Giving Compass' Take:

• Timothy A. Schuler discusses how a flood could devastate the tourist zone of Waikīkī in Honolulu, but a federal plan to fortify the Ala Wai Canal has met with strong local resistance.

• From flood prevention measures to carbon elimination, there are many efforts already in motion across Hawaii’s islands. What can other states learn from the innovations pushed by local leaders?

• Here’s more about the urgency to take action on climate change now.

Of the nearly 5 million tourists who descend on Waikīkī and its beach in Honolulu every year, few are likely aware that the beachfront destination used to be a sprawling wetland. Here, on the island of Oahu, Hawaiians cultivated taro and built fishponds to raise ‘ama ‘ama (striped mullet). Later, farmers grew rice in wide, irrigated paddies. It was a fertile delta.

In the first part of the 20th century, Hawai‘i’s territorial governor and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers filled the fishponds and dredged the two-mile-long Ala Wai Canal, draining the wetlands and setting the stage for a century of hotel and condominium development.

This history has come to the fore in recent weeks as a battle over a proposed $345 million flood-control project for Waikīkī has played out in the community and in Hawai‘i’s courts.

Waikīkī is a three-block-wide stretch between the Ala Wai Canal and the ocean, located at the base of a steep, densely populated watershed. It’s a major economic engine, responsible for 7 percent of Hawaii’s GDP as well as 7 percent of all jobs in the state.

Read the full article about Hawaiian floods by Timothy A. Schuler at CityLab.