Climate Resilience & Equity
Climate change exacerbates existing systemic inequities threatening public health, employment, and economic stability. Indigenous communities, people of color, women, children, immigrants, people with disabilities, and lower-income communities are some of the populations considered to be on the frontlines of the climate crisis. A critical need exists for local governments to explicitly invest resources and shift policy into more just and equitable solutions centering the strength and leadership of frontline local communities’ abilities, assets, relationships and wellbeing.
Our Program
The 4 Pillars of Operationalizing Equity in the Resilience Office
Community Relationships
Foster inclusive community-centered engagement practices and decision-making processes by uplifting the capacities and abilities of communities that already make them resilient.
Environmental Justice
Prioritize frontline communities with the Resilience Office’s scope of work through the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.
Equitable Governance
Guide research, policy formulation and implementation, trainings, operational processes and community engagement practices that standardize equity throughout the City and County of Honolulu.
Adaptation and Mitigation
Advance short term and long term reduction (and ultimately elimination) of disparity, harm, marginalization, and discrimination while increasing social, cultural, economic and political inclusion.
Defining Equity
Place- and People-Based Solutions
Equity aims to ensure that all people have the opportunity to benefit from solutions, while not taking on an unequal burden of negative impacts. Equity is both a practice and a process that focuses on systems change, aiming to make a positive difference in the lives of people who have been historically disproportionately marginalized, disenfranchised and underrepresented.
Climate equity begins with understanding resiliency from a systems framework. Acknowledging the societal and institutional structures that have caused and continue to cause injustice while amplifying the strengths and abilities of a place and people. Equity engages in the correction of systems in order to eliminate disparate outcomes based on identity. Equity work is community-centered, demonstrated through the fair treatment and meaningful involvement and representation of the people within the communities we serve, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of laws, regulations, and policies.
Sameness vs Fairness: “PONO”
Harmony, balance, righteousness, goodness, uprightness, morality, excellence, equity, wellbeing, prosperity, welfare, benefit, behalf, sake, true condition, nature, duty, upright, just, virtuous, fair, beneficial, successful, in perfect order, correct, eased, relieved, must, necessary
Procedural Equity
Accessibility and inclusivity of decision making processes by those most impacted.
Distributional Equity
Benefits are distributed to prioritize those most in need.
Structural Equity
Transparency and accountability are institutionalized, acted upon and regulated.
Intergenerational Equity
Decisions prioritize the health and wellbeing of future generations.
Cultural Equity
The acknowledgement and undoing of racism with the concurrent construction of equitable multicultural norms.
Factors for the Frontline:
The Challenges of Climate Resilience
All communities are affected by the risks and impacts of climate change, but all communities are not impacted the same nor do all communities have the same ability to adapt and respond. Climate equity begins with amplifying the strengths and abilities of a place and people while acknowledging the societal and institutional structures that have and continue to cause injustice. Such injustice includes disparities in health status exposure to high heat, disproportionate educational and economic opportunities and outcomes, and inequitable opportunities to access affordable housing and participate in renewable energy.
Move at the speed of trust.
Key Projects
Community Kūkākūkā Process
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Climate Resilience and Equity Program facilitated virtual one-on-one and small group talk story sessions throughout the months of May and June 2020 with follow-ups in May through December of 2021 focused on outreach to frontline organizational leaders seeking to learn about community resiliency during a crisis. Listening sessions incorporated structured methodology and qualitative questions centered around community-based knowledge, experiential storytelling, and firsthand experiences shared by 32 community-based organizations and over 60 individual community leaders representing 414,000+ community members on O‘ahu.
These voices represented essential services and resources including food security, community health services, affordable housing, human services, language services, natural resource management, place-based education, arts & culture, non-profit, small business, and community-based development. This initiative has been welcomed by community-based organizations to better normalize proactive efforts by the City to meet people where they are at, look to these communities as valuable solution holders, and decrease structural barriers to critical resources and decision making within COVID relief, economic recovery, and crisis resiliency.
