These assumptions are a body of interrelated concepts that flow from one to the next. As such they are expressed here in a narrative form, with each discussed briefly in turn. Immediately following this discussion is a recap of all assumptions in bulleted form.

Our efforts are driven by the belief that our culture, economy, and livelihood are inextricably interwoven with the health of our nearshore marine resources.   Consequently the conservation of our environment is critical to the perpetuation of our people. Our natural environment and the native wildlife that comprise them are the lifeblood of Hawaii, its residents, and its culture. Additionally, Hawaii’s coral reefs are estimated to yield at least $385 million in benefits per year—considering all activities and industries ranging from tourism to commercial harvest— with a net estimated value of $10 billion. Recreational opportunities in our ocean such as diving, surfing and fishing shape our island way of life. And yet, while Hawaii is well loved, it is not well cared-for. Owing to the tidal influences of a global economy, an estimated 80% of our food is imported, while a significant portion of our commercial fish catch is exported, masking the need to conserve our local natural food sources, jeopardizing our food security and thus threatening our self-reliance. Improper land use and management provide constant and lethal insults to nearshore reefs. Invasive species, through an assortment of vectors, have altered native coastal and reef systems. Unsustainable harvest and abuse continue the declining trends in marine resource health. Our Theory of Change is a framework for the Foundation to help affect real, immediate and sustained change alongside partners and stakeholders throughout Hawaii.

The most overarching concept governing this framework is that complex issues necessitate comprehensive solutions. This is to say that if we are to address one issue effectively, we need to address all of them in a comprehensive, strategic way. Just as we recognize the ecological interconnectedness of our complex coral reef ecosystems, so we must recognize the interconnectedness of the stresses facing them. For example, overfishing reduces herbivory on non-native, invasive marine algae that enable them to outcompete and grow over native algae and corals. This phenomenon is exacerbated by sediment and nutrient inputs that not only fertilize these invasive algae but also serve the compounding role of further degrading nearshore reef habitat, reducing reef fish populations. Consequently, we are not overfishing healthy resources, but rather we are overfishing unhealthy resources, leading to further decline. As a result, our reef systems continue on a downward spiraling trend. Only when we are aware of this complex of connections among threats, our resources, and the political and social forces driving them, can we hope to effectively address marine conservation issues.

Our ability to help our environment is directly dependent on our ability to help each other. Embedded within our cultural history was an effective Konohiki resource management system that held a very small group of people both responsible and accountable for the health and preservation of marine resources for each ahupua‘a. Coupled with the erosion of this system was the erosion of our collective responsibility to steward these resources, and our accountability for their well-being. Presently, in the face of frequent political turnover, fragmented and redundant resource agency mandates, and a litany of public and private organizations that commit themselves to, depend on, or are affected by, the health of our resources, it is critical now more than ever to build comprehensive partnerships that span the federal, state, NGO, and private sectors. Many, if not all of these stakeholders must be engaged in order to restore a meaningful, collective stewardship ethic.

Moreover, we feel that our respect for the environment is a direct reflection of our respect for each other. In other words, the process by which we build these critical partnerships for comprehensive marine management must be one of respect and openness for them to succeed. There are numerous examples of resentment, personal conflicts, ‘turf wars’ among NGOs and local agencies, and other political issues creating obstacles for marine resource management. Rather, we look to the example of those respected leaders in Hawaii who have personified the approach of welcoming any and all who are interested in helping, which in our estimation has contributed to the success of their efforts. As a Foundation committed to—and belonging to—Hawaii, we recognize that aloha is paramount.

Another critical element to marine conservation success is the presence

of leadership with the ability to act quickly and with authority. This includes leadership within the community to foster participation, garner support and guide the decision-making process, as well as leadership within government agencies to improve institutional efficiency and effectiveness.

