With the support of her PhD graduate committee, Rebekah Ohara continues to make progress on three chapters that explore the central research question of this work: What are the pathways and opportunities for the development and successful implementation of community-managed forests in Hawai‘i? This research has been influenced by involvement with an emerging community-based forest management area, the Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a Community-Based Subsistence Forest Area (P-CBSFA). Supporting the P-CBSFA effort has informed and shaped the research questions and design of this dissertation, which aims to support on-the-ground efforts and better understand the context of community-based forest stewardship in Hawai‘i.
The Hawaiian Islands have legislation that supports community-based management of marine resources; however, no such legislation currently exists for community-based management of forest resources in Hawai‘i. This research explores the underlying conditions for the successful implementation of community-based management of forests in Hawai‘i, exploring the emergence of CMFs across the Pacific Islands, and opportunities for CMFs within different land tenure arrangements in Hawai‘i.
This research explores the potential for community-managed forests in Hawai‘i, asking:
How is community-based natural resource management of forests emerging in the Pacific Islands?
How can the lessons learned from international and local collaboratively managed forests and community-based subsistence fishing areas be applied to the development of community-managed forests in Hawai‘i?
What are the opportunities for the development of community-managed forests in Hawai‘i? How do these opportunities differ depending on land tenure? and
How is community-based natural resource management emerging in Hawai‘i?
Chapter one will provide a synthesis of CMF literature that shares contextual characteristics with Hawai‘i through a systematic literature review of Pacific Island examples of community-managed forests. The goal of this chapter is to better understand how CMFs are emerging across Pacific Islands, and how various approaches might inform CMFs in Hawai‘i. The second chapter explores pathways and opportunities for CMFs in Hawai‘i, looking specifically at lessons learned in current community-based stewardship efforts in Hawai‘i, and through interviews with leaders of the three largest landholding groups in Hawai‘i. Finally, chapter three explores how communities in Hawai‘i are working within existing mechanisms to manage or steward forests in Hawai‘i.