A Green Hawaii: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives
"Commentary" - Maui News
by Ira Rohter
Paradise may be the image of Hawaii that the Visitors Bureau promotes, but as most Islanders know, their everyday life is far different. These islands are entangled in an epidemic of serious economic, environmental, social, and political problems. Many people are now recognizing something major must be done to solve these problems. I recently published a lengthy book, A Green Hawaii: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives, which offers both an in-depth analysis of Hawaii's problems, and a comprehensive set of creative solutions.
Unfortunately the readers of the Maui News who only know my book from Harry Eagar's angry personal diatribe (August 8), might never guess that A Green Hawaii is being received seriously by policy-makers in the islands, nationally, in Europe, and the Pacific. Its introductory chapters, which review Hawaii's economic facts-of-life, have been cited in major articles appearing in the New York Times and the internationally circulated The Economist. It has been favorably reviewed in other Island newspapers. A Green Hawaii is being read, and its proposed solutions considered, by members of County Councils, the Legislature, and Oahu's Neighborhood Boards, planning departments, University students, and high-ups in the State Government.
Maybe the problem is Mr. Eagar's "vision"; he just does not see those things that have gone wrong with Hawaii. After all, he thinks global warming is "a hoax" despite the fact that dozens of national governments around the world are actively working to reduce it causes.
Hawaii has been my home since 1968, when I was drawn to it because of its unmatched beauty and friendly people. Sadly that Hawaii is rapidly disappearing. These islands have suffered grievously from over-development, especially in the last 10 years.
We are rapidly losing green space, beaches and marine life. Our sewers are overflowing; our water supply on some islands is being rapidly depleted; our soil, water and food are found contaminated by toxic chemicals.
Hawaii's economy creates mostly low-paying jobs servicing tourism, while burdening many local residents with low wages, extraordinarily costly housing, and a cost-of-living 38 percent higher than on the Mainland. The average family has to work a combined 100 hours a week simply to get by. More than 80 percent of mothers work, many husbands or wives work second-jobs, many young people work too. One-third of our young adults are being forced to leave Hawaii for decent paying jobs and affordable homes elsewhere. We depend on imports for nearly all our needs, rather than on locally produced commodities. More than 75% of our fruit, vegetables, and fish are imported, for example. Most of our major productive resources - our larger businesses, our tourism facilities - are owned by off-shore corporations.
The poverty and ill-health of many native Hawaiians, their displacement from their lands, the destruction of their unique culture and way of life, is a disgrace. Nationally, Native Hawaiians have the highest rates of certain cancers, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and hypertension. They not only die younger than other Island ethnic groups, but suffer estrangement and alienation in high-growth, urbanized settings. They have the highest rate of high school dropouts and imprisonment, alcohol and narcotics use, and suicide among young adult and elderly males.
We must frankly admit too that Hawaii's political process is characterized by low participation, band-aid remedies and trivial reforms, and corrupt links between developers and politicians - the old land-and-power connection.
This list of problems foreshadows an even darker future for Hawaii. Developers and State planners are busily promoting and preparing for nearly DOUBLING the number of tourists flooding the Islands, to 11,500,000, by the year 2005. New resorts, hotels, convention centers, shopping malls, 105 new golf courses, expanding airports, all are designed to meet the needs of 200,000 more tourists per day, and 300,000 new residents who will migrate to the Isles to fill low-paying service jobs. The number of people present in Hawaii on any single day will increase by 70%, to about 1.75 million. [These statistics are official state projections, from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.] All this on-coming development will place even greater pressures on our fragile environment, cost-of-living, and distinctive Isle culture
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I believe that if we are to genuinely solve Hawaii's many problems we must adopt a new form of tourism, and fundamentally change Hawaii's economic philosophy. The growth-at-any-cost strategies embraced by Hawaii's leadership since the 1960s must be replaced by goals appropriate for the 21st century.
Ten chapters of A Green Hawaii give the details of a "Green" alternative to the mega-tourism future being promoted by Hawaii's business leaders and elected officials. Instead of an economy based on large facilities and businesses owned by giant corporations, with 50 percent of the tourist dollar never reaching the pockets of Hawaii's average citizens, the book details what a genuinely diversified economy meeting local needs would look like. Hawaii's economy should be creating a variety of jobs in diverse industries and occupations, ranging from eco-tourism to family-farming to recycling to hi-tech energy systems. Government policies should support community-based businesses, whose income stays in Hawaii, with residents owning the facilities and sharing profits.
We need to preserve and restore our land and shoreline. Instead of promoting the excessive use of scarce water and energy, and producing lots of sewage and refuse, as we do nowadays, we can employ renewable energy sources, water and energy conservation, and waste and refuse recycling, to live more in balance with nature.
Current development practices are biased towards large master-planned communities that results in more sprawl, more expensive infrastructure, more costly housing, more auto-based commuting to jobs, shopping, and school, and less open space. An alternative "greenbelt" perspective favors towns that are mixtures of open spaces and medium-density neighborhoods, bounded by fields, farmland, and forests. A Green Hawaii describes mixed-use neighborhoods and communities that contain a balanced combination of work sites, shops, schools, and recreation. Conventional development promotes single-family homes, high-rise apartments, and high prices. We could instead be building co-housing clusters, low-rise multi-family rentals, and self-help housing, for true affordability and a renewed sense of community.
Today, economic power is concentrated in the hands of trans-national corporations. They and their local allies decide what to build housing, golf courses, resorts and hotels, shopping centers, office buildings and where, to maximize their profits. Instead, Isle communities can be jointly planned by residents themselves, the schools co-managed by parents, teachers and students. The ideal is one of "grassroots democracy," where average citizens participate in making the important decisions that affect their lives, where community associations, Town Meetings, Neighborhood Boards and other forums of direct democracy, are encouraged.
These are not merely fanciful ideas, I assure you. The endnotes list hundreds of real examples that served as the inspiration for this book. Check out A Green Hawaii yourself. It is available in public libraries, or at most bookstores. See if it is just "magical thinking" or a catalog of new ideas that might help us shape a better future for these special islands.