Hello M SI S committee. Welcome back for our final presentation. We are ST
Neville's green growth and we'll be sharing about how islands are rising
up together to tackle climate change with you today. As always, our group
consists of Hayley Campbell, Lael K and myself, Tammy. We
islands are among the most impact paced groups to climate change due to
geography dependence on vulnerable ocean ecosystems, limited resource
availability, nature dependent economies and other physical and economic
characteristics. Current and future climate risks include sea level rise,
increasing frequency and severity of tropical cyclones, increasing air and
sea temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. These impacts result in
the degradation of freshwater resources, flooding of coastal areas,
reduction in food yields, increased coral bleaching, loss of human life
and biodiversity and damage to infrastructure and among others.
Due to the smaller scale and local limitations on resources, islands are
better better able to understand how human and natural influences affect
resource availability and adapt accordingly. For example, in Hawaii,
Malama, Aa taking care of the land and waters that feed them as a guiding
principle in their way of life, which has informed how they have been
autonomously responding to natural disasters for hundreds of years.
Ultimately, our project recognized that because island economies and
Islanders have experienced adapting to a scarcity of resources and threats
from natural disasters. They are best positioned to help the Island Earth
navigate towards a more sustainable future and serve as a community of
practice for implementing the sustainable development goals.
While islands are leading adaptation efforts, they continue to struggle by
financial political and technical capacity as well as in identifying ways
to measure impacts. In recognition of these challenges. The local 2030
islands network seeks to bring islands together to support each other in
building these capacities through promoting the design and implementation
of Island led green growth initiatives. Green growth means fostering
economic growth and in development while ensuring that natural assets
continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our
well being relies. Creating a green growth initiative offers an
opportunity to understand how climate change is impacting islands and what
island communities need to thrive in a changing in the world. As such a
green growth initiative encourages Islands to design an action framework
in partnership with community leaders to spearhead locally and culturally
relevant solutions for implementing the SDGS and tackling climate change.
Our project seeks to amplify best practices of islands that are
collaboratively working with their communities to promote sustainable
development and adapt to climate change while leading the way in measuring
progress on the SDGS. As I just mentioned, one way Islands can develop a
collaborative strategy for implementing the SDGS is through designing a
green growth initiative. Specifically, this project details the process.
Island leaders from existing green growth initiatives in Hawaii, Guam and
Tasmania used to launch their efforts and combines key findings into a
framework for other islands to use in creating green growth initiatives
that fit their local needs.
To achieve our goal of amplifying green growth efforts. We chose to create
an evidence-based locally relevant and culturally informed framework that
is easily adaptable, adaptable and applicable. An adaptable framework will
enable islands to create a unique green growth initiative that fits their
islands needs while promoting and networking and knowledge sharing across
island communities. In designing our framework, we look to the un roadmap
for localizing and implementing the SDGS. We chose to model our framework
after this road map because it combines a series of processes for
localizing the SDGS with international examples, which is how we plan to
display our findings from an island context. We studied green growth
initiatives as case studies through interviewing 10 green growth leaders
from Hawaii, Guam and Tasmania. Working with case studies enabled us to
collect a variety of experiences, assumptions, opinions and outcomes from
different islands in a real life setting. While examining sustainability
practices within specific cultural environmental and social circumstances
, we then analyzed our interviews using SWAT analysis in order to uncover
opportunities and risks of green growth initiatives not previously
identified, an aid in repositioning islands to its high performance by
capitalizing on their strengths. Each of these tools were instrumental in
helping us to produce an island specific framework for localizing the SDGS
to support islands in adapting to climate change and building an equitable
future.
Through interviewing green growth leaders of Hawaii, Guam and Tasmania, we
uncovered how their experiences shaped the development of their respective
green growth initiatives. First, the significance of high level catalyzing
events for fostering political will such as the un global agenda
conference and increasing community buy in for green growth initiative.
Second, the importance of collaborating with community members such as
the Polynesian Voyage Societies, the University of Guam and Kame Ha may
have schools to be involved in designing the priorities and focusing
efforts on what really matters. Third, we learned that to enhance trust
among stakeholders, it is vital, a Nongovernmental organization
facilitates and meets the design and implementation processes of the Green
Growth initiative. Lastly, the act of naming is a symbolic ceremony. The
name is the first thing community members and island leaders from around
the world will see as such. The name should be something that defines the
goals of the initiative and delivers a strong first impression to empower
stakeholders to dedicate their time and effort to the initiative. In
addition to the key findings for the final deliverable, we learned that it
is the face to face or I guess screen to screen interaction that is most
valuable even though we had to follow up with some interviewees after our
scheduled time, it was very important. We make a verbal and visual
connection with our stakeholders as conversations and oral sharing our
integral and island connections. Overall, the interviews were our favorite
part of this project because we were able to capture the nuance and
complexities from the very people who were a part of it all, especially in
these times of COVID having conversations with knowledgeable and
empowering people was refreshing and beneficial, not just for our analysis
purposes but for fostering authentic relationships with their project
partners.
