Study on tourism threshold proposed
By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer
As the number of visitors to Hawai'i swells to new records, the state is seeking $1.2 million for a comprehensive analysis of tourism's impact and the point at which visitors start to strain the capacity of the state's fragile resources.
A single line in the Cayetano administration's budget asks for the money for a review of Hawai'i's rooms, roads, sewers and airports, as well as its parks, trails and other environmental resources, administration officials said.
Unlike past studies, which sought to limit tourism, officials say this proposed research would try to mark thresholds at which those resources become overrun and the community has to decide how, whether and how much to develop.
"Our goal is not to come out with some magic number that says, 'This is the number of visitors we can have maximum,' " said Pearl Imada Iboshi, the state's chief economist. "There are different things that will hit their critical point at different times. We're looking at what the different problem areas would be.
"If you have certain benchmarks of what's acceptable, when would you surpass that? So you can plan for it and try to mitigate that and try to plan what we as a community want to see for our future."
The governor's proposal, first mentioned in his State of the State address in January, comes as Hawai'i's visitor base hit a record 6.9 million in 2000 and readies to rocket past 8 million by 2005.
The Legislature still could kill the request, either next week when the budget must emerge from the Senate or by the end of April, just before the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn.
But if the money is approved, the study could point the way on an issue that has sparked debate for decades: how much tourism is Hawai'i set up to receive, and how much and what kind do its people want.
If approved, a request for proposals would go out in July, Iboshi said, and the report would be finished by the end of 2002.
Widespread support
The idea has gotten a rare and resounding thumbs-up from industry, academia and environmental groups including the Hawaii Hotel Association, the Sierra Club, Life of the Land, and the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
"I see industry coming to the table, as well as the land owners, and discussing this together," said Henry Curtis, executive director of environmental advocacy group Life of the Land. "I think the tougher issues will come once we have the document and we have to develop policies from it. But I think all the parties can work on this together."
Such studies are by no means standard, environmental and tourism experts said, but they have become more common as destinations seek to avoid past mistakes of tourism overdevelopment and to grow a visitor industry that is acceptable to local residents.
But the same experts warn that gathering such data could open the door to intense — if better-informed — battles on public policy and how to handle the state's fragile resources.
"If you have better information, you're likely to make a more robust decision about what happens," said Ted Manning, director of the Ottawa-based Consulting and Audit Canada, which offers training in sustainable tourism to governments and industry. "You cannot predict whether it is logically going to support having more or less tourism at this stage. That's probably why everyone thinks it's a good idea. But it will identify those constraints in a clearer fashion."
A high-profile lawsuit brought against the Hawaii Tourism Authority last year by the Sierra Club put visitors and the environment in the news, but administration officials said it is the approaching critical mass that has moved them to act, and not that legal battle.
"As the number reaches 7 million, it's time to look at how far we can go," said Seiji Naya, head of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. "I wanted to see the relation between the environment, tourism and infrastructure needs."
The Sierra Club case, which would require the state to assess the environmental impact of its tourism marketing program, is pending in state Supreme Court.
The debate over "sustainable tourism" — how to foster a visitor industry that does not overrun the very assets it thrives on — has been part of Hawai'i's landscape since the business began to grow three decades ago.
Forgotten report
In the mid-1970s, a study paid for by the Ford Foundation and carried out at the University of Hawai'i tried to establish clear limits for the state's resources, an approach that proved unworkable. Though the results were published, people familiar with the project said nothing much was done with them.
"When it appeared the concept in that simplistic form wasn't going to get us anywhere, we just forgot about it," said Doak C. Cox, then-director of the UH Environmental Center, where the study was carried out. "Instead of modifying our view to a more rational point of view, politically it disappeared."
Today especially, technology can stretch limits, experts said, creating more water with desalinization plants or more electricity generation. The type of tourism is also important, they say, noting that 100 people hiking with cameras are less destructive than 100 people coming through on all-terrain vehicles.
Hawai'i's discussion continued through the decades in government reports, conferences, symposiums and functional plans until the mid-1990s, when a slumping tourism picture quickly focused attention on how to get more visitors to the Islands, not how to control their arrivals.
Now that a record-breaking 2000 has put some pennies in the bank, the state can resume worrying about how to control the visitors it gets.
"Now as you have increased growth and activity, there's more desire to come up with some tangible means of saying, 'We should do this,' and 'We shouldn't do that,'" said Murray Towill, president of the Hawai'i Hotel Association. "We have a real tradition of trying to plan and doing things in a systematic fashion. We have not been as successful at translating those (plans) into action. This is the next evolution in that whole issue of planning."
Global lessons
Comprehensive environmental planning and the studies that make it possible began about 20 years ago, Manning said, after uncontrolled development on Spain's Costa Del Sol fouled the waters, drove out the tourists, and left the government with the bill for hotels that owners walked away from rather than pay to rip down.
In Mexico, the government studied and meticulously planned Cancun after the island of Cozumel began running out of water every May after the tourist rush.
Though dense and urban, Manning said, Cancun has enough water and other resources to accommodate all its visitors. And projects are under way now on Egypt's Red Sea Coast to develop new resorts while avoiding the kind of previous development that has overrun some dive and snorkel sites, Manning and others said.
The Sierra Club enthusiastically supports the study plan, said Hawai'i chapter director Jeff Mikulina, and will help the government outline its parameters. But the research still won't change the club's demand for an assessment of Hawai'i's tourism marketing plan.
"We don't think a carrying-capacity study is a proxy for an environmental assessment, which is a tested methodology," he said. "There's public input; it can be challenged; there's public commentary."
Unlike comprehensive planning, which looks at the cumulative effect of many developments, an environmental assessment addresses only one specific issue, usually a property or infrastructure development.
Experts say studies such as the one proposed by Hawai'i officials take stock of much more than just the single industry of tourism: They can be a road map for preserving the local lifestyle.
"What tourism is using is everyone else's resources — they want to look at your pineapple plantations; they want to look at your palm trees and your beaches, and those do not belong to the tourism industry; they belong to everyone else," Manning said. "What you're really looking at is how you plan and manage the future of the Islands, and tourists are only a part of that."
