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Article Summary of "Hawaii's Water Wars: A Pacific Paradise Settles a Hellish Dispute Over a Scarce
Resource" by Krag Unsoeld
Citation:
Unsoeld, Krag. "Hawaii's Water Wars: A Pacific Paradise Settles a Hellish Dispute Over a Scarce Resource." Consensus. Published by the Public Disputes Network. November 1988. No.1. Pp. 1, 8.
This Article Summary written by: Tanya Glaser, Conflict Research Consortium
Public disputes over water issues in Hawaii has been on-going for many years. They
escalated in 1978 with the adoption of "a constitutional provision requiring Hawaii's
state legislature to protect, control, and manage the state's surface and ground
water" (p. 1). Due to pressure from different interest groups, lawmakers were unable
to adopt a state water code for the last decade, although several proposals had been
suggested.
Finally a councilwoman, JoAnn Yukimura, decided to try mediation. She hoped that it
would reframe the conflict by allowing the parties to move from focusing on their own
interests to being able to look at a bigger picture, and that it would allow them for the
first time to directly talk to each other. The mediation assumed the name of "Water
Code Roundtable."
The meetings were closed to the public, which reduced the pressure on the parties to
articulate positions to maintain support of their interest groups. It was agreed that
decisions would be made through consensus. Some participants believed that the success of
the mediation was due to the fact that they decided not to discuss very controversial
issues (water ownership and quality, for example), on which agreement could not be
reached. The result of the mediation was a 75-page water code proposal, the creation of an
independent state water agency and the enaction of a system of water-use permits.
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