Using the 10 interviews and background knowledge gained from our
conversations with the local 2030 islands network. Our team achieved our
goal of designing a locally relevant culturally informed green growth
framework. The framework is 30 pages long and begins by sharing the
background behind the development of green growth as a strategy for
implementing the STGS and adapting to climate change on islands
specifically, this includes how a partnership with the global Island
partnership grew into Hawaii green growth and now the local 2030 islands
network and what influenced Hawaii Guam and Tasmania to take on the
challenge of launching green growth initiatives. We follow the story with
a detailed explanation of what green growth is in order to set the stage
for sharing the four design principles and 16 priority action
recommendations that make up the framework, the four design principles
which are aligned with those of our project partner include identifying
diverse leaders, participants and partners, strengthening long term
political leadership and community support. Designing an action framework
for a localized green growth initiative and measuring and tracking SDG
progress. Each design principle has a set of priority action
recommendations but that were recommended by island leaders for existing
initiatives as tools for ensuring the successful creation of an action
framework for green growth initiative. As you can see on the screen here,
each action item contains a description of the implementation process. Key
insights from island leaders on that specific action exemplar actions from
Hawaii Guam and Tasmania to serve as an example of what implementing that
action item might look like and possible barriers based on what challenges
island leaders faced with suggested solutions for overcoming them. The
framework concludes with a couple of pages of advice from island leaders.
We found this section to be the most integral part of the final
deliverable because it shares specific tips and experiences from island
leaders for being successful. A few of the important pieces of advice
include building trust among stakeholders by establishing norms early on
and validating everyone's contributions, not being afraid to be different
and only focusing on the stgs that work for the island leaders at that
time. And listening to the community often and early on in the development
process.
While we were successful, we did have to make some changes. In addition to
conducting interviews, we had hoped to distribute survey questioners to
build support for our ideas and plan to share a draft of the framework
with other island leaders. Unfortunately, we were not able to receive
approval from HGG to distribute surveys. We also found in our interviews
that Tasmanian way was still in the process of building their coalition.
So we agreed that it would not be appropriate timing to distribute the
surveys. We were not able to attain feedback on our framework from other
islands due to concerns from our project partner over not wanting to give
the wrong idea that the framework has been completely vetted and is ready
to send out as a result of both the lack of surveys and feedback from
islands who have yet to design a green with initiative, we were not able
to build the efficacy of our framework. Nevertheless, the process followed
by the Three Islands is supported by the United Nations Organization for
Economic Cooperations and Development and GL A members which does provide
us with some level of, of efficacy and support for the ideas presented in
our final framework. Lastly, we did face some communication issues with
our project partners in terms of obtaining feedback and adhering to agreed
upon meeting times. However, these challenges did not hold us back from
creating our deliverables as we were able to adapt and build confidence in
our own sustainability knowledge to move forward.
We definitely learned a lot in this process in regards to what we could
have done differently. Having more specific interview questions would have
helped us to refine the exemplary actions included in the framework
allowing us to save time on trying to obtain information via email, post
interview. Second, within our internal group, we learn how to strengthen
our communication, which contributed to our confidence in ourselves, to
apply and articulate our sustainability knowledge. We know we all have,
thirdly, we spent a lot of time establishing an internal code of
collaboration. We did not prioritize the code of collaboration with our
project partner which would have mitigated our organizational
communication challenges. This experience taught us that without a formal
agreement, setting a calendar invite may not be strong enough to ensure
meetings are upheld. Additionally, a formal agreement outlining the
timeline and needs of our team throughout the semester may have made it
easier to push our partners to provide their feedback in a timely manner.
Lastly, everyone has a hope that they will contribute to immediate change.
But this project confirmed that the best inability solutions take time.
It will take time for the local 2030 island network to be in a place where
they feel confident, sharing the framework and have the capacity to
support islands 100% in utilizing the recommendations. While there is not
currently a significant change in islands adaptive capacity to climate
impacts as a result of our efforts nor increase in action on the SDGS. We
are confident that these changes will occur in the future. When the
framework is distributed
at this point, you're probably wondering where our final framework is
going while it will not be sent on to islands right away. It will be used
as an internal document for the local 2030 Islands network. This is
because the organization is still new and trying to figure out its path
forward and the framework needs a bit of flair in terms of political
technicalities. For now, the local 2030 Islands network will require all
incoming staff members to read the framework and use it to shape a long
term strategy for helping islands implement green growth initiatives. The
local 2030 Islands network did inform us however, they still plan to share
a framework with islands in the future. While the local 2030 Islands
network is not in a place to share the framework quite yet, we do have a
few recommendations for the future. First, we recommend our clients share
the framework with the steering committee members to gain feedback and set
the stage for a path forward. Second, we recommend that our project
partner build out the implementation process in the framework. As more
islands implement green growth initiatives, we suggest this process to be
done through interviews as we found the conversations we had with island
leaders to be the most valuable resource for collecting good practices and
key insights to include. Lastly, due to their strong intent on launching a
green growth initiative. We also recommend that the local 2030 islands
network launch a pilot run of the framework with Puerto Rico green growth
, Tasmania way and Denay green growth to determine if the proposed
recommendations are effective.
We would like to take this time to acknowledge and thank all of the
amazing wise and inspirational island leaders who contributed to our
project. Without their insights and willingness to share their stories. We
would not have been able to produce our final deliverable
through learning from the lived experiences of island leaders taking
charge on designing green growth initiatives. Our team was able to
successfully achieve our goal of creating a green growth framework for
islands. As confirmed by interviews with island leaders, the proposed
framework recognizes and prioritizes indigenous island experiences and
knowledge that has driven island sustainability and adaptation for
centuries. We are thrilled with how our final deliverable turned out and
are excited to see how the local 2030 Islands network builds off of it in
the future. Thank you so much for listening to our presentation.