WAI`ALUA SUGAR WILL CLOSE SOON AND
NORTH SHORE'S CITIZENS MUST PLAN FOR FUTURE
for "Viewpoint" - The Honolulu Advertiser
by Dr. Ira Rohter
With the imminent closure of the Hamakua Sugar Company on the Big Island, and now Oahu Sugar, which of Hawaii's remaining plantations will shut down next? Ka`u Agribusiness on Hawaii Island and Wai`alua Sugar on Oahu are likely to fall soon to the inevitable forces of low sugar prices, high wages, and intense international competition.
Wai`alua Sugar, a Castle and Cooke subsidiary located on Oahu's famous North Shore, employees about 455 workers, and creates jobs for another 500 or so people indirectly. The plantation occupies 12,248 acres of highly desirable land less than an hour's drive from Waikiki. Last year Wai`alua Sugar is reported to have lost about $7 million. It may well lose even more money this year. The time has come to admit the truth - that Wai`alua Sugar will shut down soon - and plan for the future. Sticking our head in the sand, and pretending the sugar business will suddenly revive after years of decline, will only produce another fiasco as in Hamakua.
The principle "Big Player" landowners on the North Shore - Castle & Cooke, Bishop Estate, and Mokuleia Land Company - all of course have plans of their own for "developing" the Wai`alua district. Their plans, some of which are already known, will follow the well worn recipe of tourism-centered development schemes, perhaps with a tad of environmental and social sensitivity thrown in. They will propose to build resorts, golf courses, upscale homes, with a smattering of affordable homes and infrastructure improvements to sweeten the pot. Nothing original here. Their key bait is jobs. From sugar jobs to hotel jobs.
Yes, these projects will produce replacement jobs. But at an enormous price to the residents of the North Shore, and its unique and fragile ecology. Look at the plight Hawaii is in right now precisely because of this kind of large-scale tourism-oriented development. Our environment is already ravaged by over-building and the massive loss of green space, beaches and marine life. We are running out of drinkable water on some islands, and we are finding disturbing amounts of toxic chemicals in our soil, water and food. Our economy now creates mostly low-paying jobs servicing tourism, while burdening many local residents with low wages, extraordinarily expensive housing, and a cost-of-living 38 percent higher than on the Mainland. 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 now imported, for example.
The projects proposed by the Big Players will likewise consume the heart of the North Shore. One of Oahu few remaining greenbelt and recreation areas will be converted into yet another expensive tourist playground. (Look at Maui or the Big Island.) And within a short period of time, these developments - which will certainly create jobs - will also so inflate housing costs that many North Shore residents will not be able to afford living there. Many average wage-earners - and especially young people - will be forced to leave for the Mainland, where salaries are higher, the jobs more meaningful, the cost of living affordable.
This bleak scenario is not what the average citizens of the North Shore and elsewhere prefer. Given the imminent shutdown of Wai`alua Sugar, the sensible course to follow is for the people of the North Shore to begin immediately to take charge of their future. Citizen-based planning can provide alternatives to mass development that preserve the essential rural character of this once great and sacred place.
Nearly all the residents I have talked with want to keep the North Shore and Windward areas as "greenbelts," protected from Oahu's over-urbanized development. They enthusiastically endorse creating a genuinely diversified economy based on sustainable agriculture and eco-tourism. The outline of such an approach for Wai`alua is to be found in my recently published book A Green Hawaii: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives.
Genuine eco-tourism would protect Hawaii's unique land and ocean ecologies, not destroy them. To minimize its impact on the natural and human environment, eco-tourism must be decentralized and small. It must be part of, but not dominate, a truly diversified economy. Small hotels, lodges, inns, and Bed & Breakfasts, are preferred to massive resort complexes, golf courses, exclusive homes for the wealthy, and high-rises. All facilities must conserve water and energy, and promote the recycling of waste and the use of renewable energy sources. In accord with the principles of economic democracy, Isle residents must participate more in the direction and ownership of eco-tourist enterprises. Minimally this calls for a partnership in the management and sharing of the profits of lodgings and associated businesses, since local communities bear the brunt of the ill-effects of development, while receiving little of its benefits. At best, the community itself owns and manages the small visitor accommodations and many businesses operating in the North Shore.
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 flows into Hawaii would stay here, not just "leak out" into offshore owners' pockets. My research shows that about 50% of tourism income flows immediately out of Hawaii's economy.
Eco-tourism is based on Hawaii's unique history and environment, not on the opulence and extravagance and architectural mishmash associated with many "world class" resorts. Native Hawaiian ways will be strengthened, not distorted or debased. A Wai`alua Plantation living museum, a Hawaiian cultural park, interpretative tours, and Hawaiian handarts, would present Hawaii's authentic history and culture for an audience wanting the genuine thing. [See sidebar]
Such genuine eco-tourism will attract to the Isles a new class of visitors who travel, often with their families, for the opportunity to experience diverse cultures, natural beauty, and rich learning. Hawaii's could provide an extraordinary setting for this "new breed" of environmentally sensitive, learning-oriented travelers.
