Aloha Mai Kākou! It is my great honor to welcome the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting back to the East-West Center since we last hosted this important gathering in 2010. Mahalo nui loa, or special thanks for joining this very important meeting today, to our special guests:

• Mike Pyle, APEC 2023 Senior Officials’ Meeting Chair
• Senior Officials from all APEC economies
• APEC Executive Director Dr. Rebecca Fatima Santa Maria
• Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) representatives
• Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Secretariat representatives
• We’re also delighted that our state’s newly inaugurated Governor Josh Green will be joining us later for the afternoon panel on local solutions and green growth.

It is with profound aloha that I greet you all today by acknowledging Hawaiʻi as an Indigenous place stewarded by kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiians), whose heritage I share. East-West Center recognizes Hawaiʻi as its piko, its foundation, rooted in the Pacific and in values of aloha ʻāina, or reciprocating our land. We honor this valley of Mānoa in the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī and the generations of kanaka maoli who stewarded and cultivated this land in the past, along with the persistent work by Indigenous Hawaiians today to sustain culture, language, land, and community.

I also want to acknowledge Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day today and the tragic loss of life on December 7 in 1941 just a few miles from here, and throughout the Indo-Pacific region during the duration of the war. As a former career military officer myself, I know all too well about the terrible human cost that results when nations are unable to resolve their differences at the negotiating table and feel they have no other choice but to reach for their weapons—and how critical it is to prevent that from happening.

This solemn day reminds us why peacebuilding institutions like the East-West Center were created by leaders like Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson, and Senator Daniel Inouye—World War II veterans who knew the cost of war. They and like-minded change-makers of the day like Hawai‘i Governor John Burns knew the value of investing in a place where we can promote peaceful relations among people and nations—much as the founders of APEC sought to promote international cooperation in the wake of the Cold War.

Jefferson Hall Setting

I’m proud to say that this building we are in, Jefferson Hall, was designed in the early 1960s by the legendary architect I.M. Pei, along with several others on our campus. ­It has a distinguished history of hosting world leaders across more than six decades, from then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who helped break ground on this structure in 1961, to a round-robin of several regional leaders during APEC 2011 here in Honolulu, and more than a dozen Pacific Islands leaders who met here this past September. As a matter of fact, former President Obama used to play in the beautiful garden behind us, a gift from Japan, as a boy, when his mother and Indonesian stepfather were East-West Center fellows.

I.M. Pei, who was born in China but lived and worked in the US, later said that his work designing our campus had been particularly meaningful to him in his early career, because the idea of bringing east and west closer together was such an important one in our world. It seems a fitting thought to bring to your discussions here.

Pacific Resiliency Traditions

Today, our region, and the world, stands at a crossroad as we emerge from the COVID pandemic. And while COVID is still not over, and there is much rebuilding work in front of us, this moment also offers the possibility for fresh starts and positive change. An opportunity to rebuild the foundation of a more sustainable, innovative, and inclusive Asia-Pacific region and world.

Indeed, a primary theme of this US year as APEC’s host economy is centered on sustainability and resilience, building on the leaders’ landmark commitment in Bangkok last month to “bio-circular-green” economic strategies. This makes it especially fitting that this APEC year starts here in Hawai‘i. Here in the Pacific, our people know a thing or two about resiliency—literally a life-or-death matter on small, isolated islands that have always been vulnerable to many existential threats, from storm inundations to volcanic cataclysms.

Today we are face-to-face with the most daunting challenge yet—climate change. The islands have stepped forward as leaders in insisting that world powers take individual and collective action on climate change, as we saw again at the recent COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

This legacy of resiliency rests on the core value of putting aside differences when it really matters and coming together to work cooperatively for the common good—which Hawaiians call laulima, or, literally, “many hands”—whether it was a net to be hauled from the sea, stones to be passed hand-to-hand to build a solid foundation, or paddles to be pulled in unison to carry a canoe forward.

Other key concepts for us in Hawai’i are kuleana—fulfilling our responsibility to each other and future generations. And, relatedly, mālama—to preserve and protect one another, the land and sea, our resources, our heritage, and our future.

Also foundational in island traditions is the dialogue process of talanoa—allowing every party to be heard equally and openly when a course of action is to be set, or a rift repaired. I understand that this spirit is also intended as a hallmark of the APEC process, in which big and small economies have equal standing.

