Hawaiʻi’s Climate Advisory Team (CAT) was convened by Governor Josh Green, M.D., to develop community-informed policy recommendations that drove the state’s climate-related disaster policies for the 2025 legislative session.
Hawaiʻi Legislature Passes Landmark Disaster Resilience Legislation
With the conclusion of Hawaiʻi’s 2025 legislative session, the Climate Advisory Team celebrates the Legislature’s passage of important bills that strengthen our state’s disaster resilience and climate change mitigation efforts. These bills now head to Governor Josh Green, M.D., to be signed into law.
Together, these measures represent a historic investment to protect Hawaiʻi’s people, environment, and economy from the impacts of a changing climate and support the state’s ongoing commitment to increase disaster resilience in the wake of the tragic 2023 Maui wildfires.
Phase 1: Initial Fact Finding
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In the initial fact-finding phase of our work, we met with subject matter experts in areas that included environmental justice, climate science, insurance markets, land stewardship, state agencies and grassroots community advocates to understand the unique aspects of the challenges we face and the policy solutions that can be achieved.
Phase 2: Our Recommendations
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The Climate Advisory Team’s policy paper is now available, including our recommendations to inform the administration’s legislative priorities for the 2025 legislative session and beyond. The policy paper describes actions Hawaiʻi can take immediately while simultaneously building the foundation for long-term policies that will help Hawaiʻi survive and respond to future disasters.
Phase 3: 2025 Legislative Session
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The CAT engaged in the 2025 legislative process in support of legislation that leads to meaningful, concrete action for disaster resilience, readiness and recovery. Input and comments from the public, legislators and subject matter experts were taken into consideration while the CAT advocated for legislation during the 2025 legislative session.
The work of the CAT was forward-looking and focused on promoting resilience and recovery capabilities for our state.
We owe it to our community to do everything we can to reduce the impacts of climate-related disasters like the Maui wildfires, including the environmental, economic and community fallout that come with them. The costs of this disaster - the precious lives lost, personal the emotional toll, the economic fallout - cannot be repeated. But the sobering fact is that the possibility of these kinds of climate-related disasters is part of our reality today.
We can take action to improve our environmental, infrastructure and economic resilience, and promote policies that will speed recovery from climate-related natural disasters.
It is our responsibility as a state to proactively reduce the unmanageable costs of a future climate-related disaster. The Climate Advisory Team’s goal was to design these mitigations through policy change.
We cannot allow ourselves to be unprepared again the next time there’s a climate-related natural disaster. We must act at a legislative policy level to ensure the state is better able to respond.
