#disasterstudies

     We have witnessed the intensification of climate change already having triggered weather catastrophes across the globe and we can anticipate more dire emergencies in years to come. In response, more and more cities are creating resilience plans to address and mitigate risks and to build adaptive capacity. Unfortunately, not all of these snazzy, colorful resilience reports thoroughly address the management of their community’s vulnerable populations.  Vulnerable populations include women, children, the frail and elderly, ethnic minorities, illegal immigrants, refugees and people with disabilities.[1] Here in Hawaii, the Micronesian migrant population is a case study of a vulnerable community to climate change. As their home islands become more and more uninhabitable due to radiation levels and sea level rise, thousands are moving to the United States under the Compact of Free Association (COFA) agreement.  In fact, there are currently 75,000 COFA migrants residing in the United States, with 12,000 of them residing in Hawaii.[2] Unfortunately, when Micronesians arrive in Hawaii, they usually do not have the resources to efficiently assimilate into the community, and many live in a cycle of poverty as a result.  

     The Micronesian community in Honolulu is experiencing high levels of exposure and sensitivity, and though currently there are moderate levels of adaptive capacity, it is not sustainable long-term.  Currently, the State of Hawaii nor the City and County of Honolulu does not have a resilience plan in place to address vulnerable populations such as the Micronesian community.  I believe that our community needs to come up with sustainable ways to mitigate risks and build our adaptive capacity in order to address this issue.  In my Community Resilience class, we analyzed over thirty community resilience plans to compare the quality and scope of each plan.  Out of all the resilience plans we studied, Nashville was the only one that I believe made it a priority to address the resilience for vulnerable populations within its community.  Nashville’s community resilience approach includes collaborative planning across diverse stakeholders, a clear vision for its resilient future, and uses tools like spatial mapping in order to address its vulnerable communities.  From analyzing Nashville’s approach to their vulnerable populations, we can use this as a starting point for Honolulu’s own approach to making the Micronesian community more resilient, as this community is likely one of the most vulnerable populations in Hawaii. I will take the action steps that Nashville has laid out to attain its own resilience goals and show how we can tailor those action steps to address the Micronesian migration issue in a sustainable way.

Here is a link to Nashville’s Resilience Plan

How we can use Nashville’s Resilience Plan to Address Honolulu’s Vulnerable Populations

     How can Honolulu learn from Nashville in terms of making vulnerable populations more resilient? First, Honolulu needs to have a clear vision for what its resilient future looks like.  Nashville’s vision for its future self is to become a city that is resilient to the climate and non-climate stressors facing the region, where government, business, the natural and built environment, and people are minimally impacted by these risks, and the region supports livable, prosperous, sustainable, and diverse communities.[3]  Nashville’s future vision includes ensuring opportunity for all, expanding accessibility, creating economic prosperity, fostering strong neighborhoods, improving education, championing the environment, and preserving Nashville’s character.[4]  These are all ideals that Honolulu too can aspire for.

     Secondly, Honolulu must make it a priority to address its vulnerable communities and the social and environmental injustices that continue to perpetuate these vulnerabilities.  The Nashville plan asserts the importance of focusing on these vulnerable populations because they “have traditionally been overlooked during disaster preparation and response or are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change.”[5] In addressing its vulnerable population, the Nashville plan defined what constituted vulnerable populations through indicators that included: socioeconomic status (income, poverty, employment, and level of education), disability, household composition (single parent households, the elderly, and households with dependents), minority status, English-language proficiency, housing, and transportation access.[6]  Honolulu could do the same.  In addition to having social equity as one of our community’s core values, we should call out which communities are vulnerable so that we can better draw attention to them.  Third, Honolulu should map out where these vulnerable populations reside and to create plans on how to service these communities should a disaster occur. Nashville used spatial mapping to show populations of low, moderate, and high vulnerabilities for different categories that included separate maps for the Spanish-speaking communities, the elderly, carless households, and populations that live in hazard-prone areas such as flood zones. According to Nashville’s assessment, their utilization of spatial analysis was very useful to understand regional trends, growth patterns, and concentrations of vulnerability in the region.[7]

     Lastly, Honolulu like Nashville, could use metrics to monitor and evaluate its progress in increasing the community’s adaptive capacity, particularly for vulnerable populations.  It could create short-term and long-term goals, then create action plans to move towards these goals.  In the next section, I discuss some of the action steps that Nashville’s resilience plan has laid out, and choose the ones that can be employed by Honolulu’s own resilience plan.  

