AN EVALUATION OF A COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY APPROACH: A CASE STUDY IN WEST KAUA’I, HAWAI’I
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2021
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Abstract
Low-lying coastal regions are vulnerable to the impacts of present and future hazards associated with climate change. The Hawaiian islands are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to several existing elements: high coastal exposure, sensitive coastal infrastructures and ecosystems, geographic isolation and dependence on imported goods. Given these conditions, the County of Kaua’i, Hawaiʻi adopted a 2035 General Plan in 2018, which explicitly called for integrating climate change risks into future land use, development, and infrastructure planning up to the year 2035. Following the adoption of the 2035 General Plan, the County updated the community plan of West Kauaʻi in 2020. In response, the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program and Department of Urban and Regional Planning in collaboration with the County of Kauaʻi worked with west side Kauaʻi community members to assess vulnerabilities from sea level rise and generate adaptation recommendations. The West Kauaʻi Community Vulnerability Assessment (WKCVA) involved seven community meetings, which utilized a decision support tool called the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS). VCAPS is a decision support tool that was developed to explicitly support planning by local decision makers involved in vulnerability assessments and climate adaptation planning. Given that the WKCVA was the first detailed climate change vulnerability assessment that was conducted on the island of Kauaʻi on a community level, this thesis assesses the WKCVA’s process. To do so, I utilized a mixed methods approach, in which quantitative and qualitative data was collected from the following data instruments: 1) online surveys; 2) a document analysis between the West Kauaʻi Community Vulnerability Assessment Final Report and the newly updated West Kauaʻi Community Plan; and 3) in-depth interviews. The assessment found that the WKCVA was well-liked amongst majority of the participants, though there were more mixed attitudes regarding the utilization of the VCAPS tool. Results also suggest that the WKCVA promoted the the creation of new relationships, the learning of new information on an individual and group level, and the garnering of detailed risks facing West Kauaʻi and generating detailed adaptation actions. While there is limited evidence in the WKCVA process resulting in the changing of perspectives, survey results and interviews suggest a convergence of some perspectives and the WKCVA being the first step in developing a shared understanding of the climate science and risks. The document analysis revealed that by intentionally trying to incorporate the information from the vulnerability assessment process into the Community Plan update is a successful way to weave in climate considerations and detailed policy recommendations into a community planning process. Results have important implications for future vulnerability assessments that are conducted in Hawaiʻi or with any pacific island community.
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Urban planning, Climate adaptation, Community Planning, Decision support, Hawai'i, Science-policy interface, West Kaua'i
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149 pages
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