Equity Foundations Training
The Equity Foundations Workshop Series contributes to Honolulu's continued commitment as an emerging leader in equitable solutions to our biggest challenges. Inspired by the USDN Equity Foundations Training, redesigned and recalibrated to be locally relevant and sensitive to Hawaii’s unique history and context. The workshop sessions create a community of practice, consisting of pre-reading/watching/listening material, virtual and in-person training sessions and activities on systemic root causes related to racial and social inequity that show up specifically within government institutions. The workshop series provides orientation, analysis and language, skill-building, action planning and group discussions around foundational equity concepts and the importance of reciprocity and transparency in applied concepts, guidelines, tools and practices to deepen a shared understanding of past and present systemic injustice.
The goal of equity work is individual and institutional transformation and increasing more just and liberated impacts in the short and longer term within the City and County of Honolulu and the importance of application and implementation as public servants. Equity, racial, and environmental justice are crucial topics for local governments to address, as most U.S. cities face widening inequality gaps exacerbated by the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and social injustice. Local governments across the country have implemented internal processes to support and better inform solutions to address social and climate justice challenges. Through professional development and training, policy advocacy, standardized equity guidelines and strategies, they are leading the way towards a more just transition and equitable future for all.
Equity Toolbox
Equity Check-In Form
An internal process made up of initial guiding questions and phased deeper discussions at different points of a project to be able to measure and evaluate equity considerations and applications in all of the Resilience Office’s policies, projects and programs. The purpose of this process is to ensure the leadership of disadvantaged communities in projects that impact them. This checklist was designed to serve as a purposefully simple framework to (a) identify vulnerabilities of a population, (b) think through the equity implications of the Resilience Office’s work, and (c) promote respectful collaborations with community groups.
Equitable Community Engagement Guide
The Resilience Office is required to coordinate actions and policies of City departments and agencies to advance procedural, distributional, structural, intergenerational, and cultural equity. One of those actions is inclusive, community-centered engagement practices and decision-making processes related to increasing community access, participation, and representation in programs and policies. This commitment to equity is not expressed by the Resilience Office alone, but at City Council with Resolution 20-206, in response to COVID-19 in Resolution 21-50, and City-wide with the General Plan's policy to "Ensure that government attitudes, actions, and services are sensitive to community needs and concerns."
This document provides practical guidance for the City and County of Honolulu to employ more equitable community engagement practices for the development of plans, strategies, and policies that address immediate concerns of impacted communities. This guide is a resource to assist in designing community engagement procedures that align the City’s goals to be representative of and in service to the socially and culturally diverse communities that reside on O‘ahu.
Social Vulnerability Index and Other Related Maps & Data
Frontline communities experience greater everyday stresses that can compromise their capacity to mitigate or adapt to environmental shocks. One helpful tool to advance equity and explore challenges facing frontline communities is to look at social vulnerability. “Social vulnerability” considers certain socioeconomic, housing, transportation, and other variables that can be stressors to better plan for a community’s capacity to prepare for and respond to environmental shocks such as hurricanes, sea-level rise, or extreme heat. By reducing social vulnerability, we can decrease human suffering and economic losses and advance equity.
Resources
Hawai‘i-Based Resources:
Institute for Climate and Peace
Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation
Pōpolo Project: Understanding Race and Belonging in Hawai‘i
ALICE: A Study in Financial Hardships in Hawaiʻi
KAHEA The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance
Note: These links are provided for informational purposes only, and do not constitute an endorsement by or partnership with the City and County of Honolulu.
“Equitable climate preparedness strives to fairly distribute the benefits and burdens of climate change and climate actions while also advancing racial and social justice more broadly through a community-driven process that supports empowerment for those most affected to shape the decisions that will impact their lives.”
Urban Sustainable Leadership Network - USDN Guide to Equitable, Community Driven Climate Preparedness Planning, May 2017