Honolulu – 100 Resilient Cities

Honolulu’s Resilience Story

Located on the most isolated archipelago in the world, Honolulu faces a host of environmental challenges related to weather change, including hurricanes and typhoons, tsunamis, rainfall flooding, and rising sea levels. Honolulu’s island location means that critical urban infrastructure is completely independent, and cannot rely on neighboring grids for support in times of need. A strong hurricane could damage sea and air ports, creating food crises in a city that imports almost all commodities and could devastate the fragile local economy, which is heavily dependent upon tourism. A strong evacuation plan and public outreach programs have already helped to minimize the impacts of tsunamis, and the city is currently updating its disaster mitigation plans to account for rising sea levels and other shocks.

Honolulu is also looking to address increased homelessness, compounded by the location of informal settlements along the coast that make inhabitants more vulnerable to extreme climate events.

SHOCKS AND STRESSES

Aging Infrastructure
Homelessness
Hurricane / Typhoon / Cyclone
Infrastructure Failure
Rainfall Flooding
Sea Level Rise / Coastal Erosion
Shifting Macroeconomic Trends
Tsunami

Meet The Chief Resilience Officer

Josh Stanbro brings a wealth of sustainability experience and a track record of developing partnerships to his new role within the administration. He has served as a Program Director for the Hawai‘i Community Foundation since 2009, where he led the Hawai‘i Fresh Water Initiative and the Community Restoration Partnership. He previously served as Project Manager for The Trust for Public Land-Hawai‘i, where he completed the acquisition of over 25,000 acres of land for preservation in perpetuity. He has worked in various roles with Envision Hawai‘i, the Coastal/Estuarine Land Conservation Planning Advisory Group, the South Kona-Ka‘u Coastal Conservation Task Force, and the Hawai’i Forest Stewardship Committee. Stanbro earned a BA from Claremont McKenna College and his Juris Doctor from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He spent a visiting semester at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where he earned a Cali Award in Native Hawaiian Rights.