Wayne’s World: A Vision of Success for the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i

by Wayne Tanaka, Chapter Director | Reading time: 3.5 minutes

This month saw a number of landmark victories, from the historic Navahine settlement, to the also-historic Hawaiʻi Supreme Court affirmation of the public trust in Nā Wai ʻEhā, to the once-in-a-generation convening of the Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture in Hawaiʻi. All of these events were the culmination of decades of work by generations of grassroots community members, dedicated to a hopeful future for our islands, our people, and our planet. 

All also remind us that a solid vision of hope may be the foundation we need to overcome the monumental institutional and systemic challenges and threats facing us today. 

A recent grant application challenged us to describe what “success” would look like for the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, providing us with a chance to reflect on the vision of hope that drives our work, and what we do - as an organization, and as individual human beings blessed with the kuleana of reciprocity for our Hawaiʻi nei. I would like to share our response below, in the hopes that it will also help you, Mālama readers, reflect on what inspires your own sense of dedication and commitment to our islands, and all that we love: 

What does “success” look like for the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi?

Success for us would be a future Hawaiʻi where our streams, springs, and aquifers are clean, protected, and revered as the life-giving resources they are; where everyone understands our collective kuleana to ensure that the public trust in wai is upheld; where streams flow freely to the ocean in support of watersheds, estuaries, riparian communities, and other public trust purposes and instream reasonable-beneficial uses, and where water resources are no longer wasted or hoarded for private gain, but prioritized for the benefit of the public as called for under our constitution and state water code;

Where our farmers and agricultural lands are freed from the pressures of land speculation and luxury development; where traditional Hawaiian agricultural methods and crops are used to once again feed a population of over one million residents while improving, rather than degrading, the health of both ʻāina and our social fabric; where a relationship with ʻāina based on stewardship and reciprocity, rather than exploitation, is understood as our ancestral duty to our future generations and to our Hawaiʻi nei;   

Where we grieve the sites, resources, species, and human lives that have been lost to our destabilizing climate and rising seas through tangible and intangible memorials that remind us of how colonial legacies (industrial capitalism, white supremacy, misogyny, gratuitous militarism, epistemicide) placed our people, islands, and planet at the brink of utter destruction; 

Where our economy, power structures, public policies, and social norms place the greatest value in how well we take care of our ʻāina and each other, and what we pass on to our future generations; where we continuously aspire to better our society by listening to those most impacted by its faults, rather than those who have most benefited from them; where aloha ʻāina (love of the land) and aloha kekahi i kekahi (love for one another) are the guiding principles that make Hawaiʻi a beacon of hope for a better way of living on and sharing this planet;

Where we know our children’s grandchildren will learn about today’s generations as those who successfully confronted the greatest crisis in the history of humankind; and where their history books will describe how humanity was able to both redeem and save itself in a few short decades by pivoting toward an era of global sustainability, human rights, and universal kinship with nature and with each other.

What does your hopeful vision for a future Hawaiʻi look like? As someone who has supported our work and taken other actions to care for our islands and environment, what would a successful outcome of your efforts look like? We would love to know! Send us an e-mail at hawaii.chapter@sierraclub.org, so that together we can continue building a foundation that can drive us towards a better and brighter future for ourselves and generations to come!