The heart and soul of Ira Rohter's A Green Hawai„i: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives lies within these lines, "The people of planet Earth began, in the 21st century, to create a wide-ranging public discussion emphasizing the interrelationship between environment, energy, food production, population, and more democratic institutions and political forms. Hawai'i was at the forefront of this profound change in consciousness." Written in 1992, Rohter's eloquent and profoundly hopeful manifesto was clearly ahead of its time. Envisioning an alternate future for the Hawai'i of 2010, A Green Hawai'i is an important wake up call, demonstrating how far we are from where visionaries, like Ira Rohter, hoped we would be today.
A beloved professor in the University of Hawai'i's Political Science Department and a founding member of Hawai'i's Green Party, Ira Rohter passed away suddenly last summer, leaving behind a valuable legacy of ideas and clear visions for a better future for our island home.
The opening chapter, "Hawai'i's Future, Over Developed Tourist Mecca" outlines, in sometimes eerie accuracy, an imagined dystopian Hawai'i of 2010 in which, "Resorts, condominiums and palatial shorefront estates now front O'ahu's North Shore beaches from Kahuku to Mokuleia," and "The Big Island's North Kohala coast has filled with new resorts, and its hillsides are speckled with several-acre 'ranchettes' appealing to wealthy gentlemen horse-fanciers." Reading these vignettes, it's easy to forget that this was his imagined future, because much of it has come to pass.
Rohter's examination of the tourism industry in Hawai'i is extremely compelling. He explains that the majority of Hawai'i's tourism is based in mainland and foreign owned resorts, tour operators and travel agencies. Today we could add chain stores and restaurants to the list. This means that the majority of the tourist dollars coming into our state, as much as eighty cents of every dollar in 1992, leaves just as quickly as they came. It also ensures that most of the locally created jobs in the tourism industry are lower paying, menial jobs. As an alternative scenario, Rohter suggests a shift to smaller, decentralized, worker or community owned tourism that entails more bed and breakfasts and smaller, locally owned tour operators who engage in a more culturally sensitive type of tourism, which respects the beauty and history of Hawai'i.
The true meat of Rohter's vision lies in his detailed delineation of the preferred future that "could be" for the Hawai'i of 2010. Using the three areas of Waialua, Palolo and Kapolei as examples of farming, urban and eco-village communities to paint the vision of a green Hawai'i, Rohter imagines diverse, self-reliant economies with community-based governance, affordable housing, local thriving agricultural communities, holistic education and human scale tourism in fine detail. He clearly points out that all of his ideas and his idealism are grounded in real-world programs, systems and societies that already exist in various parts of the world.
While most of the book will advance ideas familiar to those in the green movement today, Ira Rohter's dedication to the idea of participatory democracy is one that has not been as widely discussed of late. Rohter demonstrates convincingly that it will take a true participatory democracy to enact the positive and forward thinking changes that we as a society wish to see in the world. It will take "ordinary citizens" in a process of direct democracy to shift the way we live to a better future. This is truly a paradigm shift from the way our democracy currently operates.
In closing, Ira Rohter envisions, "In both the State and the Hawaiian Nation, in 2010, truly: The life of the land continues now that things have been set right again. Ua mau ke ea o ka 'aina i ka pono." In 2010, it seems that we have not lived up to Rohter's ideal. And yet, we can still learn much from his visionary ideas in our earnest quest to build a sustainable Hawai'i, one that truly speaks to a future where Hawai'i is balanced and in harmony with the natural world.