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Hawaii’s World
THE federally funded East-West Center sits restfully on a corner of the campus of the University of a Hawaii at Manoa, yet has a surprising reach beyond our shores. Center enjoys 40 years
of influenceIt will talk about this Friday at a dinner kicking off its 40th anniversary celebrations.
The center is not big in the federal budget -- only $12.5 million a year at present with a staff of 125 including 30 scholars. However, it has special advantages to make it worthwhile to America. It also supplements its budget with research contracts and grants.
It helps America be an honest broker to both Asia and the Pacific, including the Pacific Islands, whose leaders are meeting here this week.
Hawaii's multi-cultural background contributes to relaxed informality in aloha-shirted meetings here. North and South Korea had some of their first interchanges at Jefferson Hall.
Those who know the center in Asia and around the Pacific mostly see it as a welcome contributor. It has 40,000 "alumni" who attended meetings or studied here. They are spread through the region and the United States -- usually with a lot of aloha for the center, and often in positions of influence. They can provide each other with contacts when traveling. Journalists who studied here find this particularly valuable. Having American and Asian journalists interchange with each other is one of the center's strong programs.
Charles J. Johnson, coordinator of environmental studies and research, is an example of the honest broker role the center can play, in part because of its reputation and network.
Johnson is working to call international attention to the insidious role of coal-burning as "the No. 1 preventable health problem in Asia."
Using World Bank data, he has constructed color maps of where the pollution is worst -- China -- and how it will spread across borders if China and its neighbors continue to increase coal use as planned. Even the U.S. can be affected by pollution carried on upper air winds. Johnson says the problem thus is global, a significant factor in global warming.
Johnson is calling his maps and graphs to the attention of scholars and government officials, and offering the East-West Center as an intermediary in seeking solutions. The maps are gripping, particularly those that show the potential spread.
I worked for a year in Pittsburgh before World War II. Thus I know how sooty skies fill handkerchiefs with soot when you blow your nose and require you to use special eraser-like scrubbers on walls every few months (pre-air conditioning) to keep them from turning black. Beijing is as bad or worse.
HAPPILY, Pittsburgh's key political leader, David Lawrence, and an outspoken Pittsburgh Press, which I proudly reported for, helped force cleaner methods on the steel industry. The industry only then discovered clean-burning of coal also was actually more efficient. Johnson also touts renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power. We can wish for Pittsburgh-like progress for Asia with the East-West Center as one of the early bell-ringers.
Johnson thinks we in Honolulu should do more to tout that we have the world's cleanest air city. We have, for instance, some of America's oldest people. Johnson thinks we could be a great host for clean energy and environmental education and workshops. He thinks we could well be a base for providing clean energy services to Asia. In the meantime he will be something of a Johnny Appleseed traveling Asia with his maps.
East-West Center
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.