Over centuries, Hawaiians of old developed sustainable farming and fishing practices that allowed them to flourish in these islands with finite resources, isolated from the world beyond.

A few months ago, I attended a pair of conferences in Guam and Palau on this critical topic of island sustainability. Speaker after speaker at these meetings emphasized the critical importance of incorporating traditional knowledge into modern solutions, such as the ancient understanding that there is a season for everything. As in the famous quote from Ecclesiastes, there is a time to fish and a time to let the fish stocks replenish; a time and place to plant, and a time to let the soil rest. There is a Hawaiian saying for this: Nānā I ke Kumu… look to the source.

Today, scholars study those practices to learn how their concepts can inform sustainability efforts globally. And they also inform the present-day sustainability efforts of our state. Hawai‘i has a long history of ecological stewardship rooted in indigenous knowledge and regenerative practices, and our green development policies include a bold commitment to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.

I know you will be hearing more about this during your meetings from our close institutional partner, Hawai‘i Green Growth, which has developed cutting-edge digital tools to help measure progress on the state’s sustainability goals. Tools like this are critical for providing transparency and accountability—and for encouraging individuals, partners, and government to take actions that support locally and culturally appropriate solutions to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Importance of APEC’s Working Levels

In the public’s view of APEC, it is the Leaders’ Week each year that occupies center stage—as we in Honolulu know first-hand from our extraordinary experience hosting the leaders in 2011, by far the largest-ever single gathering of world figures in Hawai‘i’s history.

But you who are familiar with APEC’s work program know and appreciate that a lot of the most concrete progress happens out of the spotlight, at the committee, working group, and specialist levels that you are engaged in and oversee. We at the East-West Center have a great appreciation for this work because it has so many similarities and synergies with our own—bringing experts together to sort through the issues outside the political fishbowl, learn from each other’s experiences, develop goals and action plans, and help to inform and nurture tomorrow’s generation of regional leaders.

In that regard, I'd like to give special recognition to one of our early career research fellows here at the Center—who was also formerly one of our student leaders when he was pursuing his Ph.D. here—Dr. Micah Fisher. As it happens, Micah, who focuses on community environmental governance and disaster resilience primarily in Indonesia, was the US finalist for APEC’s ASPIRE science prize this year… a wonderful example of the connections between our institutions.

Progress, of course, sometimes comes in a non-linear fashion—one step backwards in order to later make two steps forward. But in recent years, we seem to be witnessing a trend toward greater nationalism and protectionism—a distressing direction for those of us dedicated to building peace through mutual understanding and cooperation. And the pandemic and recent heightened tensions have exacerbated the situation at a time the world needs more than ever to work together on common environmental, health, and other threats. Can we reverse this direction and take two steps forward?

Hawai‘i as Multicultural Model

Our hope is that APEC can make important contributions to helping rebuild a foundation of public faith in the value of multilateral understanding and cooperation. I invite you to examine Hawai‘i as a model and an inspirational environment for pursuing this.  

For those of you who are here for the first time, perhaps one of the first things you noticed was that Hawai‘i is one of the most ethnically diverse places on the planet. No single race has a majority here, and according to census figures about a quarter of our population claims multiracial heritage—more than three times the figure in the next closest US state. The actual figure is actually higher, as a majority of our newborns are of mixed heritage, and many are we call “hapa,” from “half.”  I am a perfect example myself—of Hawaiian, Portuguese, English, Tahitian and Chinese descent on my dad’s side, and my mom was born in Japan. Some have joked that I’m practically a one-person APEC!… like so many here in Hawai‘i.

Living together on these small islands, Hawai‘i’s diverse communities have had to find ways to get along and cooperate for everyone’s benefit. As the sugar plantations started bringing in workers from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and many other places who lived side by side in plantation villages, they developed a simplified English dialect that everyone could share, which we call Pidgin. You may have already heard its distinctive inflection and colorful terms from local people you have encountered.

I actually grew up speaking it as a young girl, and had to consciously break the habit later in life, although… you may hear some of it when you ask about food in Hawaii—if they say “broke da mouth” then it means you should go to that restaurant because it’s delicious! Yes, in Hawaii we also learned to appreciate and love one another’s distinctive foods, which is why a local “mixed plate” might include teriyaki, adobo, lo mein, kim chee and poi. And of course, Spam.

