Resilient Loko Iʻa
The Loko Iʻa Needs Assessment is the first comprehensive compilation of the research ideas and needs within the community of fishpond managers, landowners, and stewardship organizations to inform adaptation of fishpond practices toward their resilience, adaptation, and sustainability in the face of a changing climate.
This inaugural report, synthesized in partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program and the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, reflects the needs, interests, visions, and ideas of the Hui Mālama Loko Iʻa as documented in their collective and cumulative conversations in 2019. Rooted in conversations that started in 2014, and whose seeds were planted in the foundational loko iʻa movements beginning in the 1970s and extending through the 1990s, this living document firmly acknowledges the pathways that previous generations laid to make this effort possible — pathways of on-the-ground caretaking, community advocacy, historical research, and funding support.
Compiled by a diverse community of kiaʻi loko, contributors, writers, and partners, the project required facilitation of a year-long process to enable practitioners to voice their needs, articulate their priorities, and create pathways for resilience in their places and practice. The effort ultimately informs the development of future research, monitoring, and planning for loko iʻa throughout Hawaiʻi and serves as an important example for funders, academic institutions, and other resource/boundary organizations on how to implement deep listening and engagement with community-based experts who most often know the most critical questions to ask about the issues facing our communities.
Six focus areas of the Hui Mālama Loko I’a ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: KELSEY IGE
Strategic roll out opportunities will be ongoing and includes the development of an informational website. To explore the newest evolution of thoughts and perspectives on loko iʻa resilience please check back for updates. www.kuahawaii.org/resilientlokoia
