Sometimes it takes an objective view from far away to make people on this island understand that things here are actually pretty darn good. Frequent Kaua’i visitor Ben Beeckmans, who lives on Spain’s Ibiza island in the Mediterranean Sea when
Sometimes it takes an objective view from far away to make people on this island understand that things here are actually pretty darn good.
Frequent Kaua’i visitor Ben Beeckmans, who lives on Spain’s Ibiza island in the Mediterranean Sea when he isn’t teaching in Barcelona or traveling the world on business or pleasure, recently completed a study comparing Ibiza and Kaua’i.
His conclusion, in a nutshell: “Kaua’i is not perfect, but it’s near the top. It’s close to perfect in our world,” said Beeckmans, visiting Kaua’i this month for the 15th time in as many years.
“Kaua’i’s future depends on conserving its present model, not being led astray by economic pressures, creating an energy model of self-sufficiency with optimal use of local resources, and achieving excellence in the integration of the principal environmental vectors in the management of the island,” the study concludes.
As with other islands, there are similarities and differences, but a major difference between Kaua’i and Ibiza, a European vacation hotspot renowned for its night life, is resident and visitor attitudes about the need for environmental protection.
Ibiza’s awareness of the relationship of visitor plant development and environmental degradation came late, and at a high price, Beeckmans and the study contend. Controls on construction and land development are very lax there compared to Kaua’i.
And because of Kaua’i’s isolation from the other Hawaiian islands and its early emphasis on agriculture, as well as the deliberate concentration of tourist facilities along coastlines and in areas specifically designated for it, it is better off than Ibiza.
“Kaua’i in fact is fairly clean” compared to Ibiza, where one of the chief visitor complaints is lack of cleanliness. Both islands are dependent on tourism, with Ibiza actually more so than Kaua’i, hosting two million visitors a year essentially entirely during the summer months.
The Spanish island is slowly moving toward encouraging visitors during the non-summer months, but without much success so far. The emphasis on tourism has been to the detriment of fishing and agricultural industries, though much of that island’s interior still has forests and agriculture.
It is a third of the size of Kaua’i, with a resident population of around 80,000, compared to Kaua’i’s 58,000. Kaua’i the last few years has hosted around one million visitors a year, spread out nearly evenly over each month.
Kaua’i’s laws restrict development in certain areas, control tourist accommodations in five basic areas, while Ibiza’s zoning laws are much more permissive in regard to construction.
As a result, tourist accommodations dot nearly every available coastal area where rocky cliffs are not present on Ibiza. The Spanish island also draws a younger crowd that doesn’t spend as much money as the average Kaua’i visitor, who is older.
Part of the goal of the study, “Tourism and Environment: A Comparative Study of the Islands of Ibiza and Kaua’i,” was to create an environmental model which could be used for other islands and governments as a way to lead to environmental improvement.
“None of the places are perfect in the world, but some are better than others, and we need to figure out why,” he said. The study proposes a model of environmental evaluation of tourist destinations, with specific factors examined specifically for how they impact tourism, or tourism impacts them.
He decided to study Ibiza and Kaua’i because both are dependent on tourism, and are the two islands he knows best, he said. He sees the study as an important first step, and welcomes improvements and other fine-tuning of it in order to plan for a clean, orderly future not just for the two islands, but for the tourism-influenced world.
The main thing is to see what’s wrong with each place, see what’s right with each place, and to encourage taking the best things about both places and improving each by bringing those good things to each island.
There is a danger of rapid development on Kaua’i because of the phenomenon of large tracts of land in the hands of single private landowners, including the Robinson family and Steve Case, Beeckmans feels.
If economic pressures lead to those large private landowners selling large parcels to developers who would develop entire large parcels, Kaua’i could lose much of its current appeal as a place for escape, respite, from the rest of the world, he fears. Environmental degradation would follow almost naturally, he added.
He has the same fear for the thousands of acres currently owned by the state, he said. On Ibiza, he has seen it happen. Another of the good things about Kaua’i is the awareness among residents including governmental leaders of the importance of a healthy environment to a healthy tourism industry, he said.
Further, Beeckmans feels there is physical room for development of renewable energy sources on the island, and questions out loud why it doesn’t appear anyone is currently looking into that matter.
Ecociencia, the environmental sciences company Beeckmans founded and heads, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, as well as a smaller college on Ibiza, funded the study. It took over a half a year to complete.
Beeckmans, a Belgian who has lived half his life in Spain, holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences, and is a geographer, geologist and author.
He has created what he thinks is the “environmental bible of Ibiza,” and encourages development of such a document for Kaua’i as well. It’s sort of a baseline study showing how the island is today and how it was yesterday, while trying to project how the island will be in the future.
Planning, water availability and use, waste disposal, noise pollution, other pollution, cleanliness of surrounding seas and coral reefs, industries, population density, and other factors need to be taken into account, he said.
The study is available at all six public libraries on the island. Finally, Beeckmans said he is surprised that an island as small as Kaua’i has that many public libraries, and how many visitors and residents were present at each when he dropped off copies of his study earlier this month.
Business Editor Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