EWC as Model of People-to-People Multilateralism

Speaking of food—to find a stellar model of multilateral cooperation, you actually need to go no farther than our Hale Mānoa dormitory, the tall building next door, where several hundred graduate students from more than 30 countries live, study, and share kitchen facilities with one another. Again and again over the years we have heard stories of students from diverse—and sometimes even mutually antagonistic—societies having to negotiate refrigerator space and dish duty, sharing their culture’s cuisines, potluck style, and winning each other’s hearts and minds through their stomachs.

Not only did they learn how to get along and cooperate, but in many cases they forged lifelong friendships across borders. In fact, not an insignificant number of cross-cultural marriages have also sprouted there over six decades, but that’s a whole other story!

My point is that we at the East-West Center believe above all that it is such people-to-people connections at the deep human level we all share—the desire for safety, for abundance, for education and a better life for our children and grandchildren, and, yes, for understanding and love—that can bridge divides and bring people together. Ultimately, as economies change and modernize, the key to sustainability and resilience is to develop new rules of the road in order to prosper together. Your work on the digital economy, on services industries, and on mutual recognition agreements are examples of constructing a foundation of cooperation stone by stone as you adapt to new needs in our rapidly changing societies.

We encourage you to consider this as you deliberate on how best to focus APEC’s efforts in the coming year. And we think the East-West Center can be a valuable partner in these efforts through our history of Asia-Pacific expertise, our diverse network of close to 70,000 alumni and hundreds of institutional partners throughout the region, and our extraordinary location and capacity to convene leaders across a broad spectrum of critical fields—as we are proud to be helping to host you here today.

Thank you for gracing us with your presence here in my ancestral homeland. Maikaʻi loa—or best wishes for a most excellent meeting for your nations, our collective region, and the world for generations to come. It is my honor to welcome you this morning, and may you take some time to pause during your stay here to feel and experience the special beauty and spirit of Aloha of this place—Hawaiʻi.

Aloha Mai Kākou! It is my great honor to welcome the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting back to the East-West Center since we last hosted this important gathering in 2010. Mahalo nui loa, or special thanks for joining this very important meeting today, to our special guests:

• Mike Pyle, APEC 2023 Senior Officials’ Meeting Chair
• Senior Officials from all APEC economies
• APEC Executive Director Dr. Rebecca Fatima Santa Maria
• Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) representatives
• Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Secretariat representatives
• We’re also delighted that our state’s newly inaugurated Governor Josh Green will be joining us later for the afternoon panel on local solutions and green growth.

It is with profound aloha that I greet you all today by acknowledging Hawaiʻi as an Indigenous place stewarded by kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiians), whose heritage I share. East-West Center recognizes Hawaiʻi as its piko, its foundation, rooted in the Pacific and in values of aloha ʻāina, or reciprocating our land. We honor this valley of Mānoa in the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī and the generations of kanaka maoli who stewarded and cultivated this land in the past, along with the persistent work by Indigenous Hawaiians today to sustain culture, language, land, and community.

I also want to acknowledge Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day today and the tragic loss of life on December 7 in 1941 just a few miles from here, and throughout the Indo-Pacific region during the duration of the war. As a former career military officer myself, I know all too well about the terrible human cost that results when nations are unable to resolve their differences at the negotiating table and feel they have no other choice but to reach for their weapons—and how critical it is to prevent that from happening.

This solemn day reminds us why peacebuilding institutions like the East-West Center were created by leaders like Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson, and Senator Daniel Inouye—World War II veterans who knew the cost of war. They and like-minded change-makers of the day like Hawai‘i Governor John Burns knew the value of investing in a place where we can promote peaceful relations among people and nations—much as the founders of APEC sought to promote international cooperation in the wake of the Cold War.

Jefferson Hall Setting

I’m proud to say that this building we are in, Jefferson Hall, was designed in the early 1960s by the legendary architect I.M. Pei, along with several others on our campus. ­It has a distinguished history of hosting world leaders across more than six decades, from then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who helped break ground on this structure in 1961, to a round-robin of several regional leaders during APEC 2011 here in Honolulu, and more than a dozen Pacific Islands leaders who met here this past September. As a matter of fact, former President Obama used to play in the beautiful garden behind us, a gift from Japan, as a boy, when his mother and Indonesian stepfather were East-West Center fellows.

