THE HONOLULU ADVERTISER (6/23/93)
Ira Rohter
Political Science Department University of Hawaii
Tourist industry spokesmen such as DBEDT's Director Mufi Hannemann and HVB's President Stanley Hong, have recently been touting Hawaii as a place where "eco-tourism" and "cultural-tourism" is practiced. Frankly, these statements are PR hype. Their actions promote more mass tourism, whose impacts are bad for the `âina, native Hawaiians, and Hawaii's average working and middle-class residents.
The State's single-minded fixation on mass tourism has led to unbalanced economic development and grossly inflated housing and living costs. Tourism today creates mostly low-paying jobs and attracts large number of migrants to fill these jobs. Massive growth has overburdened public services, while polluting and damaging the environment. The commercialization and overwhelming of native Hawaiian cultural practices and identity is a disgrace. And our political process is too much tainted by corrupt links between developers and politicians, the old land-and-power connection.
Our problems will get worst in the future. 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 and hotels, 105 new golf courses, convention centers, shopping malls, expanding airports, and 300,000 new residents who migrate to the Isles to fill low-paying service jobs, will result. All this place even greater pressures on our fragile environment, cost-of-living, and distinctive Isle culture.
If we are to genuinely solve these 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.
Environmental balance is one of the first principles of sustainability. Genuine eco-tourism must protect each island's unique land and ocean ecologies, not destroy them. All facilities must conserve water and energy, and promote the recycling of waste and the use of renewable energy sources.
To minimize its impact on the natural and human ecology, genuine eco-tourism must be decentralized and small. Facilities must fit into, but not dominate, the area's environment. Small hotels, lodges, inns and Bed & Breakfasts, are preferred to massive resort complexes and huge high-rises.
In accord with the principles of economic democracy, Islanders must participate more in the direction and ownership of eco-tourist enterprises. Minimally this calls for a partnership in management and sharing of profits of resorts and associated businesses, since local communities bear the brunt of ill-effects of development while receiving few benefits. At best, the community itself or local hui should own and manage the business.
Eco-tourism's local emphasis means Isle employees and products are used as much as possible. With supplies bought locally, more of the money that tourists spend would stays in the islands, not just "leak out" into offshore pockets. My research shows that about 50% of tourism income flows immediately out of Hawaii's economy.
Eco-tourism must be based on each island's unique history and environment, not on the opulence and extravagance and architectural mishmash associated with "world class" resorts. Native ways are strengthened, not distorted or debased.
In my book A Green Hawaii: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives I lay out in detail a number of examples of this new kind of tourism. They include: Hawaiian Cultural Parks, Plantation Villages, small-scale facilities such as Bed & Breakfasts and small inns, farm tourism, home-grown learning-oriented tours, and many others.
Such genuine eco-tourism will attract a new class of visitors who travel, often with their families, for the opportunity to experience diverse cultures, natural beauty, and rich learning. We in Hawaii are fortunate that we can provide an extraordinary setting for this "new breed" of environmentally sensitive, learning-oriented travelers.
But the question remains: Will the powerful political and economic forces presently in place in Hawaii allow the kind of changes I have outlined?