From Framework to Implementation – Using Collaborative Planning

     Though Nashville’s resilience plan is still in its nascent state, the city’s progress is admirable, and Honolulu can learn from Nashville’s collaborative planning approach.  According to Nashville’s resilience plan, the core team of stakeholders comprised of, “representatives from organizations that engage with the elderly, disabled, low income persons, immigrants, and homeless populations in both urban and rural areas, and environmental policy and natural resources experts from the government, nonprofit, and private sectors.”[8] Honolulu must create a similar public-private partnership to include those intimately involved with its vulnerable populations.  As an example, one of the groups involved in the Nashville resilience planning was the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC).  Honolulu could bring together like organizations to better serve the Micronesian community.  Secondly, Honolulu must address its housing shortage.  The Nashville plan acknowledged that through their vulnerability needs assessment, there was a shortage of emergency shelter locations.  As a response to this, the city significantly increased the number of emergency shelter locations, “with a specific emphasis on the areas of the city with the highest concentrations of vulnerability.”[9]

     Nashville’s plan concluded with tables of actionable items that addressed each of its four goals.  Honolulu can glean some of Nashville’s actionable items as low-hanging fruit to come up with solutions to address its vulnerable populations efficiently. For example, from Nashville’s first goal of, “Adaptation and response to extreme weather events are planned, coordinated, timely, and enacted on a regional scale,” Honolulu could adopt the following actions:

Conduct detailed transportation infrastructure vulnerability assessment to extreme weather within the Honolulu urban area

Map service gaps of storm shelters throughout the region

Ensure that all emergency response and hazard mitigation plans consider the impacts of climate change to the region and are including this information in their plans

Conduct workshops for vulnerable populations on emergency preparedness and access to services

Ensure adequate maintenance of existing transportation infrastructure

From Nashville’s third goal of, “The region’s growth and development promotes equitable prosperity and is sustainable for people and natural resources,” Honolulu can adopt the following actions:

Identify and map environmentally sensitive areas in the region at high risk of being developed

Prioritize the development of mass transit for the region, and continue to invest in sidewalks, greenways, and bike infrastructure to encourage active mobility. Improve connectivity issues, especially for vulnerable populations

Create equity atlas for the Honolulu region

Research the economic benefits of green infrastructure and jobs training for low income people

Explore options for integrating renewable energy technologies, such as solar, to serve low-income housing to decrease the burden of energy bills

 Lastly, from Nashville’s fourth goal of, “The region works collaboratively and effectively in all resilience actions,” Honolulu can adopt all of the action items:

Explore effective government/nonprofit partnerships to expand government’s capacity to affect change

Create a Regional Resilience Working Group to meet regularly to monitor and evaluate resilience progress and increase partnerships between government, nonprofits, and business sectors

Maximize the utilization of volunteers to perform direct action resilience efforts.

Conduct outreach on the findings of this plan throughout the region to create engagement with and support for the action plan

Monitor and review progress and success and continuously reprioritize goals and actions to represent need, capacity, and opportunity

Final Thoughts

     Of course, this discussion begs the question of, “Why does Honolulu have to follow another city’s resilience plan? Why can’t Honolulu just make its own plan?” Good point - and indeed, Honolulu’s issues are so unique that it could be argued that it cannot be compared to any other city in the world.  I’m not arguing against Honolulu making its own resilience plan.  I’m saying that we need one - and soon.  Nashville’s plan simply gives us an example that we can use.  I am hopeful that with the newly created Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency under the City and County of Honolulu, that we will see impactful progress in this area.

References

Blair, Chad & Cory Lum. “An Untold Story of American Immigration.” Honolulu Civil Beat. 14 October 2015.  Accessed 22 July 2017. http://bit.ly/2qggwSc

Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment for Makassar, Indonesia, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2013.

Healey, Patsy. 1998. “Collaborative Planning in a Stakeholder Society.” The Town Planning Review 69 (1).

Letman, John. “Micronesians in Hawaii face uncertain future- COFA Agreements provide US regional control in exchange for limited access to America.” Al Jazeera website. 2 October 2013. Accessed 22 July 2017. http://bit.ly/2pVzdcO

Lincoln, Mileka.  “State officials: Majority of Kaka'ako homeless are COFA migrants. Hawaii News Now. 12 May 2015.  Accessed 22 July 2017. http://bit.ly/1IBeQDK

Reghezza-Zitt, et al. 2010. “What Resilience Is Not: Uses and Abuses.” Cybergeo : European Journal of Geography

Roy, Ananya. 2005. “Urban Informality: Towards an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 71 (2): 147–58.

Umemoto, Karen. 2001. Walking in Another’s Shoes: Epistemological Challenges in Participatory Planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research 21(1): 17- 31.

U.S. Relations With the Federated States of Micronesia Factsheet. Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. State Department. 25 February 2016.  Accessed 22 July 2017.  http://bit.ly/2pbAf5p

Wiener, Aaron. “America’s Real Migrant Crisis is the One You’ve Never Heard Of.” Mother Jones Independent News Organization.  29 December 2016. Accessed 22 July 2017. http://bit.ly/2hzg3qb

Wisner, Ben et al. 2006. “At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters (Second Edition).” Routledge.

[1] Wisner, At Risk, p. 42

[2] It is difficult to determine exactly the number since they are able to travel back and forth without a visa or green card.

Lincoln, Mileka.  University of Hawaii at Manoa Department of Urban and Regional Planning, 2015.

[3] Building Resilience: A Climate Adaptation Plan. Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, 2015,

p. 11.

[4] ibid, p. 75.

[5] Building Resilience: A Climate Adaptation Plan. Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, 2015, p. 75.

[6] ibid, p. 25.

[7] Ibid, p. 66.

[8] Building Resilience: A Climate Adaptation Plan. Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, 2015, p. 19.