Tourism is Hawaii’s biggest industry, with some 10 million visitors to the lslands ever year. But that has all changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, and many businesses on the archipelago have been forced to shut down for good, according to a helicopter pilot who flies pleasure trips for tourists.
Sabra Kauka is a cultural practitioner and teaches Hawaiian Studies at the Island School on the island of Kauai, in Hawaii, while acting as a coordinator for the Department of Education. As the daughter of an army officer, she spent much of her youth living overseas, but “felt the call to come home” to Hawaii as an adult after reading a newspaper article which highlighted the poor standard of living for indigenous Hawaiians in Hawaii.
Could studying the cosmos help us to fight the climate crisis? Two astronomers at the University of Hawaii think that knowledge of the solar system may help to slow down the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Innovation and experimentation are helping a coffee farm in the US state of Hawaii to prosper in a competitive market, an approach which has helped the company to get through the global COVID-19 pandemic.
An asteroid tracking programme in Hawaii has been dubbed the “Earth’s Last Defence” against potentially catastrophic impacts, the UN has heard ahead of International Asteroid Day marked annually on 30 June.
Ari Heinz is an astronomer at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy working on the NASA-supported ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) project which tracks small but dangerous asteroids which may strike Earth.
The sustainable production of coffee, and indeed other crops, is more of a cultural rather than environmental commitment according to the manager of the largest coffee farm in the United States.
Fred Cowell, the General Manager of Kauai Coffee Company on the Pacific Ocean island, Hawaii, says the way a company treats its workers, land and local community is as important as the steps it takes to ensure the health of the environment.
Coral reefs are being killed by the climate crisis, which is leading to rising sea temperatures. “Cryopreservation”, a pioneering scientific technique, could be one way to help save them.
A master practitioner of the Hawaiian hula dance has told UN News that he is “nothing without my culture.”
The study of astronomy can “shed light” on the challenges the planet faces from climate change; according to a professor at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy.
Professor John Tonry says, astronomers, astrophysicist and other scientists are looking at a range of climate-related issues, including the temperature of the sun, what will happen to the atmosphere of a warming planet, and even whether or not other planets in the solar system could be habitable.
The teaching of traditional cultural practices like tattooing not only preserves cultural identities but underlines the important role indigenous people can play in the modern world; that’s according to a practitioner of the art of tattooing in Hawaii.
Keone Nunes, brought the practice of the traditional art form back to Hawaii from Samoa in the 1990s after it was largely forgotten in the US island state.
