Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 3, 1 March 1995 — OUR READERS WRITE [ARTICLE]

OUR READERS WRITE

Wary of ecotourism The Dec. 1994 article "State, community explore ecotourism" raises some extremely important issues about ecotourism that need further debate. One issue involves numbers - both in dollars and tourist hordes. Loeal people, especially Hawaiians, ean all speak to the negative impacts on the environment, traffic, beaches, wages, and lifestyles that increasing numbers of tourists have brought. State tourism officials see the need to attract and increase the number of new visitors (and keep the old ones coming back) because higher numbers mean more dollars. But what, if anything, is the state willing to do to avoid the more horrific problems of mass tourism that eeotourism ean turn into when more and more visitors are lured to experience ecotourism's "different traveling options including adventure travel, heahh tourism, cultural tourism and heritage tourism"? Based on past state actions, if conflicts develop between the state's desire to increase visitor numbers and dollars against the preservation of Hawaiian culture and nature, the presumption is that the state will go with the numbers, and all that nice-sounding language about a "new approach - one that takes the needs of the environment, the eommunity and the indigenous culture into consideration" will go out to sea along with the sewage from Kewalo Basin. Lehua Lopez Alburquerque, NM