Sweetness and HPOWER: Waste, Sugar and Ecological Identity in the Development of Honolulu's HPOWER Waste-to-Energy Facility

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated the high spatial, economic and ecological stakes of solid waste management in remote island environments, like Hawaii, but also suggested ways in which conceptions of risk and identity have factored into stakeholders' decisions regarding particular waste management technologies and processes. Through an analysis of historical and archival documents, this article examines linkages between a declining sugar plantation industry and the development of a major waste disposal project, and shows how an ecological identity narrative which combined an understanding of Honolulu as a place needing to reduce reliance on imported resources with an understanding of metropolitan Honolulu as a major centre for plantation sugarcane agriculture resulted in a plan for combining waste disposal with sugarcane processing. Focused on the historical case of the HPOWER facility on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, I argue that ecological identity offers new insights for understanding how environmental infrastructures are conceptualised and resisted, and that explicit consideration of ecological identity in the analysis of environmental governance may lead to improved scholarly understanding as well as improved outcomes for governance itself.