we'll talk about today. And I call all of them all of our environmental majors. We have environmental science and studies, planet savers. So I know you really care about young people and their voice and boy, they are out there. They are our warriors for the future and Rhea is one of them. So I'm so glad Rhea could join us. So yes, I was an ecologist by training but then I got pulled into environmental issues and then we have environmental programs at Shyamunad. So coupled with that, we have a provost who directed a Seafold center. Seafold is a French acronym and it basically means it's translated, if we translate into English, into international training centers for local authorities and actors. So there are 22 of them in the world. Max, first slide. And what they do is they are here to make change locally and to make change since they are United Nations Seafold centers. They are part of UNITAR, which is the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. So they're the Seafold centers, the 22 of them in the world. Honolulu is the newest along with one in Victoria, Canada. And each of them is to act locally, to train people and to partner and to help form programs that help to achieve the sustainable development goals, which are the 17 goals that the United Nations has founded with lots of public input and lots of expert input starting in 2015, they go to 2030. So we're here to help achieve those sustainable development goals and we'll talk about one of them. Number 13 is climate action and it is affecting the Pacific and our Seafold center, our local region is the Pacific. So there are 780 plus inhabited islands out in the Pacific and unfortunately we are in the double jeopardy of having not caused climate change and also suffering from it, its impacts, its many impacts more as a lot of people in the Pacific know. And so that's part of the reason why Howard you're seeing what you're seeing and we'll talk in more depth about that. So the Seafold centers train for the goals and next slide Max, these are the goals. So all of them are important to achieve quality of life sustainability. The United Nations likes to call it peace, prosperity and planet. And so those three P's are what we're after and we're focusing on the Pacific. So all of these are important of course, all of them matter, but on the islands. Next slide Max, there are some that are very pressing and so you can see here things like hunger and food security. So we're out here depending a lot of islands. Now some islands, if they haven't a healthy core reef and they have some agriculture that's working, they are subsistence, they can feed themselves but there's a lot of Pacific islands as we know that rely heavily on shipping. So that's why number two is in there and you can see also gender equality. Also if we talk about Red Hill in Hawaii, the sanitation, number six is about clean water and sanitation, number seven is about renewable energy, Hawaii is leading the way on that one. And then we also need sustainable consumption because it's really tricky on islands to figure out what to do with your waste, as we know. And there's number 13, climate action. And climate action on islands is closely aligned with the other things that are really important on islands which is the land and the water. So that's 14 and 15. And then the last one is really about equity, justice and partnerships. So we'll end up talking about all of these because climate change is affecting water, food, of course the land, as well as the built environment and economies. So next slide, Max. So the thing that is most affecting the Pacific Islanders in terms of a diaspora or a forced migration or if some people use the term climate refugees is climate change. There are other challenges on islands. But I just like to say here that each of the goals, the sustainable development goals, which is what the Seafall Center trains to help meet. So this is a big one for us. All those islands are, but this one's really important and everybody knows why. Each goal has specific targets it's trying to achieve. So these are the United Nations global goals for us helping with climate change. Each target has measures that are called indicators. They're not super complex measures because they have to be done all over the world. People in Africa, people in South America, people in cold places, in hot places. We want global measures. So we're gonna help in the Pacific to partner and link up and there's already infrastructure there, but just to see how we're doing. So those are the goals and I won't go over all of them in detail unless you think I should, Howard. But it's kind of more important to talk about the threats. So what are the specific threats? So next slide, Max. And Rhea's gonna chime in with me because we are well aware and Rhea will tell you she's born on Palau and has lived in Guam. So this, some of you may recognize, this is Madro in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. And Madro has 35,000 people, it's probably higher now, living on 3.5 square miles. Its highest elevation is less than 10 feet. So it is an atoll and there are hundreds and hundreds of atolls in the Pacific. And so you can imagine sea level rise is a huge threat in terms of land loss. I read some recent papers and some atolls are actually growing with climate change. The problem is the dynamism. So they're growing, but the land is moving. So sand is where it didn't used to be and it's disappearing by erosion, huge erosion due to sea level rise. So sea level rise is a huge, huge challenge. And on Madro, if you go online, there's pictures of graveyards and of the landfill all being eroded by climate change as well as people's homes. Next slide, Max. And Rhea, chime in, any thoughts on that with me? Yeah, so I feel especially that sea level rise is detrimental to my community of specifically Madro because if we look back in history, Madro had, they were affected by bombing. So just by then they had to be displaced and be sent to other places due to health reasons and due to