Aloha and welcome to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around the world? Today it's exciting to be engaging one of the foremost experts on business and human rights. Today we'll be looking at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, Protect, Respect, and Remedy for All. Thank you so much, Surya Deva, for taking time, not only from your busy teaching schedule, but also coordinating right now the second annual forum on business and human rights in the Pacific. Thank you, Joshua. It's my pleasure to be on the show. It is such an honor to have someone with your experience, but also your dedication to the issue. I've been able to fortunately see that over many years and really we're also celebrating the 10th year of the guiding principles. Could you maybe share with the world what are the guiding principles and why are they so important in the field of human rights? Definitely. So the UN guiding principles on business and human rights were adopted unanimously by the Human Rights Council in June 2011. They were developed by late Professor John Draghi during his six years of mandate 2005-2011. These guiding principles are international soft standards which basically tell what states need to do, what private sector businesses need to do in terms of respecting human rights and remediating adverse impacts. So the guiding principles are built around three pillars and that's where it comes to protect respect and remedy. So states have a duty to protect human rights against their violations by the business enterprises. All business enterprises have a responsibility to respect all human rights and then both states and businesses have their respective duties and responsibilities to provide remediation if there are adverse impact on human rights. I think the guiding principles are very important because before 2011 it was a very polarized debate in the business and human rights field about soft versus binding rules and I think the guiding principles provided a pathway that how we can move forward and I think after the adoption in 2011 in the last 10 years we have seen significant progress in terms of their adoption, in terms of the uptake by different actors and I think because of that they are really highly influential throughout the world. Of course the implementation remains a challenge but as normative as standard they definitely provide a very important ER district for both the states and businesses and other actors including investors to understand what they need to do. Oh that's really good and you also brought up John Ruggie and also David Weissbrod. Unfortunately both of them had just passed but they did a really good job at planting the seeds to address and include corporations, multi-nationals and smaller enterprise and businesses because when we look at the history of human rights there's been a lot said about states duties and their role as duty bears but we also look especially since it is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. the role of corporations with the king, with Columbus there's always been many businesses having impact on indigenous and communities around the world so this was the first time as you shared Ruggie was able to diplomatically bring everything together and codify it in these guiding principles and as you said how many principles are there and what are some of the main points people should be aware of on top of these three elements that you share to protect respect and remedy? There are 31 principles in total and before I go a little bit into those principles I think you mentioned Ruggie and Professor Weissbrod I mean so it's a sad year I would say for the business and human rights community because these two legendary figures in the field have unfortunately left us but they created definitely and planted seeds they created a momentum in different ways and I think the draft UN norms also created in the groundwork I would say for the UN guiding principles and also I would say the treaty process that is going on now to negotiate a binding instrument so I think those are complementary processes in my view the soft standards and the hardening of those standards. Now let me briefly talk about the 31 principles in the UN guiding principles so we have pillar one which is the state duty to protect human rights we have 10 principles here and basically the expectation is that the government should ensure by taking a number of steps legal steps, policy measures, rules and regulations, creating incentives to ensure that all business enterprises within their territory and jurisdiction respect human rights and I think the word jurisdiction here is quite critical in my view because businesses have transnational footprint and it is critical that the home states of these businesses also have an obligation to ensure those companies respect human rights wherever they operate. Of course the pillar one has several components for instance there is a key role for the when the state is an economic actor you should be taking lead lead by example as we call it and that happens when let us say public procurement is involved or when we have a state on enterprises which are involved in doing some business and I think then the expectation is they will also respect human rights then there is a greater focus also on policy coherence because we would like the trade and investment regimes and the human rights regime to work together we don't want a situation in which the governments are trying to attract investment and they ignore labor rights and human rights and the climate change now that's becoming a big issue and I think that policy coherence is is a key component of pillar one when it comes to pillar two Joshua as you know it talks about responsibility of all business enterprises to respect all human rights now what is crucial is that this is an independent responsibility of businesses so irrespective of what the states do and do not do businesses are expected to respect all human rights at all times wherever they are operating and this responsibility is over and above the legal obligations that those businesses may have in certain situations I would say a key contribution of pillar two is this language of human rights due diligence this is a four-step process and businesses are expected to know and show how they respect human rights and the tool that is provided by pillar two of the UN guiding principles is the UN sorry the human rights due diligence now let me quickly touch upon the pillar three which is about access to remedy now prevention as all of us know working in the human rights field is ideal it is desirable but prevention is never full proof there are always adverse impact on human rights and then in those particular situations the individuals and the affected communities should be able to secure access to effective remedy and in this particular context the pillar three provides for three broad possibilities of seeking remedies judicial mechanism like the courts second is a state-based non-judicial mechanism these could be national human rights institutions which are very very vital but we could also have national contact points which are established by OECD countries and the third possibility is that they could be some operational level grievance mechanism like businesses may establish something to provide remediation or international financial institutions like Asia Development Bank or the world banks lending arm they can establish those grievance mechanism so I think that is in brief a quick summary of what these three principles are pillars of the UN guiding principles handle well that's absolutely vital especially it's education and awareness raising and also capacity building of the community and the corporation in the country because many people aren't aware of that and bringing up widespread I remember being in the UN subcommission and him bringing those issues forward and seeing him advance those for the norms and then being part of rugby's consultation process with different indigenous peoples what was so exciting when they were adopted as you said in 2011 was what next and I remember the negotiations with Scandinavia hosting in the Human Rights Council in that June and one idea was how then do we advance and build on that important work of Weisbrot and now rugby and the idea was a UN working group on business and human rights and the idea of a UN forum on business and human rights and it's exciting to see you there representing Asia Pacific and also your experience even being as chair did you share a bit about what the working group is and how those five members operate and then maybe talk about some highlights of your time on the working group definitely that would be my pleasure so the UN working group on business and human rights was established in the same year 2011 so the working group comprises five members representing different regions of the world I represent Asia Pacific but we have colleagues coming from Africa Eastern Europe Western Europe and the other regions and the late in America so the primary mandate of the working group is to promote their dissemination and effective implementation of UN guiding principles and business and human rights and we work together with governments private sector entities industry associations civil society organizations NHRIs civil society groups trade unions academia lawyers almost everyone because we adopt a collaborative approach and I think earlier you mentioned about the importance of raising awareness and building capacity we cannot underline and highlight the importance of raising awareness and capacity building enough because unless companies and government officials know about UN guiding principles they cannot