The voyaging canoes Hokule’a and Hikianalia are venturing into rising waters as they bring their Malama Honua ("care for the Earth") message worldwide, meeting islanders for whom the effects of climate change are neither futuristic nor theoretical, but here and now.
The Hawaii-based voyagers arrived in Apia, Samoa, in time for the United Nations’ Small Island Developing States Conference, securing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s signature on the "Promise to Ka Pae’aina," pledging to be better stewards of global resources.
The crews are collecting similar pledges as they continue their worldwide voyage over the next several years, raising awareness about the need to protect marine and other environmental resources.
One of the strengths of the voyage is that it brings the important Native Hawaiian perspective of sustaining life in an island community out to the broader world. But another, less heralded advantage, is that the voyagers are bringing back to Hawaii the perspective of island residents who are already coping with the severe effects of climate change that are predicted for Hawaii years down the road.
Conference participants in Samoa heard from residents of the low-lying island nation of Kiribati, for example, who have seen friends and family members forced inland by rising seas as shoreline property they owned succumbed to continual erosion. Crops failed and trees died as saltwater intruded on once fertile soil. Sea walls built to delay the inevitable were ultimately no match for the encroaching sea.
Leaders of Kiribati and other threatened islands, including the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, rightly and reasonably pressed for more serious global action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. These remote, low-lying atolls are on the front lines of climate change, facing urgent challenges to their infrastructure stability and food security — their basic livability.
They provide an important lesson for Hawaii, if we are willing to learn from their experiences and adjust our lifestyles accordingly, especially when it comes to shoreline development, fresh water conservation, energy efficiency and sandy beach management.
The recent report prepared by University of Hawaii researchers for the tourism industry points the way ahead not only for that economic sector, but for life in Hawaii in general.
Many of the findings in "Climate Change and the Visitor Industry" were grim, foreseeing a Hawaii that is hotter, drier, more prone to devastating storms and less likely to have lovely sandy beaches. It’s quite simply too much for some folks to fathom, especially since the worst of the predictions, if they come true at all, would not occur for decades.
But contemplate it we must, as Hokule’a and Hikianalia remind us with their reports from far-flung island residents who are already living the reality.
One of the goals of the UH report was to summarize climate-change science in an easy-to-under- stand format and demystify the topic for the general public, a goal it has laudably achieved. Residents should read it, and other UH research on the topic, at bit.ly/1uo5yD4.
The tipping point for Hawaii may be 20, 30 or 50 years away — but the time to prepare smart policies to deal with realities such as eroding shores is now.