At the head of these public/private partnerships must be the community, as community-based marine management is one of the only approaches that have proven to be effective in Hawaii thus far. In a climate where the government is too poor in capital and capacity to be anything more than reactive, the onus is on local communities to catalyze efforts to improve marine resources.  Communities of both native Hawaiian and of mixed ethnicity most heavily rely upon the health of marine resources in their area. It stands to reason then, that they often harbor the most intimate knowledge of those resources; play the greatest role in their stewardship; and consequently play the largest part in managing them. As now seen in Hāʻena and Kaʻūpūlehu, site-specific, community based efforts have the potential to affect conservation on a statewide scale through partnership, networks of learning and exchange, and by affecting statewide policy. It is the Foundation’s goal to continue to improve upon community-based processes to be fair, open, and inclusive. As a ‘bottom-up’ process for conservation, community-based management needs to be coupled with ongoing ‘top-down’ efforts for improving policy and government.

Moreover, within communities, fishers are the social, cultural, and ecological connection between us and our oceans and as such working with them, and for their benefit, is critical. Fishers are not normally amenable to conversations that they feel may threaten their livelihood or identity, and consequently they are often one of the most difficult stakeholders to engage. Yet all fishermen, both responsible or otherwise, commercial or recreational, local or foreign, are the most substantial connection we as a community have to our ocean resources. As a result, they must be a central focus to the process. Key to engagement is recognition of their concerns outside of harvesting (and overharvesting), and an honest effort to give voice to the large amount of knowledge and sense of stewardship that resides within this stakeholder group.

Many elements of traditional Hawaiian management are still relevant today and restoring effective traditional management can only be accomplished via broad-based partnership with the community at the lead. In following with the aforementioned assertions, it is the view of the Foundation that the traditional Hawaiian system for managing marine resources was very effective, built upon the intimate knowledge collected, lessons learned—and mistakes made—for over a thousand years of relying on the ocean’s resources for their survival and livelihood. However, this quintessential place-based approach was nearly lost entirely, giving way to a species-based approach that has at least in part allowed for the decline in the health of our oceans over the past century. It is the view of the Foundation that bringing back the values, tools and approaches of the traditional system is a valid means for reversing this decline. While some elements of the traditional marine management system are no longer relevant, others very much are, and some are actually relevant now more than ever in the face of climate change, food security, and other pressing, emerging issues.   In line with our previously stated reasoning, it also the view of the Foundation that the success of any contemporary version of Hawaiian resource management must include broad, public/private partnerships and community leadership to succeed.  A strong recent example is the Promise to Paeʻāina initiative catalyzed by the Worldwide Voyage. Hence, restoring personal and group responsibility and accountability is at the core of restoring traditional effective management.

However, it is also the position of the Foundation that the Western, science-based approach to marine resource management is also critical to reversing the decline of our marine resources. Where traditional management has rich value in knowledge collected through subjective use, scientific inquiry provides value in objective observation. Scientific research answers many questions that traditional management may not, such as life history information, and critical chemical and biological thresholds that are essential to setting present-day resource management targets. Just as technology has allowed for the advent of new threats, never before faced by our reefs, so we must use technology and new approaches to address them. The scientific process often provides a platform for the latest in technological tools and applications. And scientific findings offer a standardized basis for comparison to help us set realistic management targets and devise effective approaches in strategic planning processes. As a result we are committed to supporting efforts that utilize the benefits of applied scientific study.

With this we acknowledge that while there are differences between the Western-science based management paradigm and the traditional Hawaiian management paradigm, the tools used to implement them are strikingly similar. Clearly, some of the values underpinning the Western, science-based management approach are diametrically opposed to those of traditional fishing practices, and so are irreconcilable. However, many of the tools that the two management frameworks applied were very similar, for example, spatial closures, seasonal closures of specific species, gear restrictions, and limited entry/access. Therefore, the potential for integrating these two approaches lies less in the ideological tenets and more in the practical tools that manifested from them. The purpose here is not to antagonize the differences between the two paradigms, but rather acknowledge that they exist. However, even in light of these differences, all effective management tools—both from Western science-based management, traditional Hawaiian management, and the multitude of integrated, ‘hybrid’ approaches that lay in between—should be utilized to conserve our nearshore marine resources.

