With the CEO of Hawai'i Green Growth - home of the Aloha + Challenge of 30% local food by 2030 - we discuss Hawai'i's leading role with the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Celeste grew up in Kailua, Oʻahu and returned to Hawai’i after her global education and work experience. She is now the CEO of Hawai’i Green Growth, the keeper of the Aloha + Challenge dashboard, where the 30% local food target is displayed and monitored. Celeste has an impressive history with international climate goals and is a Pacific Rim leader in engaging progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).
She previously served as the Director for Environment and Climate Change at the National Security Council and National Economic Council in President Obama’s White House, where she helped shape the Administration’s climate and energy policies, including the SDGs. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Celeste served as a diplomat in Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Germany. She also held positions at the U.S. Mission to the UN, served as the Climate and Energy Advisor to the Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and worked for the City of New York.
Celeste explained how Hawai'i is ahead of the US itself, as well as any other US state, in terms of reporting on their progress on sustainability goals, including the 30% local food target. Hawai'i is a UN local 2030 hub, thanks to her efforts. She agrees that Hawai'i can become an example for the world -- especially if the state can successfully grapple with the dynamic tensions surfaced by needs such as housing, energy, water, employment -- all on a charismatic, very remote island archipelago. Hawai’i’s metric based reporting model is spreading through the island nations of the Pacific, Caribbean and elsewhere, inspiring communities of practice.
We discuss how some form of community investment vehicles might be applicable to food system infrastructure, and she brings us a powerful example of engaging island youth - who have a specially ingrained knowledge of how systems work. Having grown up in Hawai'i herself, Celeste is definitely a systems thinker. I liked her view that sometimes you have to "make the challenge bigger so we can see the outlines of a solution", and I really appreciated her sense of urgency. As she put it: we're simply out of time to negotiate any further. "We don't have all the solutions, but we are certainly trying to paddle in the right direction on this and learn," she said.
For more information:
TEDx Talk by Celeste Connors, “Think like an Islander to Save the Planet” (November 2021)