really implement that and I think that is what we do and I see this interview as part of that process as well raising awareness reaching out to new audiences in different parts of the world and I think we keep on doing it you mentioned the UN forum and like the UN guiding principles the UN forum also started around the same time and this year next week in fact we have the 10th UN forum on business and human rights because of the COVID pandemic which is continuing the forum will take place virtually for three days from 29th of November to the 1st of December but it used to be an in-person event the largest event on the planet at this point of time at least on business and human rights where more than 2000 people will come from more than 130 countries but I think the technology during the pandemic has also provided us an opportunity to reach out to the global south in particular who are not able to travel to Geneva in person so we also see this as an advantage that we are able to bring on board people who are perhaps not as included in the forum structure apart from the forum we also do a number of other activities to promote demand it as you know we do two country visits in a year because of the pandemic again there was some disruption to those visits but I had a chance to visit Italy in late September early October and of course let us see which countries we visit in next year we also accept complaints complaints against governments complaint against private sector if there are allegations that they have not followed the UN guiding principles and of course as you know just we also release guidance that happens in the form of two reports that we do every year where we try to unpack the UN guiding principles different components and finally let me briefly talk about my experience of the working group I joined the working group on the 1st of May 2016 so I'm in my final year of the mandate because as you know the mandate is three plus three six years in maximum so I'll finish at the end of April next year 2022 for me the experience has been quite satisfying of course my mandate is not limited to Asia Pacific but I have pushed the agenda more I would say in the Asia Pacific and one thing which I take a lot of satisfaction is that we started those sub-regional approaches in the Asia Pacific we started with South Asia forum the East Asia forum was already going on led by UNDP but I created the South Asia forum in collaboration with UNDP and as you know last year we created the specific forum in collaboration with the office of the High Commission for the Pacific and hopefully let us see if we can pull it off the idea is also to do something in the Middle East so this sub-regional approach is very very vital in addition to that I'm also working on drafting an information note on climate change because the UN guiding principles don't mention climate change or environmental rights anywhere so but but there are deep linkages between human rights and climate change so how do we draw those connections together so this information note will provide guidance on that particular aspect of course earlier I would also like to mention a couple of quickly other reports that I led one is around the gender aspect so I think that was the report to the Human Rights Council in 2019 and basically it put the gender dimensions in the center of the business and human rights discourse and earlier than that I did reports around access to remedy so that was a 27 report on what is an effective remedy and more recently I did a report around the role of national human rights institutions in the business and humanist agenda and of course my final report which was to the General Assembly which I presented in last month in fact was on international investment agreements that how can states bring in human rights and environmental issues and climate change considerations into their investment agreements and I think that links nicely with the policy coherence point that I was talking about earlier as part of pillar one so I think that is a quick fire rapid fire summary of what the working group does and what I have been doing in the last five and a half years as part of the working group it's an excellent summary and just gives a glimpse into the good work that's being done regarding this very important field and as you described the forum and it reminded me of being there at the first handful of those and these are it is true there were more different elements of the economy of the ecology all people coming together former High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson everyone looking at the important contribution of the guiding principles and so maybe you could share with us then what have been some of the innovative initiatives that have taken place since the guiding principles were introduced and some of the ways that the forum has been able to really those innovative initiatives from the international down to like the island's level to bring those guiding principles alive. Yes so I would say that the working group just completed a project we call it the stock-taking report they're two dimensions of this project one is to review the progress we have made in the last 10 years implementing the guiding principles and the second component is the roadmap ahead where we should be going in the next 10 years so I'll invite the audience to look at our website and look at those two particular documents which should provide more details but let me highlight the positives what have we achieved in the last 10 years and I will start with this point that UN guiding principles provide a common language everyone whether these are states or companies or industry associations or trade unions or NHRIs or civil society groups or academia or lawyers or investors for that matter all of us can talk to each other in the field of business and human rights through this common language of human guiding principles and business and human rights I think this is quite a remarkable achievement to begin with because if we speak a common language then it is easier to collaborate because we're talking about the same thing and we are moving in the same direction perhaps the second key contribution is I would say that UN guiding principles are accepted by almost all stakeholders and slowly we see the uptake and the adoption of national action plans on business and human rights in all parts of the world earlier in the in the beginning of this last decade most of the national action plans were from European countries and in the last couple of years we have seen progress in Asia for instance we have three countries Japan Thailand and Pakistan adopting national action plan several other countries like India also Malaysia Indonesia Vietnam other countries as well they're working on national action plan on business and human rights in Africa also we have Kenya and Uganda adopting national action plans and of course in Latin America also we have Chile and also Mexico adopting national action plan on business and human rights so I think that is sorry sorry not Mexico it's Colombia my apologies for that so Mexico was in the drafting stage but I think there are some issues there but they haven't yet closed the line so what I'm trying to suggest here is that in different world regions we can see definitely a significant progress in terms of the uptake the other aspect that I would like to highlight is the alignment of other standards with UN guiding principles so whether these are the OECD guidelines or this is ILO tripartite declaration for MNE's all these are aligned with the UN guiding principles and the related aspect is that the UN guiding principles are also shaping low end policy and that is what we call the hardening of soft standards especially in Europe we have those standards coming into the form of mandatory human rights due diligence legislation and let us see what the draft comes out next year because European Commission is set to release a draft of that for for the entire Europe and this will have a global implication because this law is going to apply extra territorially so any company operating in Europe would have to comply with it and I think that's how it's going to capture the supply chains in the global south as well so I think these are I would say significant achievements at the same time going forward there are many things we need to improve we need to bridge this gap between what governments and companies are saying on paper and what their practice is we need to definitely improve access to remedy and corporate accountability a lot of work needs to be done about that we also need to strengthen and provide civic space because as you know human rights defenders are under attack in almost all world regions and we can't really think of implementing UN guiding principles effectively unless we have a free civil society and space for human as defenders to operate so I think there are many more challenges that are there new technologies are also emerging climate crisis is a big issue so I think there's a lot more works needs to be done but the guiding principles provide a pathway of course this is not the end of the world in terms of the standards this is merely a floor not the roof but hopefully we will build more ambitious standards going forward and we will also implement the UN guiding principles better going forward and you can definitely see now where the roots are really taking shape for the business and human rights around the world with all those examples and as you mentioned climate change I just returned from Glasgow and the UN framework on climate change COP 26 so I know that language at your draft will be very valuable to the rest of the world maybe you can share when