Table of Contents

Goals, Strategic Actions and Indicators

Priority Actions and Intermediate Steps

Hawaii 2050 Sustainability Plan

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Hawaii at a crossroads

Creating Hawai‘i 2050 comes as the state faces a growing number of pressing issues. The steady deterioration of public infrastructure, lack of affordable housing, continued reliance on a service-based economy, the vulnerability of Hawai‘i in a volatile global energy market, possible interruptions in travel and critical food supplies, threats to our fragile island ecosystems, and the ever increasing numbers of residents and visitors all raise questions about the direction of our state, the long-term limits of growth on these islands and the need to plan and act now to assure that the preferred future for the people of Hawai‘i is met.

The signs are evident. The average cost of a home is $650,000, well beyond the means of most. The price of oil is heading towards $100 per barrel. We’re sitting in traffic much too long. We can’t find a parking space just to go to the neighborhood grocery store. Our options to care for the elderly are severely limited. In 2006, we were forced to dump 50 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal due to old, cracked sewer lines. We are over-reliant on outside sources, importing about 85 and 95 percent of our food and fuel, respectively.

And, intuitively, these pressures are gnawing at us. Some are questioning whether our aloha spirit is eroding. Tempers are flaring a little more than they used to a decade ago. Comments that “Hawai‘i is not what it used to be” are becoming noticeably more frequent. The disputes between the sectors are a bit more fierce, most recently with the Hawai‘i Superferry incident where the issues of growth and access between our islands were in conflict.

Furthermore, no discussion of Hawai‘i’s future would be complete without addressing the most basic question we have in our island state: What is our carrying capacity? We anticipate thousands of new homes coming on line, tens of thousands of additional residents to move here, millions of tourists every year, and yet no serious look at our overall capacity has been undertaken recently.

These concerns, observations and feelings all lead to the two most commonly questions asked: Where are we going? What is Hawai‘i’s preferred future?

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