their home being contaminated. And because the land was contaminated, so was the sea. And I recently just took an environmental law and policy class and I did majority of my work surrounding the bombing at Madro. And so this day they still are finding contaminants in the ocean. So even more so, like just because of sea level rise and these contaminants, they are forced to leave their islands and if you think about it, if sea level rises and there's contaminants in the ocean, it could deeply affect the land even more. Yeah, there's some really good work being done on Oahu by here, which is looking into the effects of sea level rise and perhaps flooding from high precipitation events, which is another one of the predictions of climate change. There can be drought, but there can also be these intense storms, which we've experienced. So yeah, so when sea level rises, it may, and there's a flood together and or a king tide, a hurricane, et cetera, we may end up pulling things from the environment that are toxic. And so it's become an issue, yeah. Next slide, Max. And Gail, to give you a chance to get your breath, I would remind our readers that maybe just three weeks ago, we saw a photo on the North Shore of a home, North Shore home slipping onto the beach and we read about another fellow who was illegally filling in more and more and more and more sand to try to protect his home. So it's the same phenomenon, just Oahu style versus Marshall Island style. Exactly. So even the high islands, we call them the high islands if they're volcanic and they have some place to move up. Now they're still impacted. They're impacted by global warming. They're impacted by mosquitoes moving to places they didn't used to be. So it's not just the coastlines and we'll cover that. And another thing is, see, this person was trying to come up with a solution. And so Ria and I, anybody who works with climate change or any other environmental issue knows you've got to always talk solutions because it can be quite heavy, right? Because you're noticing somebody's losing their house. So the talking solutions is the antidote for getting either depressed or feeling helpless. And solutions occur at every level from the individual, what can I do, what can we do all the way to what the United Nations handles, which is what can the globe do, right? What can everybody on this planet do as a government or as an organization larger than single governments? The United Nations has 197 member states who have signed on to their Rio summit, which was in 1992 to try to stop the dangers of climate change. So our conferences are about that, but we talk solutions. Yeah, next slide. So you guys closely aligned, of course, with sea level rise and global warming of the air is the ocean has warming up. And so Pacific Islanders, so many Pacific Islanders depend upon the reef for their protein, so fish. And so fish depend upon an ecosystem that's intact. And there's other pressures. There's population growth and overfishing, but if the reef dies from warm water, which is happening, we're having a ton of coral reef degradation and you've all probably heard of it. There's basically been no tropical place that's been untouched by that. Some places worse than others. We had a really bad year in 2015 in Hawaii. And so this is another reason that we might see people leaving their home. They may leaving their islands having to be forced to leave. They may lose their land, yeah? And they may lose their sources of protein. And this is not just about personal subsistence. Coral reef fisheries are a big deal in the Pacific. Food comes from the reef for many, many artisanal fisher people and for the economy. So the United Nations recognizes in the first set of goals, which were called the Millennium Development Goals, they didn't leave out nature, but there was one of the goals was about that. Now, if you look, there's like four or five that are really about nature because we know economies are dependent upon healthy nature and people's wellbeing is dependent upon having an economy. So this coral reef bleaching or acidification is a big deal for people and their livelihood and getting their food. So see that diminishes food security. That's part of the food security story. Is are we going to have to import spam foods that aren't good for us instead of getting healthy fish from the reef in a sustainable way? Rhea, what are you going to add to that? What are you thinking? I just wanted to add, not only does it, it's detrimental to their livelihoods in an economic way and like a subsistence way, but it also affects their way of life. Cause for thousands of years, like we depended on the coral reef, not just because we wanted food, but because our ancestors before us taught us how to like work on the reef and how to like weave around the reef. And if there's no more coral reef due to ocean acidification, then we kind of lose our stories within this ocean. And I feel like that's like detrimental to us because we kind of lose like who we are as a people. Cause if we have to move somewhere else, like what else are we going to do besides? Cause all we know is like fishing or like planting crops on land. And now we're even losing that today and we aren't even as affected by climate change due to like the reliance on imported foods. So I think it's really important for us to kind of like look at climate change as a crisis, like as if like, cause for example, like we all seen COVID as a crisis and we worked so hard to kind of like get out of that period of like transition to get onto our way of life. And I think we need to have that perspective on climate change because if we can easily come up with solutions for COVID, like we can easily come up with solutions for climate change. So we're able to keep our traditions and our practices and feed ourselves rather than rely on other people's food. Yes. I'll never forget one day in class, Rhea, this was before your time, but I asked, and we have a lot of Pacific Island students at Shamanaut. We're like 40% Hawaiian