The Foundation is aware that effective enforcement is a key component to successful marine conservation. We submit that the most effective mode of enforcement is self-enforcement– via peer pressure, assurance of consequences, and trust in an effective framework. We are committed to helping our regulatory agencies improve laws surrounding our resources, their ability to administer them, and their ability to enforce them. We are also committed to cultivating a culture of compliance within our community by helping to establish a regulatory framework in which fishermen and ocean users can trust and believe. This is a strategy of feeling ownership not only for one’s place, but for the laws governing it.

We also recognize that we cannot manage what we don’t understand. In the traditional model, Konohiki paid attention to what was in the ocean and what was coming out of it. Today, scientists and managers are working to learn more about our reef species and their ecology, and evaluate the efficacy of our management efforts in real time through monitoring efforts across the State. Either through the traditional lens or scientific inquiry, the continued effort to increase the knowledge base of our resources is at the foundation of our ability to conserve them. However, we also recognize that the scope and intensity of threats facing our oceans are great, and that there is a pressing and urgent need to intervene with management actions based on the best available information. Most recently, this involves convening marine scientists and monitoring agencies to synthesize data and wrestle with how to distill them in such a way that gives us a clear understanding of the health of our reefs.

In following from this we are also aware that as a community, we don’t bother to understand what we don’t care about. Education about our marine resources is a critical part of our theory of change. New residents need to be connected to our marine environment and the culture to which it has given rise, while many within our local population need this connection revived. Inspiring within our communities the transformation from apathy to hope to empowerment through education is critical to creating change. Whether it be through ‘applied’ education efforts where students and volunteers learn how to remove invasive species, reintroduce native species, or engage in monitoring efforts; or ‘general’ educational efforts that aim to raise public awareness or invest in our youth the importance and value of our resources; or the technical training of our teachers, managers, scientists, and future leaders to be more effective at what they do, we feel that education is a key component to maintaining and improving upon ongoing marine conservation efforts in the future.

Also among our assumptions are principles on the process by which the Foundation intends to support these types of marine conservation projects in Hawaii. We recognize that there is a difference between outputs and resultant outcomes. The Foundation emphasizes the outcomes of its grants so that it may be held accountable to the Hawaii marine conservation goals it has set for itself. We acknowledge that our goals are long-term outcomes, but that the results of our grants in the form of benchmarks, performance measures, etc., will largely be outputs. Our intention is to ensure that all of our collective outputs continue to push us toward our desired outcomes for Hawaii’s oceans.

Alcorn (1994) stated, “While proof of conservation success is ultimately biological, conservation itself is a social and political process, not a biological process. Consequently, biological ends via social means manifest themselves as short-term social outcomes, and long-term biological outcomes.   In following from the previous assumption, we understand that biological responses to management actions take time, and that there are no shortcuts to biological timelines for response to management action. Based on literature and case studies from tropical reef management globally, the expected, detectable positive response of reefs to the removal of stress, e.g., sedimentation, overfishing, etc., is generally first the recovery of fish populations in the area in 2-3 years, followed by successful post-larval settlement of colonizing corals, i.e., coral growth, in approximately 5 years. There is no case in which these biological responses have been accelerated.   Therefore, the only reasonable expectation for short-term outcomes will largely be social in nature. However, the efforts to understand and identify many of these social outcomes continue; for many types of projects, such social outcomes remain unclear. We hope to continue to identify these in partnership with recipients in time.

Similar to biological responses to management actions, there are very few shortcuts to political timelines to affect management action. Some strategies, such as social marketing to affect regulatory reform, or education campaigns to change the behavior of communities, are well developed and have proven to be effective methods for influencing policy. However, we recognize that the processes of assembling community support, building broad-based partnerships, developing trust with fishers and other stakeholders, cultivating ownership of management within community and partners, and crafting sound management strategies all take time and cannot be rushed. Recent efforts to develop and operationalize the State’s Aloha+ Sustainability dashboard offer an immense promise for collective action. In particular, the State’s articulated “30 by 30” nearshore marine goal; effectively managing 30% of our coral systems by 2030” gives the marine conservation sector a shared goal to foster coordinated action.

