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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, January 12, 2003

UH, city workshop draws crowd

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Even crowd control veterans were stunned at the throng of folks who showed up for yesterday's Sustainability Workshop at the Dole Cannery Ballroom.

"Must be a good movie," quipped one HPD traffic cop who marveled at the line of cars that — a full five minutes after the workshop was set to begin — snaked from the cannery garage, crossed the parking lot, stretched along Pacific Street and continued for more than a block onto Nimitz Highway.

Inside, a man standing at the end of one of several long lines of people added, "I don't believe early Saturday morning meetings can be sustained."

Perhaps, but there was no evidence of it yesterday as all 1,000 chairs were filled, dozens more packed the standing-room area, and stragglers spilled from the ballroom into the lobby.

When the meeting finally got under way more than a half hour after it was scheduled to begin at 8 a.m., Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris and keynote speaker Gov. Linda Lingle expressed surprise at the size of the crowd.

"I am just in awe that all of you, on a beautiful Saturday morning, when we could be doing fun things in the ocean, or walking on a mountain trail somewhere, when we're so close to movie theaters," chose, instead, to come to a workshop on sustainability, Lingle said.

The only thing that may have outnumbered people present was the number of times the word "sustainability" was used by the speakers.

The event, hosted by the city and the University of Hawai'i's Office of Sustainability, qualified as the first manifestation of "The New Beginning" that became the hallmark phrase of Lingle's election campaign.

"As far as I know this is the first time in Hawai'i's history that the governor, the mayor, the president of the university and community leaders have come together in the same room, the same podium, to develop plans for our future," said Harris.

The crowd, which apparently liked what it was hearing, applauded that and other remarks, such as when Lingle promised that she and the mayor would work together for the betterment of the community even though they might not always agree.

Lingle described sustainability as a subjective term.

"What's sustainable to us may not be sustainable on the Leeward Coast," she said.

Harris defined sustainability as a process of making decisions that will meet our current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The time has come, he said, to move away from being a society of consumption and waste without accountability.

According to Harris, the sustainability process should begin with answering some challenging questions:

How do we sustain the host culture that tourists from all around the world flock to see? How can Hawai'i diminish its dependence on tourism? How can Honolulu take the lead in alternative fuels for its transportation system? How can O'ahu stop filling its valleys with landfill? What sorts of industries should be encouraged to come to Hawai'i?

"We're at a crossroads," he said more than once. "We need to choose a new path."

So experts are gathering from a variety of disciplines to share their insights with the community on the economy, land use and agriculture, transportation, energy and natural resources. Further workshops will focus on each of those issues.

But university of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle cautioned that sustainability cannot be accomplished by a select few. It must be grassroots. And an essential grassroots component comes from the youthful students.

"The university's role in sustainability is not in the realm of imagination," he said. "We would be wise to listen to what these scholars say, and to listen carefully."

Among the notables attending the workshop was panelist Noel Brown, former director of the United Nations Environment Programme, who characterized yesterday's opening workshop as "a family about to begin a conversation with itself."

Islands, said Brown, are special places — economically and geographically fragile, and facing what he called "emerging island dilemmas." UH could, by focusing on the solutions, take a leading role in shaping the sustainability course of islands around the world.

"It's time to stop being so hard on ourselves," he said. "We are a problem-solving species."

John Bullard, former director of the federal Office of Sustainable Development, who sailed to Honolulu for the workshop aboard a two-masted ship, said, "One thing I've learned in navigation is that if you don't change course, you will get to where you are going.

"So, where are we going?"

That, of course, was the question on everyone's mind.