that will be coming out or if there's still a time for people to contribute and that also could lead into the exciting second forum on business and human rights which I know you spearheaded and that's now taking place could you maybe share a little bit about some of the issues coming out of the national hubs of the second forum on business and human rights and some of the issues you see related to the guiding principles in our region yes of course let me talk about the climate change information not so you mentioned COP 26 and there is always this struggle to connect human rights and the climate changes and you can see that the struggle continues including at COP 26 so this information not which I hopefully will finalize by the end of next month will unpack what UN guiding principles mean for states and private sector and others in terms of climate change there's still a small window for stakeholders to get in touch with me if they have any ideas but this is not a full report this is just in short information note but hopefully in future there will be more work done around this by the working group in terms of the second UN Pacific forum on business and human rights as I mentioned to you earlier this is part of the working groups regional or sub regional strategy to push the agenda in different parts of the world because the local context is very very crucial and if we don't take into account the local political social economic and cultural context it is difficult to implement the UN guiding principles let us take Indonesia Indonesia has more than 10,000 islands so implementing UN guiding principles in Indonesia is very different how it would look like in a country like us which is very vast country with 50 states but it is not like the small island of Indonesia or let us talk about Mongolia where people move around in the same country right so I think those local contexts are very very relevant or we can talk about the Solomon Islands again about around 1000 islands but they face quite serious crisis coming from the climate change right so I think that local context is very much relevant and we're keeping that in mind we started this forum in collaboration with the office of the high commissioner for human rights but before that we build the background and Joshua you're part of some of those workshops that we did with the diplomacy training program and the office of the high commissioner we did those workshops in Fiji and in PNG and now we have been doing those workshops virtually so they they built that background of raising awareness about UN guiding principles and building the capacity around that and I think that was quite significant starting point which provided a groundwork for the forum now the forum is taking place so at this year we did something innovative so the forum started on Monday 22nd of November today is the final day of the forum and on the first day it was a private what we call national hubs national hubs were not public hubs but these were the hubs that we created in different countries and we wanted to put the rights holders in the pacific countries at the center of the forum so we could pull off these national hubs in four countries Solomon islands Vanuatu, Fiji and PNG in PNG I think it was entirely virtual but it was also hybrid in other places and then we allowed some sharing from those four hubs to take place on the first formal day of the forum yesterday and the people are engaging in those particular issues whether this is about illegal logging, land grabbing, environmental pollution issues, climate change or gender-based violence all these are very important issues for the pacific and I think the guiding principles have a role to play in how we can work together to overcome some of the challenges. No that was really important and it's exciting to see everything that's being raised even deep seabed mining as we're coming close to the end of the program and we won't be able to see each other together at the forum on business and human rights could you maybe give an overview of what will happen in Geneva for that 10th anniversary as we look at this decade of action and I know you mentioned earlier the treaty that's also emerging maybe you could can close with some insights to those important international institutions and how they are becoming a reality for businesses and communities around the plan I think there is let me start with quickly about the treaty process I think there is a growing recognition that we should not see any conflict between soft standards and the binding standards we need both and the treaty process should be seen in this particular context and the working group also issued a statement last month that we see this complementary relationship and to create a global level playing field the government should work together to create binding rules at the international level but of course we need binding rules at the national and regional level as well so the process is moving ahead but of course we need more political support from developed countries to this process so that they can push these in that together in my view about the forum this will be an entirely virtually event taking place over three days starting on 29th of November to the 1st of December there will be a number of sessions covering a range of issues but a key focus this year is on the 10th years anniversary of the UN guiding principles in particular where we want us to be there in 2030 next 10 years right so that is the roadmap it will be launched on the first day and then we will try to integrate the roadmap into different sessions throughout the three days and we very much hope that the real thing is that whatever we say we try to implement in practice I think that is that is crucial right and we very much hope that going forward the continued push about the better implementation of UN guiding principles will continue and the forum like this in Geneva or the regional forum in the pacific could definitely be a game changer going forward in my view excellent and that overlaps very well with the UN sustainable development goals and the 17 global goals and it's been an honor to watch you organize and operate in Asia and the pacific to bring these guiding principles from paper into practice and thank you so much for your two terms on this important aspect and I want you to know it's also inspired me as we've been accepted into a new cohort here for travel to change and native wine hospitality to educate tourism industry about the guiding principles so we're doing the work here in Hawaii as well so thank you so much for joining us and I know our time has passed but I look forward to meet you at the next forum either in the pacific or in Geneva Mahalo so pleasure meeting you and doing this with you take care and see you again sometime


In previous modules, we've been looking at socio-ecological systems from the perspective of feedback loops and resilience. In this video, we'll be taking another perspective on this dynamic between the social and ecological domains as we talk about sustainability. The idea of sustainability offers us another lens with which to understand the complex interaction between society and ecosystem. The rise of the term sustainability over the past few decades has been phenomenal as it has rapidly gone from the fringes to the centre of our collective conscience. This graph showing the number of times the word occurs in a book publication shows a stellar take-off around the late 80s. In the research literature, sustainability articles also started growing rapidly beginning in the early 1990s and have been doubling every 8 years since. Developing sustainability through social-natural interaction is an inherently complex process, the analysis of which requires inter and transdisciplinary efforts. The philosophical and analytical framework of sustainability draws on and connects with many different disciplines and fields. In recent years, this has formed into an area that has come to be called sustainability science, which has been described as an emerging field of research dealing with the interaction between natural and social systems, and with how these interactions affect the challenge of sustainability, meeting the needs of present and future generations while substantially reducing poverty and conserving the planet's life support systems. Research relevant to the goals of sustainable development has long been pursued from bases as diverse as geography and geochemistry, ecology and economics, or physics and political science. Increasingly, however, a core sustainability science research program has begun to take shape that transcends the concerns of its foundational disciplines and focuses instead on understanding the complex dynamics that arise from the interaction between human and environmental systems and how they give rise to more or less sustainable outcomes. One of the great challenges to sustainability science today is in trying to develop generic models that capture the essential variables and interactions between society and ecosystem that affect the system's overall sustainability within some overarching framework. Socioecological systems are inherently complex assemblages that are spatially heterogeneous and change over time, according to an intricate interplay of a large number of biophysical as well as socioeconomic factors. Effectively modeling them requires systems-based holistic approaches that are able to integrate the many different perspectives involved. Sustainability can be defined as the ability to be sustained, supported or upheld. In more general terms, sustainability is the endurance of a system or process. When we talk about sustainability in the abstract, we're