In following from this reasoning, there is a difference between process and product. If/when they are the same, the probability of achieving outcomes is diminished.   At times, particularly when agency goals are unclear, efforts focus on delivering processes as opposed to products. For example, having ‘held 3 meetings’ is not a product, but rather part of a process. As partners to marine conservation efforts, we recognize the need to challenge ourselves and each other to focus on products—i.e., ‘what was achieved during these meetings?’ If the answer is nothing, perhaps we should reassess the need for meetings, be more strategic in holding them, or clearer on the expectations of convening them. Rather than ask ourselves ‘what are we doing?’ we can ask ourselves, ‘what have we accomplished?’ When we are clear on the products we can provide in the form of benchmarks, performance measures, and outputs, we can methodically move closer to our desired outcomes.

The Foundation is a permanently endowed, kama‘aina institution that is committed to investing in permanent solutions. As such we are uniquely positioned to think and act very long term. Our view on this theory exists on this immense timescale, so we are committed to securing a healthy future that spans multiple generations. It is perhaps with some irony that this long-term view gives us a sense of urgency, as we believe that halting and reversing declining resource trends and restoring our marine environment is least expensive—with respect to time, energy, and resources—to do now than it will be 20, 50 or 100 years from now.

In summary, the following is a bulleted overview of our stated assumptions, which serve as the basis of our giving goals and strategies:

• • Our culture, economy, and livelihood are inextricably interwoven with the health of our nearshore marine resources.   Consequently the conservation of our environment is critical to the perpetuation of our people.
  • While Hawaii is well loved it is not well cared-for.
  • Our Theory of Change is a framework for the Foundation to help affect real, immediate and sustained change alongside partners and stakeholders throughout Hawaii.
  • Complex issues necessitate comprehensive solutions.
  • Our ability to help our environment is directly dependent on our ability to help each other.
  • Our respect for the environment is a direct reflection of our respect for each other.
  • A critical element to marine conservation success is the presence of leadership with the ability to act quickly and with authority.
  • Community-based marine management is one of the only approaches that have proven to be effective in Hawaii thus far.
  • Fishers are the social, cultural, and ecological connection between us and our oceans and as such working with them, and for their benefit, is vital.
  • Many elements of traditional Hawaiian management are still relevant today.
  • Restoring effective traditional management can only be accomplished via broad-based partnership with the community at the lead.
  • Restoring responsibility and accountability is at the core of restoring traditional effective management.
  • The Western, science-based approach to marine resource management is also critical to reversing the decline of our marine resources.
  • While there are differences between the Western-science based management paradigm and the traditional Hawaiian management paradigm, the tools used to implement them are strikingly similar.
  • However, even in light of these differences, all effective management tools—both from Western science-based management, traditional Hawaiian management, and the multitude of integrated, ‘hybrid’ approaches that lay in between—should be utilized to conserve our nearshore marine resources
  • We cannot manage what we don’t understand.
  • We don’t bother to understand what we don’t care about.
  • The most effective mode of enforcement is self-enforcement– via peer pressure, assurance of consequences, and trust in an effective framework.
  • There is a difference between outputs and resultant outcomes.
  • Biological ends via social means manifest themselves as short-term social outcomes and long-term biological outcomes.
  • There are no shortcuts to biological timelines for response to management action.
  • There are very few shortcuts to political timelines to affect management action.
  • There is a difference between process and product. If/when they are the same, the probability of achieving outcomes is diminished.
  • The Foundation is a permanently endowed, kama‘aina institution that is committed to investing in permanent solutions.
  • This long-term view gives us a sense of urgency.