Closing Remarks
Professor Marian Chertow, Industrial Environmental Management Program Yale University
We heard a lot about the past from today’s speakers. We all agreed that we are unlikely to go back to the lifestyle of the 1830s. We saw that the industrial regime is vastly different from the agrarian society that preceded it, and we can assume that the future will be vastly different from the industrial societies at present. It is as difficult for us to imagine the future as it would have been for farmers in 1830 to imagine what the world looks like today.
We can’t assume that everyone will share a common vision for the future. But we can engage people through this process to help define the future for Hawai‘i Island.
There are two purposes for this long-range study: one is to conduct research and the other is to provide information for policy making. Our research will help us to frame the right questions, observe inputs over time, and provide insight into best practices for the future. This study will provide the range of choices that are available to policy makers.
As scientists we want to measure everything. We will build redundancy into our data collection systems and allow different systems to co-exist because we don’t know which ones will be important. Just as Keeling didn’t know that measuring carbon dioxide levels would be so profoundly consequential, it is very difficult to determine today what might be the most significant factors to examine for the future.
We will conduct a literature review to catalog issues on other Hawaiian islands, as well as those that are specific to this island. We will study everything from injection wells to coastal degradation. We will gather information on environmental and cultural resources from the local community, as well as from our partners around the globe.
We will be creating exhaustive data sets about this island to be housed in a centralized data bank. When policy makers want to make decisions about particular issues, they will be able to consult this data bank for information.
An agent-based modeling system relies on talking to residents and to decision makers – the agents in the system – to discover what factors would tip them in one direction or another. This process involves multiple conversations with information flowing in many directions. This kind of process provides us with an opportunity to help develop an informed public and to ensure that our government and private sector leaders become more informed decision makers.
Models are useful for elucidating our assumptions about the world. These kinds of analyses can help us to develop scenarios for how life could be here in 10 to 20 years. With our modeling tools we can allow the community to decide what Hawai‘i Island might look like under different circumstances, for example, with zero net inputs or with home grown fuel. This project will provide us with the tools to help us envision the future.