really talking about the state of the system over time. We're talking about how long the system or process can continue at the current level of functionality before it becomes degraded to a lower level of functionality. For a system to be sustainable, or what we might call viable, it has to be consuming at or less than the aggregate level of production to whatever resource is sustaining it. Equally, it has to be able to adapt to its changing environment. So on its most basic level, this question of sustainability is an equation between what is being consumed and what is being produced. But of course, this is a very complex equation when we're talking about a whole economy and supporting ecosystem with many interacting moving parts. So we'll firstly talk about this more concrete side to the equation of sustainability, trying to identify some of the primary variables and key dynamics before going on to discuss the idea of economic and social adaptation with respect to sustainability. The sustainability of a socio-ecological system is not a simple equation, but it does help to understand some of the basic mechanics at play before trying to expand on this to be more representative of a real world situation. To try and understand these basic variables, let's think about a very simple situation, a closed system with a single static source and single sink. We can think about a group of people on an island with some given stock of consumable resources. Modeling the sustainability of this system then is not difficult. We would have a variable for the quantity of stock, some rate at which they're being consumed and from this can derive how long they will last and thus the sustainability of the system. So these are the most basic elements understanding the stock which would correspond to ecosystem services and the rate of consumption which would correspond to the input into the economy. This is of course a very simple linear model because the elements in the system are not themselves changing and there is no feedback. One of the first things to add to this model is the fact that the population is changing over time. The rate of growth to a population and its change is typically understood within population ecology with reference to the logistic map where the rate of population growth is proportional to both the existing population and the amount of available resources all else being equal. The mathematician Ver Haust derived this logistic equation to describe the self-limiting growth of a biological population. By adding this into the dynamic we get one basic understanding of sustainability in terms of what is called the carrying capacity. Where the carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely given the ecosystem services available in that environment. The carrying capacity can be defined as the environment's maximum load to which the population can grow and exist sustainably. To develop a more representative model we would also have to recognize that the stock which is the ecosystem is not just a static variable but in fact has a generative capacity the capacity to reconfigure and regenerate itself so there are really two factors here the stock of resources or the ecosystem services that flow to the economy at any given time but also there is the system through which these services are generated this is called natural capital. A functional definition of capital in general is a stock that yields a flow of valuable goods or services into the future. Natural capital is then the stock of natural ecosystem that yields a flow of valuable ecosystems goods or services into the future. For example a stock of trees or fish provides a flow of new trees or fish a flow which can be sustained indefinitely. Natural capital may also provide services like recycling waste or water catchment and erosion control. Since the flow of services from ecosystems requires that they function as a whole system the structure integrity and diversity of the system are important components of natural capital. Thus the supply of ecosystem services can change when we affect the systems that provide them and as we previously discussed when talking about regime shifts these critical ecosystems functions can often change in a non-linear fashion with tipping points and thresholds. The next important factor to include into our model is that unlike with the simple island model where resources are consumed and just disappear in reality economies are dissipative systems that means during their operation they generate entropy and this entropy has a degrading effect on the functionality of the ecosystems natural capital over time. This means we need to think about not just how much the system is consuming but also just as importantly the level of efficiency to the system. Here we're talking about efficiency as a ratio between the total resources consumed and the total entropy exported. The scale of impact that an economy has on the natural environment is attempted to be captured in a model called i equals pat which is the lettering of a formula put forward to describe the impact of economic activity on the environment. It posits that economic impact on the environment is equal to p which is for the total size of population a which is for their affluence representing the average consumption of each person in the population and t which is for technology representing how resource intensive the production of this affluence is. So this goes some way to describing the basic physical mechanisms to the sustainability dynamic the variables that we've outlined loosely correlate to those used in the first such macro model to global sustainability which was published in a book called the limits to growth in 1972. The original version presented a model based on five variables including world population industrialization pollution food production and resource depletion but of course sustainability is much more than just about technology demographics and natural resource supply just as important as the basic physical mechanics is a society's capacity to adapt and evolve in response to changes from this perspective sustainability is not so much about trying to make everything add up trying to reduce ecological footprint or make technology more efficient but instead recognizing the change is an inherent part of the socioecological dynamic and that long-term sustainability is only really going to come through enabling an effective adaptive mechanism within the social system in order for it to evolve in response to changes in the ecosystem and thus endure over time adaptation engages both economic social and cultural dimensions on all levels it requires feedback loops so that people and institutions can receive information and respond to it seeing the effect of their actions and the state of the environment on its most basic level the market economy engineers an adaptive capacity into the pricing system in general as a commodity or service becomes more scarce the price increases and this acts as a restraint that encourages efficiency technical innovation and alternative products however this only applies when the product or service falls within the market system as ecosystem services are often treated as economic externalities they are often systematically underpriced and therefore overused and degraded the pricing of ecosystem services then is an important part of enabling this feedback loop to function as long as ecosystem services are externalized the market has no signal or way of sensing their state and thus no way of responding and adapting as needed and this broken economic feedback loop has been a major critique of the free market system and identified as a central cause of current environmental problems on the global scale but as we previously noted when talking about the social dilemma markets have their limitations they are not effective at dealing with situations that involve some form of commons such situations require social capital the value that is stored in the social bonds that enable effective communications reciprocity and coordination social capital is central to dealing with the tragedy of the commons problem that otherwise can be very environmentally costly and very inefficient to try and manage through the market self-organizing communities that effectively use their social capital become more sustainable effective and resilient than those with adaptive mechanisms designed and imposed by external entities the published literature contains many examples that demonstrate not only the ability of social capital to provide the needed power for the management of community commons property or resources such as water pasture forestry etc but also to build an adaptive capacity to better tolerate climate variables as well as climate hazards and extreme events case studies to the management of sea defense in vietnam during the 90s among others have shown how in the time of crises the dormant social capital was rapidly awakened by the community themselves and played an important part in dealing with the change social capital enables the community to self-organize from within and use their social capital to build adaptive capacity to be more effective resilient and ultimately sustainable and central to enabling sustainability sustainability and adaptation also have a strong cultural dimension to them society's capacity to adapt is strongly correlated to how it understands itself and through this it's relation to the natural environment people's identity plays a very significant role in their capacity to adapt to change within their natural environment there's a recognized need to expand understanding of subjective dimensions to recognize the values and lived experiences of