Goals & Objectives:

Due to its activist history, and large Native Hawaiian population, the island of Molokaʻi is considered to be the “most Hawaiian island” in the Hawaiian archipelago. For decades, residents have fought to protect and preserve the island’s ecosystems and sacred sites for current and future generations. Part of the fight to protect Molokaʻi has centered around Molokaʻi Ranch (MR): an expanse of land that takes up 30% of the island. MR is currently owned by a subsidiary of a foreign owned corporation, and has been historically used for several extractive industries, such as cattle ranching and growing industrial monocrops for export. Since 2017, the ranch has been listed for sale, and many community groups have organized around a vision to buy back this land, and steward it in a more sustainable way. Many residents of Molokaʻi are asking: “how can the community own MR? What kinds of sustainable economic development aligns with our values and can support our community?” Native Hawaiians and generational residents have worked tirelessly to craft plans that ensure the environmental, cultural, and economic vibrancy of the island. The importance of this movement is deepened by the fact that this ranch is prime realty for wealthy individuals whose private approaches to land ownership would further erode sovereignty and sustainability on Molokaʻi. To quote a resident, who was recorded at a public hearing in the early 2000s, “Million dollar homes bring million dollar people. Million dollar people bring million dollar attitudes. That’s going to change our island.” Such threats are what the residents of Molokaʻi have been fighting against for decades.

In the context of this SEAS Theme-Based Capstone Course, which will be centered around the working theme of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in the Hawaiian context, students will be called upon to support the efforts of nonprofit Sustainable Molokaʻi (SM) and residents of the island in their efforts to establish long-term community-based ownership and management of MR. To be more specific, this project will focus on exploring the ways in which an FPIC framework could be applied to the community purchase and ownership of MR.

There would be 3-4 main deliverables for this project:

1. Researching the history of Molokaʻi’s activism and resistance to unethical development projects, with the goal of co-producing an ethnography of this history.
2. An FPIC manual for community management of MR and/or a land use/development plan based on FPIC.
3. Grant-writing and fundraising support to help build capacity around this community-led land purchasing process.
4. Co-creating GIS maps, for community land use planning efforts and be integrated into FPIC decision-making processes.

Theoretical Justification, Social Benefit, or Significance:

The community effort to buy back MR is reminiscent of the many Land Back movements sprouting up around the globe today. These are movements often led by Indigenous peoples fighting for their rights to their ancestral territories. Beyond Indigenous groups, more and more grassroots communities are engaged in the fight for access and agency over the health of the ecosystems which surround them. This project is but one of many independent and interconnected movements that are seeking to restore ecosystems with a community-centered approach. Research that supports Sustainable Molokaʻi will not only help guide this movement to success, but also serve as a framework to support the many other similar projects that are emerging up around the world. In this way, this Master’s project has both a local and global impact.

Specific Activities & Duration:

Multiple methods will be employed throughout this project and a wide array of students with varying backgrounds, interests and talents, will be mobilized to carry out this project. The following methods and activities will potentially be explored throughout this effort:

• Ethnographic, archival and qualitative interview-based research to compile and co-produce a resource on Molokaʻi’s land defense history
• Policy and case study analysis of different instances in which the FPIC framework was applied nationally and internationally to explore how it can be innovatively employed and implemented by and for local communities on Molokaʻi
• Report-writing
• GIS mapping
• Grant-writing and fundraising
• Community engagement through meeting facilitations and interviews, as well as possible youth engagement opportunities
• On the ground fieldwork through travel to Hawaii

Integrative Approach:

For this Sustainable Molokaʻi Master’s Project to be successful, skills from areas such as sustainable land management and conservation ecology, as well as policy, fundraising, education, mapping, and more, will be needed. Because of this, there is a huge opportunity for the diverse interests of SEAS students to be employed in a cohesive way throughout this project. Diverse team members will have agency over their own initiatives, but also hold a responsibility to interact with, report to, and collaborate with members working on different areas of the larger mission.