students and students from America, Samoa and Micronesia. And I asked in class, and then there's mainland students, right? I asked in class, okay, who buys all of their fish, right? And hands went up and the guys from the Pacific are wondering what Mrs. Paul's fish sticks are. They don't eat fish sticks, they're eating fish. And I remember asking guys, is there anybody in there that never buys their fish and hands went up? This is people in their homes catching their meals. So another huge reason why Pacific Islands are being so impacted and why we might see people having to leave their home is that they are very resource dependent, whether it's the reef or whether it's the land, the smaller area of land to grow food. And their economies are not big and there's not a lot of industry. And it's more challenging in the Pacific to bring in industry. It's more expensive, we're remote and so it costs more to do construction. Also there's just not a big economic base. One storm I was reading, one storm in a small island can take a huge chunk out of the GDP. And so these places are vulnerable physically and as Ria was alluding to dependent on their resources and a richness, the cultural richness and the value of the land, the importance of healthy land for healthy people, spiritually, aesthetically, as well as materially. Yeah, next slide, Max. So this was just, I was thinking storms. And so this is a picture from Laysan and Papa Hanamo Kokea. And Laysan was not freed from even coral bleaching and it's pretty far north. So the corals are perhaps more sensitive when they're used to colder water. But there have been hurricanes in Papa Hanamo Kokea as well as all over the Pacific. So we are at risk of more intense storms. There may not be more storms, but more intense storms. And I know we know that and Ria's lived in Guam and Guam is in like Hurricane Alley, Typhoon Alley. So yeah, so it's already got pretty good building codes but still a challenge, yeah? Yeah, it's a challenge and I think it's kind of hard for us to like deal with it at this point because there's so much people coming into Guam and it just, it's kind of hard to like go around living around the storms that come in because like Dr. Gale said, we're like in a territory where typhoons are coming naturally and it's kind of weird to me to say that because it's amused to the typhoon. And I'm thinking like it's a natural occurrence but in reality it can be really detrimental to us as a people because of like what it can do to our crops and what it could do to our ocean. So I think like a lot of us on Guam now are trying to think of solutions where we could possibly like not only like avoid typhoons but also be prepared for them. So a lot of organizations like Micronesian Climate Alliance they do a lot of work that deals with mitigating climate change and doing a lot of work outside to help like, you know, kind of slow down the process but it doesn't really help because everybody has got to do it in order to make that big impact. Yes, yes. And Rhea, I've got a question. Is there any correlation between the warming of the ocean and the formation of hurricanes or typhoons? Yes. Howard putting her on the spot. You know, we always say in class that snow is the ocean coming back down, you know, when people say, oh, big snowstorm. It's like, yeah, because there's more energy because the earth is warmer and there's more evaporation and there you go. You know, people have a hard time understanding climate change is not complex in its causes but its consequences are so many, right? Yeah, and then of course dealing with it and it was slow. I don't think it's slow anymore. I was thinking, you know, 20 years ago we had a climate change fact fiction in the future and we came out of that going, it's happening, right? 10 years ago we had a class facts and fixes and then right before COVID I had a class I said, forget all that stuff, the students know let's just do climate solutions, you know? Because we know we see in the Pacific Islanders believe that climate change is happening. They see it, sea level rises probably one of the, you know, if you've lived in a place a long time I have some pictures from Waikiki where I've lived for 20 years and actually more than 20 years now, you know with the sand coming over and there used to be a lawn and now they're having to fix the sea walls, et cetera. Okay, next one, now we get to the ones that are a little more consequences that can also really challenge people being able to stay home. And you've got about five minutes, so yeah. Oh, okay, so I'll just blow by this one. This was a storm that, and one of the things about intense storms, this was an intense storm named Walaka up in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that took out an island that was where 90% of the turtles nested. So the picture on the bottom is after the storm did the overwash, yeah, and the huge waves and the surge. Now the island has come back into a different shape but there used to be, I think it was a US Fish and Wildlife or a state, you know, there were people that would spend time there studying the turtles. They had beautiful data. And so this is when I learned the meaning of a term that Saul Kaho Hala Hala taught me which is a time of kanaloa which as I've learned about it means we're in a time of change. And so we need to adapt which goes right with Ria's message. Okay, next slide. This one just shows what's called saltwater intrusion where it's on chook and it's, you know, the kalo, the taro is being affected by saltwater in the crops. And so people's food can be at risk along with water with changing precipitation patterns and storm surge. Ria, you must want to add something about food. So Ria, where's something? Yeah. Yeah, so the reason why I'm in my car right now is because I'm actually working at Ma'au Organic Farms and I'm in this internship where we're kind of trying to implement climate smart technologies and not just like the equipment we use but the knowledge we have with the land and kind of like changing