people in a place for example most investigations into climate adaptation to date have focused on specific technology interventions and socioeconomic aspects of adaptive capacity new perspectives posit that socio-cognitive factors may be as or more important in motivating individuals to take adaptive action in a recent piece of research conducted in rural mexico one of the authors undertook in-depth interviews with a sample of farmers to explore their perception to their social identity in relation to climate risk these interviews showed robust evidence that social identity mediates between risk perception and adaptation through its influence on motivation interviews revealed significant linkages between social identity and interpretation of information risk perception and ultimately adaptation in this module we've been discussing the idea of sustainability within socio-ecological systems looking at how this very complex emergent feature of a system is really the product of many different interacting factors on many different levels making it an inherently interdisciplinary area of study that requires a systems approach for a full analysis we firstly talked about it on the most basic level of the physical interaction between the economic and ecological domains identifying the variables involved such as the supply of ecosystem services the rate of consumption and the efficiency of the technology infrastructure we then went on to recognize the central role of adaptation in enabling sustainability talking about the adaptive capacity of a society as a function of both economic factors involving well aligned feedback loops and reduced externalities but also social factors requiring social capital to enable local self-organizing adaptive resilience finally we noted the role of culture and social identity as another key dimension to the whole dynamic of sustainability within socio-ecological systems


Hey guys, welcome back to our channel. My name is Andrea with food inventory adventures in food And I am here today with a haul from Costco. We didn't get that much stuff, but we spent over $300 so let me jump in so we grabbed a propane tank It is empty, but Howard said we needed another one so we grabbed that and then we decided to give the Kirkland diapers and wipes a try for the first time so we got a box of each. I was completely or almost completely out of ground beef and I really do like their ground beef. As you can see it's lean and it's frozen and you get five chubs in each package so I grabbed two of them. I think they were $18.99 for each package and then if you've been with our channel for a while you know how much I love these foster farm crispy wings. They still have them on special so these were $14 a bag and I probably should have gotten more but I didn't so I grabbed sweet chipotle which is Howard's favorite and the Korean barbecue is my favorite. These I'm giving a try out for the first time these Tyson roasted chicken breast chunks. They're fully cooked and they are also frozen but I thought they would be good to have on hand when I was making something quick that I just wanted to just toss some chicken in so things like salads or if I'm making a fettuccine or something like that I just thought it'd be great to have it on hand. I grabbed this large box of honey made graham crackers. You get four boxes inside and they were on sale so they ended up being like $5 and something a box which is a really good deal. Howard grabbed some lemonade he really likes this lemonade and I actually like it pretty pretty well too so grab that. This is a new purchase for me. I have wanted to try these every single time I've gone to Costco and never picked it up but decided to today thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies. Howard grabbed some cashews and then we needed some more pacante sauce so normally I get metales but I also like paste so I just grabbed this this was a lot cheaper five bucks for the two of these and then I was almost completely out of butter so I grabbed some butter gonna throw this in my freezer and then these were another things that another item that were on sale these were eight dollars and something with three dollars all so they were eight dollars and something which is a really good deal and Howard and I both like those Howard grabbed some avocados and then he also grabbed some vitamin D and fish oil and these were also on sale I think these were maybe four dollars off each I think I don't remember and then we both really like these peanuts I've never bought them from Kirkland I've had them other places but these are the ones that are really big and extra crunchy and we both like those oops and then I also grabbed some tide and some dawn so this is it this is everything that I picked up from our Costco haul I hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did please make sure to give us a thumbs up and if you have not subscribed to our channel I certainly hope you'll do so thanks so much for watching and we'll see you guys next time


ThinkTecAway, civil engagement lives here. So often science is likable, and so often science helps us. Today we're going to study, from the point of view of the UHC Grand College program with Dolan Eversole, we're going to study how science can help us preserve the most valuable asset in the state, what I call the engine of our economy. Welcome to the show, Dolan. Thank you, Jay. Pleasure to be here. So tell us about your work at the UHC Grand College program. Sure, yeah, I serve as an extension agent for the University of Hawaii through a program called Sea Grant. Sea Grant's a national organization that's affiliated with NOAA. We're one of 33 Sea Grant programs in the nation. We happen to be the largest of the 33, with a fairly large extension network in all the Hawaiian islands, also includes American Samoa, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. So I'm one of an army of extension agents, and what we do as extension agents is provide information to our stakeholders. In my case, my primary stakeholders are the businesses of Waikiki, so I do a lot of work in Waikiki on beach management. But we also extend that extension work to government officials, developers, really anybody that will listen to our messages. And who is involved in Waikiki, and who should listen to your message. That's right, yeah, there's a lot of decision makers, and I'm happy to say that more and more people are starting to pay closer attention to some of our messages of more cautioning of warning of climate change and things like that. But we try to be practical in our messaging and not wave our arms too much that the sky is falling and instead be, you know, pragmatic about what we're seeing. Yes, it's really an interesting spot to be in, this is the tipping point. You don't want to create panic, you don't want to create discomfort.  At the same time, you want to raise public awareness so people over time, anyway, develop an awareness of mindfulness about these issues. And these issues are derived largely from climate change, right? That's right, yeah. A lot of the policies that we're seeing develop now at both the state and the local county level. There's a lot of interest in developing new policies and actually examples of it happening related to climate change. And one of the big things that I've seen happen over the course of my career is we went from a paradigm, let's say, 10 years ago or more of having to defend the climate science. And we were very much in, from a university academic standpoint, having in a defensive posture trying to justify the science that it is credible. I think we've moved well beyond that now and there's a general, particularly at the government level, there's a acceptance of the climate science. Not in Washington, but here. Maybe not at the federal level. That's a whole other issue. But at least here in Hawaii, I like to think that we're a pretty progressive state here, particularly with things like climate change. For example, I can say the word sea level rise and it doesn't make people cringe. It's not the case everywhere. People are going to be blacked out in your written material. Yeah, the transcript's blacked out. But there are a number of efforts going on locally that are encouraging signs that our local elected officials, state elected officials are paying close attention to this and responding by creating new policies and laws related to climate change. Not just what to do in response to it, the adaptation side, but also the mitigation side on controlling our emissions and things like that. So let me ask you a question that I draw from what you just said. And that is, how concerned should we be? How much of a threat, an immediate threat is posed by these factors and processes and environmental changes? Yeah, that's a great question and something that I've had many discussions with my friends about over drinks and whatnot. And to me, it is this idea of climate change and the changing realities of the world that we live in is possibly the most pressing issue of our time. And certainly I would strongly argue the most pressing environmental issue of our time. And the reason I say that is there's overwhelming evidence that our climate is changing. And this is well beyond normal weather-related seasonal cycles of even anticipated changes like El Nino cycles. And we're seeing an ever-increasing change in our atmospheric conditions. The temperature is changing. And when you increase temperature both of the atmosphere, the land and the ocean simultaneously, you begin to see changes in weather phenomena. So for example, while we can't say that any single hurricane that we've seen over the last couple of years is directly attributed to climate change, the message is we're going to see a lot more intense and unusual phenomena like our El Nino winter of 2015. And that whole season, we had very unusual weather. So we're going to see more things like that.  