I.M. Pei, who was born in China but lived and worked in the US, later said that his work designing our campus had been particularly meaningful to him in his early career, because the idea of bringing east and west closer together was such an important one in our world. It seems a fitting thought to bring to your discussions here.

Pacific Resiliency Traditions

Today, our region, and the world, stands at a crossroad as we emerge from the COVID pandemic. And while COVID is still not over, and there is much rebuilding work in front of us, this moment also offers the possibility for fresh starts and positive change. An opportunity to rebuild the foundation of a more sustainable, innovative, and inclusive Asia-Pacific region and world.

Indeed, a primary theme of this US year as APEC’s host economy is centered on sustainability and resilience, building on the leaders’ landmark commitment in Bangkok last month to “bio-circular-green” economic strategies. This makes it especially fitting that this APEC year starts here in Hawai‘i. Here in the Pacific, our people know a thing or two about resiliency—literally a life-or-death matter on small, isolated islands that have always been vulnerable to many existential threats, from storm inundations to volcanic cataclysms.

Today we are face-to-face with the most daunting challenge yet—climate change. The islands have stepped forward as leaders in insisting that world powers take individual and collective action on climate change, as we saw again at the recent COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

This legacy of resiliency rests on the core value of putting aside differences when it really matters and coming together to work cooperatively for the common good—which Hawaiians call laulima, or, literally, “many hands”—whether it was a net to be hauled from the sea, stones to be passed hand-to-hand to build a solid foundation, or paddles to be pulled in unison to carry a canoe forward.

Other key concepts for us in Hawai’i are kuleana—fulfilling our responsibility to each other and future generations. And, relatedly, mālama—to preserve and protect one another, the land and sea, our resources, our heritage, and our future.

Also foundational in island traditions is the dialogue process of talanoa—allowing every party to be heard equally and openly when a course of action is to be set, or a rift repaired. I understand that this spirit is also intended as a hallmark of the APEC process, in which big and small economies have equal standing.

Over centuries, Hawaiians of old developed sustainable farming and fishing practices that allowed them to flourish in these islands with finite resources, isolated from the world beyond.

A few months ago, I attended a pair of conferences in Guam and Palau on this critical topic of island sustainability. Speaker after speaker at these meetings emphasized the critical importance of incorporating traditional knowledge into modern solutions, such as the ancient understanding that there is a season for everything. As in the famous quote from Ecclesiastes, there is a time to fish and a time to let the fish stocks replenish; a time and place to plant, and a time to let the soil rest. There is a Hawaiian saying for this: Nānā I ke Kumu… look to the source.

Today, scholars study those practices to learn how their concepts can inform sustainability efforts globally. And they also inform the present-day sustainability efforts of our state. Hawai‘i has a long history of ecological stewardship rooted in indigenous knowledge and regenerative practices, and our green development policies include a bold commitment to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.

I know you will be hearing more about this during your meetings from our close institutional partner, Hawai‘i Green Growth, which has developed cutting-edge digital tools to help measure progress on the state’s sustainability goals. Tools like this are critical for providing transparency and accountability—and for encouraging individuals, partners, and government to take actions that support locally and culturally appropriate solutions to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Importance of APEC’s Working Levels

In the public’s view of APEC, it is the Leaders’ Week each year that occupies center stage—as we in Honolulu know first-hand from our extraordinary experience hosting the leaders in 2011, by far the largest-ever single gathering of world figures in Hawai‘i’s history.

But you who are familiar with APEC’s work program know and appreciate that a lot of the most concrete progress happens out of the spotlight, at the committee, working group, and specialist levels that you are engaged in and oversee. We at the East-West Center have a great appreciation for this work because it has so many similarities and synergies with our own—bringing experts together to sort through the issues outside the political fishbowl, learn from each other’s experiences, develop goals and action plans, and help to inform and nurture tomorrow’s generation of regional leaders.

