Which of these two propositions strikes you as the more absurd:
1. The president of COP 28, the global endeavor aimed at Net Zero by 2050, is also the minister charged with achieving a 300% increase of oil and gas production in the United Arab Emirates by 2030. That’s when Earth needs global emissions cut by almost half.
2. America should adapt a formulation for Hawaiian sovereignty, which Native Tribes on the mainland gained in part, that’s consistent with American statehood.
COP 28 will and won’t disappoint on tourism
Although we can’t expect the formal “Blue Zone” proceedings of COP 28 to consider the censure of mass tourism as a chief factor in global greenwashing, back-up “Green Zone” proceedings will examine a wide range of questions free from oil and gas industry agendas that can honestly ask how leisure travel can become a source of emissions drawdown and learning. Conference demonstrators will further ensure that mass tourism gets no bye.
We can also be assured that the World Council on Travel and Tourism will anoint the UAE and Egypt where COP 27 convened last year, as green over-achievers.
The World Council foresees uninterrupted growth for tourism over the next 10 years that will reach $15.5 trillion in economic impacts and the creation of 430 million jobs, or 1 in 9 jobs globally.
A report in Travel Weekly Asia about the WTC forecast appeared earlier this month without any reference to vast disruption from global warming in Maui that was eye-witnessed by a global audience.
Not just for the travel industry, but for greenwashers altogether, COP 28 will expose the overplayed hand.
The missionary curse
Hawaii is one of the world’s most popular luxury destinations. Yet the culture of overconsumption is as foreign to Native Hawaiians as polytheistic culture was to 19th century missionaries who worked to eradicate its “heathen” practices that later zealots almost accomplished through plantation economies, militarization and statehood.
By 1840, some scholars estimate, the Native Hawaiian population had plummeted by as much as 84 percent, largely due to diseases introduced by Western colonizers. Native language itself was banned in public schools for 90 years.
With no birthright of the wisdom that made every Native an environmentalist, a government of occupation turned to its outsider backers to formulate a tourism policy as extractive as plantations for the cultivation of single-crop sugar and pineapples. Imports and willful ignorance would stand in for the depletion of life-sustaining soil and wetlands.
Too little, too late
Tourism was about job creation and GDP. Not about honoring community. Notwithstanding, Native pressures by last year had already forced reconsideration of how the Hawaii Tourism Authority misrepresented Native culture in marketing the state in favor of a different kind of agency that would prioritize compatibility with Native community first.
The change was forestalled by mainland-owned resort lobbyists, as I described in last week’s posting. The larger questions of expanded Native sovereignty were put off by the Maui fires, which led a state government unable to shoot straight to spin a series of conflicting messages about don’t-come/do-come that left travel suppliers confused about whether to proceed with Maui tours.
No surprise that major airlines simply canceled half their scheduled flights into Maui and that global media revealed the ineptitude of government and its electrical utility that prepared to declare bankruptcy.
The aftermath of the Maui fires has laid bare for everyone to see a historic truth about the ugly overthrow of long and benign Polynesian self-rule over Hawaii by freebooting American capitalists 6 generations ago.
Survivors demand their right to shape Maui’s future
Making fundamental changes to the tourism industry should begin with returning rights to Native Hawaiians and letting them decide how they want their culture to be shared and consumed, if at all, says Kyle Kajihiro, a lecturer at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and activist for the rights of Native Hawaiians.
“There’s already a model of this in New Zealand, where the Māori people have control over how their culture is represented and experienced by tourists,” he said, with an emphasis on mutual respect.
“Community leaders have come together calling not just for assistance “but also demanding an acknowledgment of our pains, our history, and our rights.”
Volunteer initiatives, under the banner of Lahaina Strong, are working for immediate relief but also to empower banner locals for the impending legislative battles. The Maui Just Recovery Fund, a collaborative of deeply accountable grassroots funds, stands poised to resource this long-term work of relief, recovery, and rebuilding.
Says Nā Ohana o Lele, a coalition of community members in Lahaina, “True justice doesn’t lie merely in acknowledging the climate crisis. Justice is returning control of public resources like land and water to the people. It’s about recognizing that for too long the strings of Maui and thousands of communities like it have been pulled by forces indifferent to their soul.
“It’s acknowledging that survivors aren’t just figures in a news report but the heartbeats of a resilient community that demands its rightful place in shaping its future.”
Sovereignty is the big question
To what degree and when depends on two factors: some adaptation of U.S. history with Native American rights, and the elections of 2024. Democrat control of Congress and the White House would likely achieve a fuller measure of sovereignty as soon as 2025.
In briefest detail, sovereignty across the century that began with overthrow of the monarchy in 1896 and until a Clinton apology for that in 1993, was almost always about less. And Congress had given itself virtually unchallenged right to determine Hawaii-U.S. relationships.
The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009 was a bill before the 111th Congress, introduced by and named for Hawaii’s then junior U.S. senator Daniel Akaka, that sought to address many Native grievances. Among these, regarding land and natural resource sovereignty that has been posed by real estate practice.
In 2006, the United States Commission on Civil Rights held hearings on an early version of the Akaka bill and published a report that recommended against. The report contained no official findings and its only recommendation stated in part:
The Commission recommends against passage of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005 “or any other legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege.”
The Commission reversed its position in 2018.
NOTES
https://climateactiontracker.org/press/uae-2030-climate-plan-keeps-firm-focus-on-fossil-fuels/
https://herbhiller.medium.com/what-happens-when-the-dog-at-last-catches-its-tail-aaa802da71da
https://beatofhawaii.com/decisive-maui-travel-rules-released-no-mixed-messages/ https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKKZGcGKSTsdJtMpgPRRkbcGXbLmXFkfncHfmPkszZMbVrCrQssxwHwjWLFkLbQpbVHB
html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIt%20might%20be%20trite%2C%20but,if%20at%20all%2C%20Kajihiro%20said
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/us/hawaii-tourism-impact-united-shades-cec/index; https://www.google.com/search?q=when+was+the+hawaiian+language+banned&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS951US951&oq=when+was+the+Hawaiian+language+banned&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j0i390i650.22335j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://skift.com/2022/07/11/hawaii-turns-over-tourism-marketing-to-group-rooted-in-local-culture/; https://skift.com/blog/hawaii-cancels-u-s-tourism-marketing-contract-with-native-community-group/
https://www.mauijustrecovery.org/; https://www.hawaiilife.com/blog/maui-strong/; https://www.organizingresilience.org/maui-just-recovery-fund
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/lahaina-hawaii-fires-justice/
