In May 2025 C.E., Hawaii Governor Josh Green signed Senate Bill 1396 into law, making the state the first in the U.S. to require visitors to pay a dedicated climate resilience fee. The levy — estimated at around $25 per trip — will direct tourism revenue into a protected fund for coral reef restoration, coastal defense, and adaptation infrastructure. It is a simple but consequential idea: if you come to experience Hawaii’s natural beauty, you help pay to preserve it.
At a glance
- Hawaii climate resilience fee: Visitors will pay roughly $25 per trip into a dedicated fund covering coral reef restoration, watershed management, and coastal protection.
- Tourism scale: Hawaii receives around 10 million visitors each year, meaning the fund could generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually for conservation and resilience work.
- A U.S. first: No other state has tied a direct visitor fee to climate resilience funding, positioning Hawaii as a national model for sustainable tourism finance.
Why Hawaii needed this
Hawaii’s environment has been absorbing the costs of mass tourism for decades. Coral reefs bleached by warming seas. Coastal trails eroded by foot traffic. Freshwater systems strained beyond their limits.
Then came the Lahaina wildfire in August 2023 C.E., which killed at least 100 people and destroyed much of the historic town on Maui. The connection between a warming climate and the vulnerability of island ecosystems is not theoretical in Hawaii. It is immediate, visible, and devastating.
At the same time, the state has faced rising seas, intensifying hurricanes, and growing pressure on infrastructure already stretched thin by a resident population grappling with some of the highest housing costs in the country. The fee creates a dedicated, recurring revenue stream to address all of this — separate from general state funds and federal grants, both of which are uncertain and frequently insufficient.
How the fund will work
Revenue from the fee flows into a ring-fenced climate resilience fund. Eligible uses include coral reef restoration, coastal protection, watershed management, and sea-level rise adaptation for vulnerable communities.
The model has an intuitive logic: as visitor numbers grow, so does the fund — and so does the ecological pressure the fund is designed to relieve. Supporters argue this alignment makes it more durable than one-off appropriations.
Hawaii’s approach echoes strategies used by the Galápagos Islands, Bhutan, and Iceland, where visitor fees help limit environmental degradation. But in the American context, it is new ground entirely.
Native Hawaiian voices and open questions
The bill’s passage was welcomed by many conservation advocates. Some Native Hawaiian organizations have long called for stronger protections for wahi pana — sacred and culturally significant landscapes that are among the most visited and most vulnerable places in the archipelago.
Several Native Hawaiian voices pushed for the legislation to ensure that fee revenue reaches community-led stewardship efforts, not just state agency programs. Whether the fund’s governance will meaningfully center Indigenous-led priorities remains an open question, one that will depend heavily on how implementing rules are written and who oversees fund distribution.
The fee also faces a structural limitation: charging visitors without managing visitor volume may generate revenue without reducing ecological pressure. Global emissions reductions remain the only long-term solution to ocean warming and sea-level rise. These are real tensions Hawaii will need to navigate as the program matures.
A model the world is watching
Tourism generates roughly $9.9 trillion in global economic activity annually, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Yet its environmental costs — reef destruction, carbon emissions, water consumption, coastal erosion — are largely externalized onto the places visited.
Hawaii’s climate resilience fee begins to make those costs visible in the price of a trip.
It will not solve the climate crisis. But it establishes a direct, scalable, and recurring funding stream for adaptation at a moment when marine and coastal ecosystems worldwide are under severe pressure. Other island states and coastal destinations are watching closely. If the fund proves effective and transparent, it could become a template for sustainable tourism finance well beyond the Pacific.
For a state that has spent generations welcoming the world, it is also a statement about what it means to be a good host — not just sharing beauty, but taking responsibility for its future.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Courthouse News Service
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana protects a stretch of Atlantic coastline as a marine reserve
- Marie-Louise Eta makes history as first female head coach in men’s top-flight European football
- The Good News for Humankind archive on climate
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