Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 3, Number 10, 1 October 1986 — What is Development? [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

What is Development?

By Poka Laenui (Hayden Burgess) Trustee, Oahu

Development! We appear bewitched by a word. In many, it evokes a sense of invasion, taking away another ehunk of Hawaii's body and soul. It brings anger and resistance. For others it means returning to work, more money to spread around — the knoek of opportunity.

Too often, it splits a community. People meet people at the battle fields — either at the work site, or in government board and commission rooms or in the court. Are we missing the point? Are we misled by emotional appeal? What is development? What shoud it be? Development should be a movement of our society from a present to an improved future. Therefore, to evaluate any movement (housingproject, tourist resort, etc.) to determine if it is a development we should aecept, we have to be clear on what future we are seeking. I suspect we share many more eommon dreams for Hawaii's future than we, traditionally on "opposite sides" of the development question, would expect.

I dream of a seventh generation future, where my line of descendants and yours will have the beaches as elean and as productive as when I was a child; a Hawaii whieh will not be hostage to multi-national corporations or other foreign interests in the orient or in the west; a generation who will know balance between material wealth and human growth. I dream of our descendants proud of their many cultural heritages and refusing to peddle away or in any way degrade that treasure; a people fearless in always aspiring for full control over their own destiny by controlling their own eeonomie, social and cultura! developments. If this is a eommon dream, why should we disagree so often over so many "development" projects. Can we agree on some measure of what Hawaii should tolerate in Hawaii?

I submit these five measuring standards: 1. No further destruction of our renewable resources — our oceans must be protected, our productive lands always kept productive, our human resources eontinually regenerating ourselves, etc. 2. Hawaii's economy must be diversified and made self-reliant. 3. Hawaii's cultural identity must be promoted. 4. Eeonomie growth must remain secondary to human development.

5. We should always have loeal control of our eeonomie, social and cultural affairs. With these ,five simple measuring tools, (perhaps others ean add more) we ean better measure projects and determine our tolerance to such plans accordingly. I suggest this to be a more rational approach, one avoiding the tragedies of community splits, factions against factions, and ill-will within the society. Such an approach should keep us in line with our dreams for Hawaii's seventh generation.