And I very much am in that camp of paying close attention to water levels and sea level. But to me, the most pressing environmental issue is rainfall. And as we all… You mean storms or ordinary rainfall? Both. So the reason it's so important to me is, as an island state and communities that live on islands, we're heavily reliant on rainfall for our water. And if we have a change in rainfall, either too much or too little, that can dramatically impact our source of water. Well, why would too much dramatically negatively impact our source of water? Well, a great example. As of yesterday, we had a potential evacuation threat of the New Wanu Reservoir Dam, number one. Thankfully, they were able to pump the water levels down. It did not fail or even come close to it. But it's an example of what can happen when you get too much water too quickly is it can saturate the ground. It can create all kinds of landslides and problems like that. But it can also impact water quality, both in some of our drinking supplies, as well as maybe more importantly, to a coastal person like me. Our nearshore coastal waters are heavily impacted by these big storm events that tend to flush a lot of contaminants down to the shore. And the sea life, the animals in the sea are affected by that. Then it's just a trickle down problem where literally everything flows down into the ocean and eventually dissipates. But in the meantime, we have brownwater advisories and not the most ideal situation. And if it's short-lived, like, thankfully, Olivia passed through quickly. There were some damages, some brownwater advisories. But we fully expect that to be fairly well cleaned up in the next week or two. And we all move on. But the point I'm making is that we're going to see more and more frequent events like that. They're going to start to slowly chew away at our infrastructure. And some of our stormwater infrastructure is showing signs of its age already. If you have infrastructure that breaks, I mean, water infrastructure that breaks, I heard this in a piece on NPR yesterday. You have the risk of contamination into the water, and thus, water that's not potable, that is infiltrated with bacteria and the like. And so this is a big problem. When the pipes break, I didn't really know this. When the pipes break, you have a quality control question right away. Yeah, that's right. I'm not a water engineer, but I have just a little basic understanding of the process, which is consistent with what you just said, which is our water comes from underground aquifers. So they're more or less sealed. That's great. The amount of rainfall isn't necessarily going to impact the aquifer. It takes decades for that water to kind of eventually filter down. But our conveyance of that water from the aquifer goes through pipes and pumps. And if there's ever a break, which they are pretty frequent, now you have a potential contamination issue. And you could have things, for example, in low-lying areas where we have our infrastructure underground, and that groundwater table becomes too high and it starts to saturate our utilities, including groundwater, I should say, our water supply pipes. If there's cracks in the pipes, and there's positive pressure through the pipe, it's okay because the water's leaking out. But if the water pressure gets too low, then that groundwater can leak into our drinking water. And there's really no filter between that and your house. So those are problems that— And you could have pressure out, and then it could change. That's right. Pressure could drop. And now, instead of pushing out through the pipe, it pushes into the pipe, no? Yeah. That's a common problem with our sewer systems, especially because they are not generally what's called a forced main or a positive pressure. They're gravity-fed, and they do develop cracks over time. And then when it rains real hard, the groundwater or stormwater will leak into the sewer system and overwhelm it. So when you hear about sewer systems getting overwhelmed, it's typically through a million tiny little cracks seeping through. How does that work? That happened in Waikiki. Yeah. Well, that was maybe a bit different, where they had a catastrophic failure that kind of forced them to discharge into the All-Awaii Canal. Yeah, that was a bad time. That was not a good time. During Mufi Haname's administration, yeah. I think so. Yeah. So—and now he is the CEO of the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, which is really a statement of the tourist industry in Hawaii, the engine of our economy. But I saw him last night at the—was at the tourism walking contest, and they were doing awards last night. It was very good. It was a—coming together of the industry and the people who support the industry and of the nonprofits around there. And I saw something that I don't always see. I saw the community of Waikiki, the community of the hotels, the community of the nonprofits, the community of people who work there and support it. It was interesting to see them all in one room. Anyway, so let's go to Waikiki for a minute. Sure. OK. Because Waikiki clearly is subject to erosion and—see the little change, the little rise, or whatever you call it, in a given place. And that has got to affect tourism, because people come here from all over the world seeking an expansive beach, don't they? Yeah, that's right. I think most people, if not everybody, would agree that Waikiki Beach serves as a critically important piece of infrastructure. If you could think of it as an asset or infrastructure to our economy. As a matter of fact, we did an economic study of Waikiki Beach. There was a study done in 2008. We just recently completed an update to this 2008 study through the University of Hawaii as one of our many initiatives to try to provide science to inform decision making in Waikiki. And the study suggests that Waikiki Beach generates about $2 billion a year to the local economy. That's $2 billion with a B. And so most people would agree, Waikiki Beach is invaluable. It's priceless. Now we actually have a number that we can assign to that. And it points to the need to maybe reinvest in some of the infrastructure around Waikiki as it relates to beach management. Some of the shoreline structures that literally hold together Waikiki Beach as we know it are beginning to show signs of their age and failing in some cases. And certainly many people would agree, or at least they may have seen, that there's been a slow, progressive erosion of many of the beaches in Waikiki. Not all of them, but most of them are in a state of erosion. And that's partly because if you look at the history of Waikiki Beach, it's not a natural beach to begin with. There were very small beaches in Waikiki prior to us interfering with them that were bisected by a number of streams that emptied into Waikiki. And we've completely altered that whole system. Sure. It was a swamp, wasn't it? It was a swampy island and so forth.  And I guess when they filled in Waikiki at some point, this must have been in the 20s or the 30s, I guess, when they were into that kind of dredging experience, at the time they built the Alawai canal, then you wind up bringing artificial sand, making artificial beaches. No. That's what happened. Yeah. That's fair to say. I think if we go back far enough, the dredging of the Alawai Canal in the 1920s created the fill that was used to develop Waikiki, as we know it. According to some of the documents I've read, the original intent was not to create a visitor destination, but to instead just create new land that's developable. It turned out that it was in an ideal location for the visitor industry because of its perpetual sunny skies and blue waters. So Waikiki evolved into what it is now. And I think it represents, Waikiki is not alone, but it represents one of the outstanding problems that we have here is unplanned communities, that the infrastructure wasn't really developed with the type of development that we have now. You mean what kind of infrastructure are we talking about? Streets, sewers, electricity, all of that. Streets are thrown together. A good part of it was called the jungle until recent times. That's right. So they never really, this sounds like caca-aco, I'm sorry to say. They never really put the infrastructure together on a planned basis. Right. It wasn't a planned community to be such a high density and important economic driver that it is now. So we're in this situation now, same thing with the beach. And we have a number of structures along the shoreline. We've done a lot of investigation, engineering, environmental, and economic into understanding what is the current condition of Waikiki Beach. Which structures are getting older? Which structures might we want to start to think about replacing? When I say structures, I mean things like groins that go into the water, breakwaters and things like that. And many people may not realize it, but what you see in Waikiki was not at all planned or envisioned in any way to be what it is now. It evolved into what it is. And if you look at the progression of structures in Waikiki, it started with what we call the Eva groin of the Kuhio Beach area. So the Dukanamoku statue, if you're facing the ocean, it's that swim area on the left. That was the first segment to be breakwatered and have a groin. Then a beach was placed and then about 10 years later it started progressing towards Diamond Head. And long story short, it ended up being what it is now. But again, none of it was planned out in any comprehensive way. So I've been working closely with the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association, Rick Eggid and his group, and providing the technical background behind some of the beach management priorities. And we've just finished a beach management plan for Waikiki. So we're trying to take a look at what are our priorities moving ahead, really trying to realistically answer what is the community vision for Waikiki if we start thinking about things like sea level rise and what that could mean in Waikiki. We need to anticipate where erosion is going to occur. And so we're trying to be more proactive in some of our beach management.  