Maui Pono’s ongoing battle for East Maui water has popped up in a story on a Canadian news website. Writing about the Public Sector Pension Investment Board’s $267-plus million, 56,000-acre purchase of prime Central Maui ag land (and half East Maui Irrigation System), Breach Media reports, “PSP’s mandate isn’t to employ locals or support sustainable agriculture…the fund is legally bound to maximize returns on its investments.”
The article, by reporter Justin Brake, reviewed other controversial PSP purchases, such as its water-privatizing investments in Brazil and Australia.
In 2020, a bill was introduced at the Canadian legislature that would have forced pension funds to invest ethically, but the bill was defeated.
A spokesman for the environmental advocacy group Council of Canadians told Brake, “For years, public sector pension funds have resisted implementing any ‘ethical’ investment screens by claiming they have a legal obligation to get the highest return on investment possible—as long as it is not illegal.”
Also quoted was former Maui Board of Water Supply chair Shay Chan Hodges, who said PSP and Mahi Pono, “are continuing the plantation legacy of dewatering the streams, with devastating impacts on native Hawaiian communities.”
Here is the complete story.
