FOCUS
Protect environment to preserve economy
"Have you seen these islands? Have you seen the beauty of the land? Have you seen the flowers? ... This is Hawai'i, the land of aloha."
— Danny Couch, "These Islands"
By the Natural Resources Working Group
Residents and tourists alike are drawn and held to Hawai'i by its natural beauty and a culture grounded in the 'aina — aloha 'aina means to love and respect the land, make it yours and claim stewardship for it.
Advertiser library photo • April 18, 2002
In economic terms, Hawai'i's comparative advantage is based on its environmental resources. Yet our resources are increasingly at risk. Unless we make the connection between Hawai'i's environment and economy, we are heading down the path of degrading our quality of life today, and our children's life in the future.
Waterfalls cascade off the Pali. Protecting Hawai'i's natural resources now from disease, pests and misuse will help maintain the state's status as one of the world's safest destinations.
Environmental economists have shown that natural capital can be valued similarly to manufacturing equipment. Both produce economic value. For example, the 100,000 acres of forested watershed in the Ko'olau Mountains on the island of O'ahu have been valued at approximately $10 billion. Amenities considered in the analysis were ground water quantity, water quality, in-stream uses, species habitat, biodiversity, subsistence, hunting, aesthetic, commercial harvests, ecotourism and climate control.
Enhanced groundwater recharge provided by forests accounts for over $2 billion of this total.
The hydrological services of the Ko'olau watershed are in good condition today because of forest conservation efforts of 100 years ago. The Hawai'i State Legislature has declared the year 2003 to be the Year of the Hawaiian Forest, in recognition of the centennial of Hawai'i's Forest Reserves. Will our children have healthy forests 100 years from now? Not unless we invest to protect them.
Another example of the urgent need to connect environmental with economic issues concerns invasive pest species. In Hawai'i, we have the most severe invasive species problem in the nation.
The headlines have become all too familiar. The invasive tree-like weed, Miconia calvescens, is spreading into our forests and watersheds. Agricultural pests such as papaya ringspot virus and banana bunchy top disease are invading our farms. Screeching tree frogs are in our backyards. And now the green monster, Salvinia molesta, threatens our lakes and wetlands.
It is estimated that invasive species cost Hawai'i roughly $500 million annually in lost agricultural revenue and property damage. Irreversible damage to native ecosystems and watershed is less quantifiable in dollars, but is even more devastating. Just imagine the potential devastation of the tourist industry, which accounts for one quarter of Hawai'i's economy, caused by continuing outbreaks of dengue fever, or potential malaria.
The reality is that the worst is yet to come. On average, 100 new plants and 20 species of insects are introduced to Hawai'i each year.
Between 1971 and 1989, cargo increased by more than 120 percent while the number of state inspectors rose by only 15 percent. Recent blitz inspections by the state Department of Agriculture found as many pests in 16 weeks of intense inspections as are annually found at all of Hawai'i's airports and harbors combined.
A potentially worse threat is the red imported fire ant, whose stings hospitalize its victims. Solenopsis invicta is impossible to eradicate once established. The probability of this ant becoming a severe pest in Hawai'i seems high.
It has already been interdicted twice on Hawai'i-bound vessels and has just recently been established in California. The impacts from red imported fire ants would include serious declines in biodiversity of native invertebrates and vertebrates, and damage to corn, cucumber, eggplant and citrus trees, to name a few.
Nationwide, at least 83 human deaths have been attributed to red imported fire ant stings, three from incidents that occurred indoors. In Texas, damage and control costs for this pest already total more than $690 million each year.
More than 80 percent of Island residents favor "strict limits on importing harmful alien pests," according to a Malama Hawai'i study of public attitudes toward the environment.
In fact, support for protection against alien species was greater than for any other environmental issue. We need to invest in our invasive species prevention and control systems to save ourselves billions in potential future costs and reinforce our reputation as the world's safest and most desirable vacation destination.
The alternative is to engage knowingly in a game of biological roulette.
It is not all bad news. Several recent actions have been taken to make the connection between tourism promotion and environmental quality explicit. First, the legislature funded and the visitor industry supported an administration proposal to conduct a study on sustainable tourism.
Second, the Legislature mandated that the Hawaii Tourism Authority spend a minimum of $1 million per year on environment-related issues and that an additional $1 million be set aside for parks and trails provided that a minimum amount of Transient Accommodations Tax revenues are received.
Although everyone recognizes the contribution of the visitor industry on total tax revenues, this is the first time that the visitor industry and the Hawaii Tourism Authority have been made directly responsible for improving environmental conditions.
Another promising development was reflected in last year's conservation forum for natural scientists and resource managers, sponsored by the Hawaii Conservation Alliance.
Participants agreed that good science needs to be linked to economic valuation and public outreach. This year's Conservation Conference will be dedicated to the Year of the Hawaiian Forest (www2.hawaii.edu/scb/evconfer.htm).
Environmental and natural resources management issues are not just the concern of the obvious advocacy groups in our community. Hawai'i business owners rank public expenditures on water and natural resources ahead of those on security and transportation and second only to public education in importance (Bank of Hawai'i's business confidence survey, August '02).
We have ignored these concerns because we have not explicitly connected the environment's contribution to economic health. We have an opportunity to embrace a more comprehensive definition of economic value by making these connections and using the tools of government for stewardship, to help protect natural capital assets that generate economic gains.
We can begin to reform policy by thinking of the environment not as a "free good" but as a capital resource that will depreciate without appropriate care. The jointly held, public nature of natural capital makes this task difficult, but not impossible.
Just as many of us value services like National Public Radio or Television more than we show in our contributions, efforts to protect Hawai'i's environmental quality are underfunded. For example, the budgets of the state departments of land and natural resources and agriculture combined make up only 1.5 percent of the state total budget.
Conventional methods of economic accounting, e.g. GDP, focus on quantifying the value of the market economy, excluding environmental goods and services. These non-market goods can range from biodiversity to air pollution from motor vehicles, and are the sorts of goods and services for which we design legislation to attain better outcomes than the market can provide.
Previous policy action over the past 30 years at both the state and federal levels has reduced the number of conflicts between users of these environmental resources, paving the way for joint activities like the Watershed Partnerships and Invasive Species Committees.
New policy action should support these endeavors and focus on the lower cost path of stewardship of our native habitats and other forest, watershed and coastal resources. Without better information about the true productivity of our resources, these decisions will be skewed in favor of overproducing capital that uses natural resources while underproducing natural capital that produces non-market benefits like scenic beauty and ecosystem health.
Unless these accounting systems are adjusted to incorporate natural capital assets and the flow of benefits derived from them, timber will always be worth more than forest. Attempting to repair or replace the ecosystem benefits lost to a lack of stewardship will be far more expensive, if not impossible, than the cost of improving our decision-making today.
We all need to recognize the connection between the economics of present and future resource use and the health and stability of the environmental good. Irresponsible long-term exploitation of our natural resources will have disastrous economic effects and impinge on our quality of life — and that of future generations.
Members of the Natural Resources Working Group include Paul Brewbaker, Michael G. Buck, Pearl Imada-Iboshi, Claudia Hamblin-Katnick, Brooks A. Kaiser and James Roumasset.