Uh-oh. I've stolen Eversol. And I'm going to ask him my questions when we come back from this short break. We'll be right back. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to come visit with us on Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000-year odyssey where we explore and examine the plant that the muse has given us and stay with us as we explore all of the facets of this planet on Wednesdays at noon. Please join us. Aloha. Hello, everyone. I'm Yukari Kunisei, the host of the Japanese broadcast of Hello, Hawaii. I'm here from 2 o'clock on Monday, every Monday. I'm here at the Japanese community. I'm here at the Japanese community for useful information, news, and other guests. Hello, everyone. I'm here on Monday, every Monday. Please watch. I'm Yukari Kunisei, the host of Hello, Hawaii. OK, we're here on a given Friday afternoon with Dolan Eversol from the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, which is associated with NOAA, and which is looking at many things important to the community about the way sea level rise works and especially in the way the sand works in Waikiki and the beach and at the core of our economy. So you mentioned before, and it did evoke a question in me, is that you have a group, you're forming a group, or you already established a group to look at the vision of what Waikiki should be in the future with a view to determine what steps you can take to preserve whatever beach you need for that vision. So tell me about the group and tell me about what kind of vision has been revealed so far. Sure, yeah. I'm happy to say that there are a number of organizations, government departments, and individuals very interested in Waikiki. And one example of that is the recent formation of what's called the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association. I know it's a mouthful, but just know that it is one of three tax districts in the city and county of Honolulu. Fort Street Mall happens to be one of the three tax districts. And this new tax district is about three years old. It assesses a special tax to the landowners in Waikiki. So it's only Waikiki and it's only commercially zoned property. So residential properties do not pay this tax. It comes in with a property tax and it's a special relatively small assessment in addition to your property tax that goes into a special fund that the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District manages. And this money generates the potential partnership with the State Department of Land and Natural Resources to do projects. So we're really happy that whereas in the past, there was a lot of concern about how do we pay for this, who's going to pay for this new beach and this new structure. We are really not in that position anymore. There's a strong commitment from this tax district and the beach management district to cost share with the state 50-50 on new beach improvements. So what? So the special fund, the Waikiki Beach Improvement Fund, whatever the name, is going to pay 50-50, 50% and what? The state of Hawaii pays the other 50. That's right. And when we say the state of Hawaii, we mean what, the tourism authority? What do we mean? Or is it out of the general fund? No, this would be through the Department of Land and Natural Resources. So they have a beach fund that they can use for projects like this. They also, more realistically, would probably go to the legislature to request additional funding for new projects. And being able for the DLNR to be able to go to the legislature and say, we already have a 50-50 cost share, it adds a lot of credibility. Like matching funds. We have matching funds in place. But one of the other examples of some of the work that's going on, a collaboration between the University of Hawaii, the Beach Improvement District and the DLNR, there's a nice partnership that's formed there, is we've recently created a community advisory committee for Waikiki Beach. And this is a committee of 30-some-odd individuals that represent the beach boys in Waikiki, the surfing community, the lifeguards, the city and county officials, state officials, hotel management officials. So there's a whole variety of people on this committee. And we've been asking questions of the committee about what is their vision for the future of Waikiki. What do we want Waikiki to look like? And one of the hard pills to swallow is their vision of Waikiki, for many people, is the vision of what Waikiki used to be. And it is no longer in a stable state. And we can. It's so interesting. I totally agree with you. Everybody wants to look back to Webley Edwards and Hawaii calls in the 30s out of the Juana Hotel. But in fact, that's not it. You've got to look forward. That's right. I mean, we can certainly respect and pay tribute to the history of Waikiki and particularly that beach boy lifestyle culture. I think we can all appreciate that. I'm a surfer, and that's part of my history as well. And we certainly want to hear that. And as much as possible, retain that sense of place. However, the beach conditions are such that they are no longer what they used to be. And if we desire a beach of the past, we have to take proactive measures to even obtain what the beach used to look like. Is there any question that we do desire a bigger beach?  OK, well, you bring down some trucks with sand, and you pour the sand on the beach. Presto, you got more sand on the beach. No problemo. It's not that simple, is it? It is not that simple. That is the history of Waikiki, though, is we would simply bring in sand from somewhere else and put it on the beach. It used to be a lot easier to do that than it is now. And in addition, legally, and we don't do that anymore, where we take sand from another location, another beach, especially, and bring it to, say, Waikiki. Instead, we are now in a position where we're looking offshore, Waikiki, to see the sand that was formerly on the beach that may or may not have come from somewhere else, that was eroded into these offshore sand fields and pumping it back to the beach. You can think of it more as a sand recycling. And it's never a one and done. It's a constant maintenance. You got to keep up with it. It slides down, you bring it back and slides down.  Kind of like painting your house. You got to do it on a regular basis. But the other thing that we're faced with now is we can't just keep up with doing just that. We're going to have to redesign some of the structures in Waikiki to be more stable, and so that a beach is more likely to stay in place longer. So this is the big point of the discussion today. You're going to write a report. You are writing an ongoing report about how it's working, the physical phenomenon, the environmental phenomenon going on. But there must be one or two major principles on how you protect the beach. With groins, gosh, I have no idea. But can you give us a praisey on the options available to an engineer to suggest new infrastructure to protect against a relatively new problem? Yeah, the good news is we are in a very data-rich environment. So we have a very good understanding of things like sea level rise, what that will look like, how that will force the beach to migrate. We can combat that, at least for a short period. I'm a geologist, so when I say short period, I'm thinking 50 to 100 years. I thought you were a surfer. I'm a surfer, too. But there are a number of options available, and the engineering technology has increased as all of our technology has progressed to the point where we can now design things on the computer, run computer models, to see how well it works. And we've been able to refine that technology where it's even from where it was 20 years ago is night and day. So we have very good understanding of what works and what doesn't. The question now is not so much how do we build it. It's more of a question of what do you want? So people say, well, how big does that groin have to be? The question actually is how big of a beach do you want? And we work inversely from that. So if you want a 100 foot wide beach, we know then you need probably two structures to contain it, and they need to be a certain length and a certain distance apart. And maybe in some cases you might put a T on the end of the groin so that it creates a cuspate beach. You could actually do it your own way. We can do it, we can have it our way. You can build it how you want it. There are constraints. Of course, a place like Waikiki, there's a lot of history. There's the reef. And there's, of course, surfing that we want to pay close attention to all the recreational opportunities there and not interfere with that too much. And each one of these constituent groups, the Beast Boys, the surfers, the hotels, they may have a different vision of exactly how much beach they want. Some want more and some want less depending on their way of looking at it. That's partially true. And I would say five years ago that was absolutely the case. Nobody could agree to anything. However, through this new advisory committee, we're seeing