Year 2002 can be our launch to greatness
If Sept. 11 taught us anything, it taught us that planning for or predicting the future can be perilous business.
Still, we cannot simply leave the future to fate. As Hawai'i looks forward to 2002, we must proceed on the assumption that we do have some control over our own destiny. We must lay down plans to rebuild our economy, maintain our social fabric, protect the aina, and protect and preserve our special cultural heritage.
If the unexpected happens again — and there's no reason to assume it won't — we will be better able to handle it if we are clear on our objectives and determined on our goals.
And what should those objectives and goals be?
For starters, 2002 must be the year when the effort toward diversifying the economy moves beyond nice idea to absolute must. We simply cannot depend on largess from Washington through the efforts of our senior delegation and the steady flow of recreational tourism.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means looking more vigorously for new forms of tourism, new ways of utilizing the travel infrastructure we have built over the years. Some of this is already under way; we have a Convention Center meant to attract business travelers, and we steadily improve our reputation for sports and health/wellness tourism.
But we must be far more aggressive in broadening and diversifying our visitor industry mix, both in types of traveler we attract as well as the regions of the world we draw our visitors from.
Bigger economic push
Beyond broadening the travel business, however, we must vigorously push forward in other economic areas. Like almost every place in the world, we want our share of the high-tech pie. And we will get some of that, particularly as high-tech entrepreneurs are drawn here for our lifestyle advantages and as word gets out of our highly developed telecommunications infrastructure. But the plain fact is that everyone is doing high tech. We must find our niche.
At the moment, that niche appears to be in the related fields of biotechnology and ocean research. The vast Pacific surrounding us is a resource that has barely been touched. With the emergence of a combined biotech/medical research/ health and wellness center at Kaka'ako, we have the potential to become an international biotech center.
There are also huge opportunities ahead for Hawai'i in the fields of tropical agriculture and tropical and alternative medicine.
A vibrant, diversified economy won't happen, however, unless there is a bright, well-educated workforce to serve it.
That makes education, from the earliest years through the university, our Priority No. 1.
The year 2002 must be remembered as the year Hawai'i truly put its education system on the road to greatness. It should be the year that public/private partnerships begin building what will become an enviable universal preschool system.
In the public schools, a Marshall Plan for education will start first with a massive program of rebuilding the crumbling physical infrastructure of our schools. With that in place, we can turn our attention to the educational infrastructure, putting in place standards that mean something and the resources and political will to insist that those standards are met. All this will take large sums of money, of course, but what better investment is there?
Think of the children
It will also take a change in the political culture, which focuses on blame-shifting and power competition rather than on the kids. This can be the year when the adults put aside their own interests in favor of those of the children.
The University of Hawai'i, working wisely with our solid private higher education system, must shake itself out of its slumber and become — in fact and by reputation — the preeminent higher education institution in the Asia-Pacific region. Part of this will come simply by recognizing and promoting our strengths — in Asia-Pacific studies, in oceanography, astronomy and other fields. Part of it will come through giving our university the right combination of political, public and private support that will free it to fly to greatness.
When it comes to the social fabric of our community, our task is clear: Working with a recently energized and forward-looking private sector, we must focus on building the human capital of our community. This means lifting up those who might be left behind, building the spirit, confidence and pride of the Hawaiian community and planning now for the rising tide of the elderly who will cry for our care.
Planning for all this, of course, cannot take place in a vacuum. It requires a spirited, active and broadly engaged public dialogue. The platform for this dialogue in 2002 is obvious: an election season that puts virtually every public office in the state (except for the two U.S. Senate seats) before the voters.
Let's get to work.
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By Dick Adair
