Oceans need a good lawyer too.

Plants and animals found nowhere else in the world call the tropical paradise of the Hawaiian Islands home, and Native Hawaiian communities still honor their traditional practices.

Founded in 1988, the Mid-Pacific regional office, located in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, works on a range of environmental and community health issues, including:

Ensuring water is a public trust, not private property

Companies from Hawaiʻi’s plantation past are diverting public water for private profit, draining rivers and streams dry. The Mid-Pacific regional office has fought for decades to restore stream flows on behalf of local and Native Hawaiian communities. As a result, we have established widely renowned precedent that water is a public trust, not private property—a tool we continue to use in our ongoing campaign to uphold public and Native Hawaiian rights to flowing water.

Achieving a clean energy future

Clean energy, particularly rooftop solar, has boomed in Hawaiʻi, thanks to the leading advocacy of the Mid-Pacific regional office. We are removing technical and policy barriers to clean energy adoption, boosting the market through innovative incentive and financing programs, and promoting the shift from the antiquated electric utility grid to the modern, clean energy model of the future.

Protecting Pacific wildlife and ecosystems

Hawaiʻi is known as the endangered species capital of the world, and the Mid-Pacific office has been at the forefront for decades in securing protections for native wildlife and habitats. We are working to save native birds and forests from destructive alien species and human activities, reduce the longline fishing industry’s toll on marine mammals, turtles, and seabirds, challenge the military use of sonar that can kill whales and dolphins, and protect the health of nearshore reef ecosystems from aquarium fish extraction and pollution.

Safeguarding public health

Hawaiʻi is a global hotspot for production of, and experiments with, genetically modified organisms, but the Mid-Pacific office has led the way in challenging the release and commercialization of GMOs and the impacts on our food supply, health, environment, and public right-to-know. We are pushing for better regulation of genetically engineered crops and also using the law, public advocacy, and community organizing to highlight the links between genetically engineered foods and the increased use of dangerous pesticides.

Learn about some of the office's current and past legal cases.