HONOLULU — The state of Hawai‘i has settled a nearly two-year lawsuit filed by over a dozen youth plaintiffs, who alleged that the Department of Transportation violated their constitutional rights “to live healthful lives in Hawai‘i now and into the future.”
In Navahine F. v. Hawai‘i Department of Transportation (DOT), the plaintiffs argued that despite the state’s goals to be a leader in climate action, emissions from the transportation sector keep rising, with the DOT unable to hit interim benchmarks to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions since 2008.
The back-and-forth since the suit was filed June 1, 2022, has been expensive and, at times, contentious. In January, attorneys for the plaintiffs accused their counterparts from the state’s legal team of using aggressive, mainland-style tactics to harass the young plaintiffs during individual depositions.
Gov. Josh Green’s administration also asked the Legislature this year for an additional $2.25 million to fight the lawsuit, on top of an initial $1 million expenditure.
But on Thursday, Green welcomed the 13 youth plaintiffs and their representatives in his ceremonial office at the Hawai‘i Capitol to announce that they have settled the case before trial.
The approved settlement agreement does not include financial compensation, but it acknowledges Hawai‘i youths’ constitutional rights to a life-sustaining climate. It also affirms DOT’s commitment to implement transformative changes in Hawai‘i’s transportation system, with the goal of achieving net- negative emissions by 2045.
“The passion demonstrated by these young people in advocating for a healthy, sustainable future for their generation and those to come, is laudable,” Green said in a statement. “This settlement informs how we as a state can best move forward to achieve life-sustaining goals and further, we can surely expect to see these and other youth in Hawai‘i continue to step up to build the type of future they desire.”
The 2022 lawsuit initially had 14 Hawai‘i youth plaintiffs and named the Department of Transportation, then-DOT Director Jade Butay, then-Gov. David Ige and the state as defendants. One plaintiff later withdrew from the case due to personal reasons.
Climate change
According to the original complaint filed by nonprofits Our Children’s Trust and Earthjustice in 2022 on behalf of the plaintiffs, children born in 2020 are projected to experience a dramatic rise in extreme climate events like heat waves, wildfires, crop failures, droughts and floods compared with those born in 1960.
The state’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are higher than those of 85 percent of countries worldwide, they argued. Emissions from Hawai‘i’s transportation sector are rising and are anticipated to make up nearly 60 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, according to the plaintiffs.
Several of the Navahine plaintiffs are Native Hawaiian youth who are facing adverse impacts of climate change on their well-being and their capacity to sustain cultural practices, they asserted.
The lawsuit did not list the last names of the young plaintiffs.
O‘ahu resident Kawena F., 11, shared with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Thursday that she became involved in youth activism for climate change because she witnessed firsthand how climate change affected her family’s crop growing in Hilo.
“My family grows Hawaiian traditional plants, and it was hard for us to grow it because of climate change,” she said. “It got hotter, and it was harder for the plants to grow. I don’t want the future generations to experience what my family experienced.”
Navahine F., a Native Hawaiian and the lead plaintiff, was 14 years old when the case began. Now 16, she expressed pride in the hard work she and her team put in to achieve this historic moment sooner than they had anticipated.
“It was a really big deal for us to be heard and taken seriously; this experience was really special for us,” Navahine told the Star-Advertiser. “The biggest thing I learned is that no challenge is too big.
“At 14, going up against a state department was a really big challenge to me. It didn’t seem possible, but seeing where we are now, it’s important that young people take a chance and stand up for what they believe in.”
Her family has been growing kalo for generations, and she recently realized the effects of climate change, including droughts and flooding, on her family’s crops.
“My farm, and all the crops that we get, is what we live off of. So, seeing the effects and how we’re struggling to make any money from our farm kind of pushed me towards this case.”
“Climate change really impacted my life because I lost my house in a flood. Luckily I was not in my house at the time because I would probably have lost my life. Climate change is drastically changing lives around the world and we need our governments to take it and us seriously,” Kaliko T., a 14-year-old plaintiff from Maui, said in a statement.
Greenhouse gases
In Navahine F. v. Hawai‘i Department of Transportation, the youths alleged that DOT’s active operation of a transportation system emitting high levels of greenhouse gasses harms their communities, violates their constitutional rights and undermines their ability to live healthful lives in Hawai‘i now and in the future.
In the settlement, the state commits to implementing targeted plans and programs to decarbonize the state’s transportation system and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. The agreement includes several actions that the Transportation Department has committed to take immediately and in the future:
• Within a year, DOT officials will create a plan to reduce greenhouse gasses — showing how the state can make its transportation system more environmentally friendly over the next 20 years.
• DOT also will set up a team and assign roles to reduce greenhouse gases across the agency. It will oversee efforts to deal with climate change and ensure that all highways are built or upgraded to be safe and accessible for everyone.
• The department promised to establish a youth volunteer group to provide advice to the state agency on future climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts.
• DOT plans to prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled, and assess and disclose the environmental impacts of each project and the overall program.
The department also vows to invest more in clean transportation and to complete building networks for pedestrians, bicycles and buses within five years. And it commits to allocating at least $40 million toward expanding the public electric vehicle charging network by 2030.
