The long-term discussion regarding global warming, sea level rise, our eroding beaches and threat to Hawaii’s shoreline residences is complicated, and is conflicted by the issues of the science and property rights. These are some precedents to consider:

>> The Netherlands for centuries has carved out its country by constructing dikes that hold back the sea, draining the wetlands using windmills to pump out the seawater and then building their farms and towns. This windmill technology has also served as an example for modern day energy producing turbine windmills. Seems reasonable on the part of a nation to want to have land on which to exist. Fair enough.

>> The Daniel K. Inouye International Airport has a runaway that was built on a reef, a not insignificant project, and which is today indispensable for Hawaii to accommodate the air traffic that sustains our visitor industry, whether you like it or not. If that project were proposed today, it might never be built if the environmental arguments outweighed the economic ones. Fair enough.

>> Waikiki Beach occasionally benefits from “sand restoration” projects in which sand which might have once been on the shore has migrated offshore (due to natural cyclical changes, and possibly global climate change effects) is mined and returned to Waikiki Beach to keep the beach wide enough to accommodate our kamaaina and visitors. Fair enough.

We invest our taxes to provide many services for our communal benefit — to mow the grass in our parks and schools, to build new roads and repave them when they wear. When it rains, we open an umbrella, and do not just say its nature and I will get wet. Fair enough.

A reasonable person might ask, Why is it legal and allowed that sand is mined offshore and spread on the beaches of Waikiki to favor a specific industry and property owners, while other landowners are supposed to simply accept the erosion of oceanfront lands they live on and cede their chosen places in which they live?

There is a difference between revering and protecting nature versus fatalistically yielding to it, and all humanity has a responsibility to minimize our impact on the planet and protect what nature provides, but humans exist with a consciousness and rights apart from nature itself, and we would be foolish and self-destructive to not recognize when we should affect nature in order to preserve our lives and our rights so long as it does not harm or degrade nature, and the shoreline preservation is one such example.

The same principle that is used in Waikiki, mine sand offshore and pump or barge it back to nearby shores and redistribute it to maintain our beaches and properties should be applied, and in the process, we protect one of our prime assets that make our islands a destination of preference and the rights of our property owners.

Further, because this need is islandwide (or statewide), a program of sand replenishment could be formalized into the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, and a system created that regularly addresses the need, wherever it may be. Ideally, Hawaii could develop a program and technology that would make beach preservation, replenishment and restoration an ongoing function, possibly developing a combination of machines that make the system more routine and economical. Maintaining our sandy beaches can be like cutting the grass of our parks, but we do have to address the mentality of balance between protecting nature versus accepting being fatalistic victims of it. Fair enough?

Gary Kawakami is a design professional and author of two novels, “Ke ola ‘aina: A Story of the Pacific” and “The Second Son: In the Shadow Between Faith and Science.”