Molokai / Having spent 35 years telling various real-estate developers, cruise ships and other strangers bearing gifts to get lost, Molokai now finds itself the most eligible place in Hawaii–if not the country–for start-from-scratch sustainability planning. With no dominant industry, a bare-bones infrastructure, abundant natural resources, an unemployment rate approaching 18 percent and 7,500 tough and proud residents, the island is ready for new ideas that might comport with its no-need way of life and, in the process, redefine what it means to prosper in the 21st century.

So, when a band of young, can-do islanders convened the two-day Sust’AINAble Molokai: Future of a Hawaiian Island Conference on July 16 and 17 at Lanikeha Center in Hoolehua, nearly 400 islanders showed up. In the main hall, decorated with exquisite hand-painted banners and massive floral and fruit arrangements, they listened intently for two solid days to an eclectic roster of guest speakers, while the keiki played outside and the trade winds gusted through the room’s open doors and windows.

“We are striving for heaven on earth,” said attorney Malia Akutagawa, lead organizer of the conference, in her emotional opening remarks. “We are the next generation, adding our ha to the struggle. Now, after so many years saying no, let’s say ‘yes’ to the things we want.”

Emcee Luana Busby-Neff, a Hawaiian protocol expert and Molokai native, set the stage: “Molokai is finally in a place where we can utilize all our resources, human and natural,” she said. “The world is watching us. We are exemplary.”

Educator Kala Hoe from Hakipuu on Oahu told stories of his fabled ahupuaa and its “fire.” He talked about the term maoli, “the Hawaiian way of saying Hawaiian,” and the weighty concept of kuleana, noting that “two words in English, responsibility and privilege, are one word in Hawaiian.”

Pioneering sustainability guru Paul Bierman-Lytle, co-founder of Global Smart Infrastructures, explained his presence at the conference: “I’m looking for best practices in sustainability,” the architect said. “I’m looking at where the action is.”

He defined sustainability as providing your own food, water, energy, shelter and dealing with your own waste, while balancing social justice and economic viability. His spellbinding PowerPoint presentation was thick with futuristic renderings of fabulous new cities being built right now in the bone-dry, oil-rich Arab states of Abu Dhabi, Oman and Qatar, whose ruling sheiks he advises and who have undertaken the most ambitious sustainability projects on earth. For example, the $22 billion, 2.3-square-mile development called Masdar City in Abu Dhabi that will house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. It will have no cars, no waste and will use no fossil fuels, thus no carbon emissions. Energy will derive from solar, wind, geothermal and hydrogen power. “Google it,” Bierman-Lytle suggested to the dumbstruck crowd as he clicked to the next screen.

“It’s kind of fun!” said Selina Tarantino, describing how her Oahu-based non-profit called Re-use Hawaii systematically disassembles old buildings rather than demolishing them and then recycles valuable materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Up to 35 percent of landfill waste comes from construction/demolition projects, Tarantino said.

David Sands, founder and president of the Maui-based construction company Bamboo Living, told the crowd that you can “grow your own house” with bamboo in as little as five years on a plot of land no bigger than the house footprint. So far, Bamboo Living has built 150 houses in Hawaii, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. An entire bamboo town in Georgia is now in the works, Sands said.

Boston-based community economic development expert Dr. Jacquie Kay stepped up to the lectern and waved the 30-page “Molokai: Future of a Hawaiian Island” conceptual plan over her head.

“Start here!” she said, urging the audience to read it and get to work refining and implementing it. “It’s an inspiring document.” Produced last year by the island’s cadre of activists, the plan was a direct response to the sudden shutdown of the foreign-owned, 60,000-acre Molokai Ranch in April 2008, which led to the loss of 120 island jobs. The plan served as springboard for conference organizers.

The second day of the conference began with keynote speaker Nainoa Thompson, current chairman of the Board of Trustees, Kamehameha Schools, and president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Humbly, haltingly, Thompson began by saying he was deeply honored to be speaking to the island.

“I come to Molokai,” he said to the packed hall, “with great respect for what you have done. I have less to teach you than you have to teach me.

“You have a shot, you’ve got a chance, and we need you to succeed. We need a new direction, new hope. So, when you talk about vision, remember that if you don’t have it, others will. There are people who are planning something else, twenty-four-seven.”

The master navigator recounted his own voyage, growing up on Oahu’s Maunalua reef flats and listening to his grandmother, who used to sit on her punee and tell stories of the old days. He described his neighbor, the artist Herb Kane, and Kane’s dream of a voyaging canoe. “There are stars that we will use to pull Tahiti out of the ocean,” Kane promised him.

One of Thompson’s heroes, he said, is the late astronaut and Punahou boy Lacy Veach, who once looked out his space shuttle window to find the Hawaiian archipelago spread out far below, supreme in its isolation. The sight inspired him: “When we figure out how to live well on our islands,” Veach postulated, “we will have the most important gift we can give to the earth, and that is hope.”