In that regard, I'd like to give special recognition to one of our early career research fellows here at the Center—who was also formerly one of our student leaders when he was pursuing his Ph.D. here—Dr. Micah Fisher. As it happens, Micah, who focuses on community environmental governance and disaster resilience primarily in Indonesia, was the US finalist for APEC’s ASPIRE science prize this year… a wonderful example of the connections between our institutions.

Progress, of course, sometimes comes in a non-linear fashion—one step backwards in order to later make two steps forward. But in recent years, we seem to be witnessing a trend toward greater nationalism and protectionism—a distressing direction for those of us dedicated to building peace through mutual understanding and cooperation. And the pandemic and recent heightened tensions have exacerbated the situation at a time the world needs more than ever to work together on common environmental, health, and other threats. Can we reverse this direction and take two steps forward?

Hawai‘i as Multicultural Model

Our hope is that APEC can make important contributions to helping rebuild a foundation of public faith in the value of multilateral understanding and cooperation. I invite you to examine Hawai‘i as a model and an inspirational environment for pursuing this.  

For those of you who are here for the first time, perhaps one of the first things you noticed was that Hawai‘i is one of the most ethnically diverse places on the planet. No single race has a majority here, and according to census figures about a quarter of our population claims multiracial heritage—more than three times the figure in the next closest US state. The actual figure is actually higher, as a majority of our newborns are of mixed heritage, and many are we call “hapa,” from “half.”  I am a perfect example myself—of Hawaiian, Portuguese, English, Tahitian and Chinese descent on my dad’s side, and my mom was born in Japan. Some have joked that I’m practically a one-person APEC!… like so many here in Hawai‘i.

Living together on these small islands, Hawai‘i’s diverse communities have had to find ways to get along and cooperate for everyone’s benefit. As the sugar plantations started bringing in workers from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and many other places who lived side by side in plantation villages, they developed a simplified English dialect that everyone could share, which we call Pidgin. You may have already heard its distinctive inflection and colorful terms from local people you have encountered.

I actually grew up speaking it as a young girl, and had to consciously break the habit later in life, although… you may hear some of it when you ask about food in Hawaii—if they say “broke da mouth” then it means you should go to that restaurant because it’s delicious! Yes, in Hawaii we also learned to appreciate and love one another’s distinctive foods, which is why a local “mixed plate” might include teriyaki, adobo, lo mein, kim chee and poi. And of course, Spam.

EWC as Model of People-to-People Multilateralism

Speaking of food—to find a stellar model of multilateral cooperation, you actually need to go no farther than our Hale Mānoa dormitory, the tall building next door, where several hundred graduate students from more than 30 countries live, study, and share kitchen facilities with one another. Again and again over the years we have heard stories of students from diverse—and sometimes even mutually antagonistic—societies having to negotiate refrigerator space and dish duty, sharing their culture’s cuisines, potluck style, and winning each other’s hearts and minds through their stomachs.

Not only did they learn how to get along and cooperate, but in many cases they forged lifelong friendships across borders. In fact, not an insignificant number of cross-cultural marriages have also sprouted there over six decades, but that’s a whole other story!

My point is that we at the East-West Center believe above all that it is such people-to-people connections at the deep human level we all share—the desire for safety, for abundance, for education and a better life for our children and grandchildren, and, yes, for understanding and love—that can bridge divides and bring people together. Ultimately, as economies change and modernize, the key to sustainability and resilience is to develop new rules of the road in order to prosper together. Your work on the digital economy, on services industries, and on mutual recognition agreements are examples of constructing a foundation of cooperation stone by stone as you adapt to new needs in our rapidly changing societies.

We encourage you to consider this as you deliberate on how best to focus APEC’s efforts in the coming year. And we think the East-West Center can be a valuable partner in these efforts through our history of Asia-Pacific expertise, our diverse network of close to 70,000 alumni and hundreds of institutional partners throughout the region, and our extraordinary location and capacity to convene leaders across a broad spectrum of critical fields—as we are proud to be helping to host you here today.

Thank you for gracing us with your presence here in my ancestral homeland. Maikaʻi loa—or best wishes for a most excellent meeting for your nations, our collective region, and the world for generations to come. It is my honor to welcome you this morning, and may you take some time to pause during your stay here to feel and experience the special beauty and spirit of Aloha of this place—Hawaiʻi.