our perspective of the land and using more sustainable methods. And one of the things that we've been talking about is our water usage. So with climate change, the water is always fluctuating and if there's not enough water, there's not enough water to feed the crops. And when you're working in an agricultural scene, water is very vital to all of the crops. And I've been working here for about three weeks already and I love it because we're trying to give the people in Waianae food that is imported. So we grow stuff like lettuce heads, kale, and green onions, things that you would have to buy at the store if they were imported. And I think it's important that we have a bunch of water because if we don't have water, we won't be able to provide these foods. Good. And next slide, Max, this will be the water slide. It's another picture from Montreux. And that's those quarried out areas are from where they catch runoff. The Micronesians are the best water catchers in the world because many of the islands are limestone, which does not hold surface water. So they've been doing rainwater catchment for a long time. And so this is the big system on Montreux and it's under threat from both some saltwater intrusion, overwash, yeah, as well as if we worry about pollution. So all of these reasons are why we might see really sad diaspora of people losing their homes, just economic hardship, physically losing your home, less land area, and just economies that are challenged. So one of the things the United Nations recognizes that is needed in the Pacific is you really need to, they need to be considered very less developed countries and they need some support and infrastructure from partners all over the world. And to leaving cultures intact, but also providing some resources that aren't just to benefit the donators, but benefit the Pacific Islanders and let them define what is needed, as well as learning. That's a Seafall Center, it's a training center. So we're gonna be creating opportunities for people to get together virtually and in reality. Next November is the Global Seafall Meeting. So we'll have all 22 and I think by then we might have 23 centers we'll meet and discuss the Sustainable Development Goals. And since we're the one in the Pacific, yeah. You're gonna see that we're gonna have a lot to learn and a lot to teach. This is just a picture of a graduate student of ours, another student, Broderick Menke, who is a climate planner for the Republic of the Marshall Islands now. Next slide, these are our solution slides. So this was a panel we had on campus that the Seafall Center hosted put on by the Hawaii Executive Council. And it's called the Climate Coalition and it's chaired by Chris Benjamin who is the CEO of Alexander and Baldwin and Dr. Chip Fletcher, who is Dr. Doomey calls himself but he's an amazing scientist who's been helping. Yeah, and so what's great about this one is businesses we need to change some of the ways we do businesses with shipping and packaging and our emissions and maybe cap and trade can work. Maybe it's going to be carbon offsets. I received an email from Hawaiian Airlines a few weeks ago that they're doing carbon offsets. So businesses are thinking, they're thinking and they need to be doing because we're gonna blow by 1.5 degrees. That's pretty much inevitable now. And that member of the Pacific Islands at the Paris meeting wanted 1.5, they needed 1.5. So we may see more refugees. Next slide. And this was just, I wanted everybody to be able to see what the predictions are. This was a technical NOAA technical report and it says that we're going to have two feet by 2,100 and it could be much higher. So if we keep behaving badly, it's what I call it with emissions, we could have up to five feet. I saw seven, yeah, by the end of the century. So the world needs to know and the islanders have been vocal there's initiatives, there's organizations both in the Caribbean and the Pacific, we are not drowning, we are fighting the climate warriors. Rhea, add to all that. These are our solutions. And we're gonna go about one minute, Rhea. Okay, well, I just wanted to add like a solution is using your voice and kind of like spreading the word, spreading awareness and a prime example of that happened here in Hawaii with the, I'm sorry if I butcher her name but the Navaheen versus the Hawaii Department of Transportation. And basically it was a group of youths from nine to 18, I believe. And they wanted to sue the Hawaii Department of Transportation because they weren't meeting the goal of trying to do carbon offsets. And there's a set track by 2030 and they kind of mimic the sustainable development goals that the UN has. And these kids are finding out that the Department of Transportation isn't doing much of the work to help offset these carbon emissions coming from the cars by building more highways and not really relying on these public transportations or just because there's so many people like buying these cars and they're not really doing an effort to kind of like mitigate these issues. And I thought it was very powerful and kind of inspiring because you don't really see older generations do this but you see a nine year old do it so it gives me hope that like that I'm it gives me hope and I'm prideful to be a part of this generation because it makes like me hopeful that we're able to make such change and maybe we won't see that change in our generations but for our future generation so that they're able to live on this planet because they deserve to live here too. Rhea, it's gotta happen in your generation. That's what we're counting on. We're counting on you. That's old people. I can't hold this to fight with that. And on that very, very, very cheery hopeful note and note that Dr. Fletcher is hopeful also. I must bid fond adieu, Dr. Grabowski Rhea. Thank you so much on behalf of Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii. See you next time. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech, Hawaii. 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