Sustainable agriculture and family-farms can be another important component of the North Shore's diversified economy. Small farms in the lowlands can grow coconuts, mango and papaya trees, sugar beets, vegetables, bananas, rice, and taro. Pigs and poultry can be also raised. In the coastal area fish raised in restored Hawaiian fishponds and aquaculture ponds can supplement the considerable catch harvested from Wai`alua's rich offshore fishing grounds. In the cooler upland region, some sugar can be grown for local use, along with cultivated guava, mountain apple, plums, berries, and green grapes. The mountain forests can yield small amounts of lumber and a little sandalwood and koa for local craftspeople, and on the fenced-in lower slopes cattle, sheep, and pigs can be pastured.
The time is now ripe for instigating a citizen-based "pro-active" planning processes on the North Shore. Wai`alua cannot remain exactly as it is. New homes and schools need to be built, if only for the children of present residents. New jobs must be created that are meaningful and decent-paying. Yet the lifestyle valued by the area's residents must be retained.
The community itself must be empowered to discover its own goals, and draft a conceptual outline of how it wants the North Shore to develop. Only its average citizens are capable of contributing fresh ideas carefully tuned to the community's unique history, circumstances, and needs. Experts on sustainable agriculture, low-income housing, community-based economic development, eco-tourism, etc. can contribute their specialized knowledge on exactly "how" the community's goals can be brought about. Developers can participate to the extent they meet the Community's goals.
This very process is underway in the Ka`û district of Hawaii Island, where residents are facing the imminent shutdown of the Ka`û Agribusiness sugar plantation. Spearheaded by Green Party Councilwomen Keiko Bonk-Abramson, the area's residents have created the Ka`û Community Economic Development Action Committee, which is now seeking funding to begin actual projects.
Yes, this is turning the old power-game upside down. Through community-based planning, the people of Wai`alua and the North Shore will directly set their own goals, based on their needs. The politicians and developers will then have to react to what North Shore people want. Is this not what democracy is all about?
WAI`ALUA CULTURAL PARK. Many residents and visitors want to experience first-hand Hawaii's ancient culture and lifestyle. The "mountain to the sea" ahupua`a idea of traditional Hawaiian social and economic organization can be demonstrated in the Wai`alua "living cultural park." The Cultural Park would contain a restored ancient fishpond, a recreated fishing village, and demonstrate traditional farming techniques. Besides livelihood features, living parks embody the Hawaiians' cultural, spiritual, and ecological principles. Native instructors can offer programs that teach both residents and visitors an understanding and appreciation of the medicine, art, language, crafts, philosophy, history, and religion of Hawaii's first dwellers on the land.
WAI`ALUA PLANTATION VILLAGE. Hawaii's past also includes the era of sugar and pineapple plantations, and the personal stories of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipino, and Korean immigrants, who came to Hawaii to earn their fortunes. These are the roots of many Island residents, and a fascinating story for tourists to learn about. The Wai`alua Plantation Villages can combine a small working sugar plantation with an interpretative plantation museum and tours, and rehabilitated rustic-style cottages for overnight guests. Tours of the working plantation's operations and mill can be offered, including, for the hardy ones, some actual cane planting and cutting. Hands-on participation in genuine plantation work is similar to the option offered by working ranches in the American West and sheep farms in New Zealand. The Plantation's interpretative museum would contain plantation-era artifacts, and be staffed by historian-storytellers who know intimately the history of both the plantation itself and the surrounding district.
Visitors can stay at restored and renovated plantation cottages, which impart a sense of history and place. The Plantation Village can be linked with Wai`alua town, which would undergoes historical preservation, restoration, beautification, economic restructuring, and promotion as part of the historic Hawaii-sponsored Main Street projects.
FARM TOURISM can increase residents' incomes while providing modestly-priced accommodations for people who enjoy active outdoor recreation. As in Europe, Bed & Breakfasts can be built for walkers, cyclists, and others who want to get away from urban settings and spend some time experiencing a working farm. These kinds of programs are found in the Alps, Scandinavia, Scotland, England and New Zealand.
People staying at rural farm sites participate in day-to-day farming activities, or can visit a nearby sugar or rice mill, aquaculture ponds, taro lo`i and rice farms, or the nearby Wai`alua Cultural Park and Plantation Village. Rural tourism provides a stable income for farmers and allows travelers and their families to rejuvenate themselves in a tropical agricultural setting.
The Hawaii Visitors Bureau can advertise such small-scale facilities and offer information and centralized booking services. Cooperatives of small holders can organize training sessions for farmers. Farm tourism is not a new phenomenon it has been successfully promoted in New Zealand, Canada, the Solomon Islands, England and France.