Advocating Traditional Values for Environmental Stewardship

On Tuesday, we have a talk by Ramsay Taum again. He was talking about engaging environments from the traditional perspective of the Hawaiian culture. It is an eye opener to be in USIE where we can get more understanding about the local community and what do they think of the tourism industry which the tourists won't know. The locals have realised that the current development of the state which brings in millions of tourist each year have depleted their environment. The total number of tourist in Hawaii at one time is larger than the total number of the local population. The tourists are not only using their resources such as water which are scarce in the island but also are damaging to the envirionment and produce more rubbishes. Thus, Hawaii is not self-sufficient right now as what they are in the past. They have to import their bottled water and foods and at the same time export their rubbishes.

Concern with the current development of the state and their future, the Hawaiian are looking back to their traditional Hawaiian culture which have a strong relationship with the environment.The lifestyle of the traditional culture have pictured many sustainable concept in their everyday life where they will always leave something for the use of other people and give time for the nature to reproduce the resources before they start to harvesting again. The Ahupua'a concept itself is a sustainable living concept. Ahupua'a is a system of system. It is about land and resources management as well as behaviour management. Each Ahupua'a are divided in a piece of cake shape from the mountain to the river so that each Ahupua'a have the same resources which covers from the jungle on the mountain to the lowland for cultivation and the sea for fishing and leisure. And each community of the Ahupua'a are restricted to enter and use the resources in other Ahupua'a without permission. Thus, they must be self-sustained to survived and the land division of Ahupua'a is fair enough to give the chance for each Ahupua'a to get the same resources. Their time is also based on the natural time as opposed by the artificial time that we use today. Natural time is the time required by nature to revive. For example, the chief of the Ahupua'a (a district) will go down to the sea and determine whether it is the season for harvesting or not. If someone defies the restriction to catch the fishes out of the harvesting season, he will be punished which means death. This is because the chief wants to ensure that they will not overfish and give time for the fish to breed again. Other than that, the traditional Hawaiian culture also believe that to get water, they must plant trees which is true enough. They just have a close relationship with their environment where they can even predict if the drought is coming before starting to ask the people to cultivate tapioca for the drought season. They just know what to do and when to do it. There are several other concepts of the traditional Hawaiian culture that are very related to the environment as well. Ramsay was also refering to planning which can be REAL. This includes several values and aspects that have to be consider which are Responsible, Respectful, Relevant, Ecological, Ethical, Economical, Apropriate, Accurate, Authentic and Local. He also stressed that there is a flaw in the system now where people who makes money from the nature did not pay a single cent to the nature. For example, tourism agency which uses the natural beauty for their marketing did not pay a single cent to the nature back which can be used for restoration and preservation projects. Instead they can make money with a minimum capital and make a lot of profit.

The evening session was filled by a talk from the Blue Planet Foundation. The foundation is actively lobbying for the State Capitol of Hawaii to enact clean energy bills which promote clean energy and reduce the GHGs emission. This include for all sectors that are involved in energy usage including transportation, power generator, residentials and others. Currently, Hawaii is dependent on fossil fuel power plant where they have to import the oil from other countries. They also have the wind turbine and bio-thermal powerplant but it is only producing a small percentage of the energy generated in Hawaii. They are also promoting the use of electric vehicles where they are only about several hundred electric cars already operating in Hawaii. The city council has also provided several parking lots that have the charging point for the electric vehicles but it is still not sufficient. They said that people are unwilling to change to electric car because of the insufficient charging point provided while the city council and businesses are also not willing to provide the charging point because there have low demand. So, it have become a challenge for them to promote the use of the electric cars where they have to persuade either one party to take the risk first and use the electric car or provide the charging point.