more and more agreement on certain things. Like for example, everybody's very concerned about erosion and they think that the beaches need to be better maintained, meaning they need to be bigger and at least bring them back to where they were in the 1980s, which was the peak of the beach width in most of Waikiki. Try to bring it back to what it was at some point. We are challenged with finding enough sand to do that. I mentioned the offshore sand fields. There's only so much sand that you can retrieve. It's not a limited supply. And we haven't found another good resource of sand just yet. So there's some work that needs to be done, but there's some exciting things happening at least within the community of Waikiki and more or less a general agreement that we need to start to do some things. The operative term being start. Is this going on or is this going to go on at a later time? And who has to do what and how much money should we expect to spend on, say, an annual basis to keep up? Yeah, great question. So we're well underway with some engineering studies in partnership with DLNR now. There's projects to investigate what could happen and we have conceptual plans now that we're sharing with this advisory committee on option A, B, C with different groin fields and new beaches and replacement of old beaches and trying to understand where their priorities lie. And I think there's a general agreement within kind of the management team that we don't want to pursue any of these options that the community won't support. So we don't want to be in a kind of a contentious situation. We want to find the path of least resistance and go forward with that. And most of that involves bringing sand into the beach. And in some cases we may have to build some new structures. One example of that is there is approvals already in place and probably construction in about a year to a year and a half for the replacement for the Royal Hawaiian groin, which serves as a really critical groin for Waikiki and it's that curve growing in between the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and the Sheraton Waikiki. It's 90 years old, so it's showing signs of its age and starting to show. They do break down. They can fail catastrophically. In this case, there's concern that it could fail at any moment and so there's plans to replace that with a new groin that will essentially serve in the same function. It won't make the beach really that much different, but it'll be much more stable. If the existing one fails, then the sand is going to wash away, no? Then we have big problems, right? That'll be an emergency and we'll have to figure it out. So all of this is a function of modeling, no? Because you have to build in climate change in general. You have to build in the wind and the waves and the tides and whatever else and try to figure out where it's going to be more sealable rise and where less and then you have to figure out what your structure, your plan, the engineering plan for your new structure is going to do, whether it's going to succeed or not. And then I heard you talking about this before we started the show. You have to figure out what you're doing. Is it going to satisfy these community expectations and is it going to satisfy the ongoing need to have Waikiki serve as the engine of our economy? Can you talk briefly about that? Yeah, that's a great point that, you know, we've been talking a lot about the engineering aspects of designing with things in mind. That's a critical component, but it's not the only part of this, you know, redesigning of Waikiki. We need to think about aesthetics. We need to think about recreation, economics. And I hate to admit it, there's politics involved with some of this too, it's, you know, who takes kind of credit for certain things. And just an oblique off that is the permitting issues where you have to satisfy 27 permitting agencies before you can dig one shovel full of sand. Yeah, and just on that note, that's a really good important point that I wanted to make is five years ago, we were in a place where I think many of the Beach Boys and some of the surfing community were kind of arms cross, just leave it alone, don't mess with Waikiki, just let it be. I can assure you that is not the case now. People are, the Beach Boys and the Life Guards are very concerned about erosion. And now they're asking, what's the delay? What's going on? How come things aren't happening? So we went from don't do anything to, okay, now pick it up, that's understandable. But as you pointed out, there are regulatory constraints with how fast you can move these projects forward. We are about to embark in partnership with the DLNR on a whole slew of new projects in Waikiki. The Royal Hawaiian growing is the first of many. And if we desire to maintain a beach in Waikiki, that's what it will take it. We're gonna need some new structures in Waikiki to help maintain the beach, in addition to bringing sand in. And maybe lastly, I wanted to mention one more thing about Waikiki that makes it a bit unique. I like to mention that Waikiki is not like other places for a whole bunch of reasons. One of which we started this conversation today is it's a manmade beach to start with. It's not in a natural state, it's out of equilibrium. And we're trying to force a beach into this manmade environment, which wasn't really engineered right to begin with. So we wanna take a step back and take a look at that and how can we make it more efficient. But it's an important contrast to other areas around the state that are maybe not Waikiki and they're more rural in their conditions. You could take a place like Kailua Beach or the North Shore, for example. And we probably are not gonna be talking about building a whole bunch of new structures in places like that that probably need a different approach that might include taking a step back from the shoreline and allowing the shoreline to be in a more natural state. A more natural evolution. In a more natural evolution where it can migrate landward and you kinda get out of the way. We're not quite there yet in Waikiki. That might be in the eventual future condition of Waikiki, but we're not there yet. It's gonna change, it is changing. People don't realize, they are coming to realize, as you see, that sea level rise and climate change affects our community, our lives, everything around us, especially in Hawaii, which is an island state. And so actually the Sea Grant College is in the perfect place. This is what you were born to do. This is what the university should be doing in every capacity, helping the community, providing science to help community problems. It's really wonderful. And I think you are raising public awareness and you're solving these problems or at least you're setting up structures that will solve these problems. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Jay. Evan, thanks for coming on the show. Sure, problem.


Coming to you from RGIS Studios, I am Anicia Antoine and this is your Mayday News Brief. The second cohort of security personnel has commenced training under the Ministry of Education Security Corps. Following a number of break-ins at various schools on the island, Minister for Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, Honourable Dr. Gail Rigabat indicated that the safety and security of the individuals on the school premises are of utmost priority. The minister explained that the necessary steps would be taken in that regard, including the training of individuals to serve as security officers at the various schools on the island. Commandments in charge of the Police Training Academy of the Royal St. Lucia Police Force and Spectre Lecinte Daisy Dolo indicated that selected individuals were considered most deserving to participate in the course. The training is at a level of a Special Police Constable, SBC, and commenced on Monday 22nd July and will be held over the period of two weeks. On the hills of a successful carnival season, events company St Lucia is gearing up for what is promised to be an exciting Rutsan Soul Festival. The St Lucia Rutsan Soul Festival is dedicated to musicians who are setting new trends in reggae, conscious hip-hop, afro-punk and R&B with performances, masterclasses and encounters between artists and other acts in the music business. The event will feature a mix of international artists and local artists, including reggae legend Taurus Riley, world-renowned reggae group UB40, and St Lucia's artist Showing Dupes Bryce. The Rutsan Soul Festival will kick off on 23 August at the Ramp and will continue on Saturday 24th to Sunday 25th at the Pigeon Island National Landmark. The Ministry of Health and Wellness in conjunction with the National Emergency Management Organization and the Pan American Health Organization recently facilitated a mass casualty management workshop for first responders. The mass casualty management workshop was conducted with the view of increasing the capacity of individuals who respond to incidents of mass casualty. According to the World Health Organization, a mass gathering is an organized or unplanned event, where the number of people attending is sufficient to train the planning and response resources of the community, state or nation hosting the event. Powerhouse Country Program Specialist in St Lucia, Tessa Stroad, indicated that the workshop is a timely one given the increase in natural disasters over the years, as well as increased mass crowd events taking place in St Lucia. Instructors who were recently trained at the mass casualty management workshop were properly equipped so as to be able to train others in the management of mass casualties. This has been your media news brief. Thank you for watching.