Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that a certain number of patterns are visible in the long history of Molokai and Hawaii, which together add up to a so-called socio-environmental calculus. First, because of the uneven distribution of water in an often marginal environment, the control of water resources is critical to sustaining life and to maintaining control of the political level in a competitive society. Second, the control of natural and human resources tends, where the environmental conditions for bigness (or resource thickness) exist, to become concentrated in a few hands and reinforces the tendencies toward intensification and stratification. The monopoly control of water and land resources exacerbates and drives the feedback loop of environmental degradation; destruction of common resources; and the decline of small, subsistence-based communities, further reinforcing intensification and the control of monopolists.