EO creates CNMI Green Growth Initiative

Gov. Arnold I. Palacios signed Friday an executive order creating the CNMI Green Growth Initiative that he co-chairs with Northern Marianas College president Dr. Galvin Deleon Guerrero.

Palacios’ signing of Executive Order 2024-225 officially launched the CNMI Green Growth Initiative at the Agriculture Research Station of NMC-Cooperative Research, Extension, and Education Services in As Perdido, with Deleon Guerrero as his co-chair.

“Today we…embarked on a new journey to achieve a sustainable and regenerative future for our Commonwealth,” Palacios said.

He and Deleon Guerrero will set up a working group to create and implement the Green Growth Strategies for action.

NMC-CREES interim dean Patricia Coleman was appointed to be NMC’s lead for the working group, while former lawmaker Christina Marie E. Sablan, who is the administration’s special assistant for climate policy and planning, will be her co-lead.

Palacios said the Green Growth Initiative is not just about changing the word “development,” but is also about changing the way people think about development.

“We’re changing our mindset. In everything we do, we must think how can we do better for the next generation and the next generation thereafter,” the governor said.

Since 2015, nations around the world have committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals to mobilize global efforts to end poverty, improve health and education, protect systems, tackle the climate crisis, and create an equitable, peaceful, and resilient, and prosperous nature.

Palacios said the CNMI has embraced those global Sustainable Development Goals and applied them on to the CNMI through the Comprehensive Sustainable Development Plan 2021-2030.

He said the Green Growth Initiative is about translating the plan and aspirations into action and bringing tangible results.

“It’s about committing ourselves to assume achieving global Sustainable Development Goals through locally different solutions,” Palacios said.

He said the Office of the Governor and NMC will lead this initiative, with NMC as the CNMI’s Green Growth Hub.

In line with Friday’s launch, the CNMI’s also intends to join the Local2030 Islands Network as a government partner and island member, Palacios said.

Through this initiative, Palacios said, they will connect with other island communities around the world in setting local Sustainable Growth Goals in strengthening partnerships, tracking progress, and implementing concrete solutions.

In his speech, Deleon Guerrero recounted his family’s experience during Super Typhoon Yutu in 2018, when he felt helpless. Yet what moved him was the aftermath of the typhoon and how the CNMI collectively came together to survive.

Despite all the buildings that had been leveled, vital infrastructure that had been destroyed, and lives that had been ended, the CNMI’s people did not succumb to their worst nature, Deleon Guerrero said

“We didn’t fight for gas. We did not turn on each other. Instead, we came together to recover, to rebuild, and to regenerate,” he said.

From that moment to this day, the CNMI’s people proved that they are not helpless, he said, and the official launch of the CNMI’s Green Growth Initiative is a testament to the people’s legacy as a community.

By committing to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the people in the Northern Marianas tell the world that they are stepping up in a big way to help solve those problems, he added.

“We tell the world that we are co stewards and we will do everything we can to save our planet and save each other,” Deleon Guerrero said.

At NMC, he said, they wholeheartedly embrace this mindset. He said they are carrying out all these stewardship initiatives as they continue to rebuild their campus, meet the workforce needs of the economy and help the people live meaningful and productive lives.

“We, the NMC Proa Tribe, are proving once again that we are not helpless. We are agents of change. We are stewards of a better tomorrow,” he said.

In her speech, Coleman cited their regenerative agriculture demonstration site as a place where people learn how to plant for food, for medicinal use, and for ornamental use.

Coleman said the site was planted largely by volunteers who are willing to relearn and shift their paradigm about how to plant food based on regenerative principles.

Coleman said this regenerative agriculture plot doesn’t just represent optimized ecologically sound ways of producing food, but also represents connecting people with nature and each other.

“Because that is really the heart of our work. Regenerating our island to the people who love and care for it. Our vision for the Green Growth Initiative is that it will transcend political divisions and divisiveness and bring about vitality,” she said.

Coleman noted that one of the heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had commented that, in his 30-plus year career, he has never seen a community so willing to give and help despite how much they’d lost during Super Typhoon Yutu.

“We are the community that took care of each other and took action during the pandemic, resulting in having one of the lowest death rates in the world and definitely in the nation,” she said.

Sablan echoed Deleon Guerrero that there is a lot of work ahead. “The good news is that it’s hopeful work and joyful work. The kind of work that feeds the soul,” she said.

It is so fitting, Sablan said, that the NMC Agriculture Research Station is the setting for the Green Growth launch because “this is a joyful place.”

She said she participated a few months ago in one of NMC-CREES regenerative agroforestry workshops, in which she experienced firsthand the joy and the pride that comes from learning how to grow food in a way that gives back to the earth.

Sablan said regenerative agriculture expert Dr. Craig Elevitch of NMC-CREES promised that they would work with nature to transform that plot into a diverse and abundant food forest. She said she was skeptical, but they were enthusiastic.

“And I’m so pleased to see that the saplings and seeds that we planted just a few months ago—they’re in that far right corner of the forest—are growing and thriving today. And I’ve already signed up for the next workshop,” she said.