Ecotourist Trap

In Focus, No. 42, Spring 2002, London

The global tourism industry was supposed to become another casualty of the September 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. Analysts worried that airline groundings, hotel layoffs, and empty beaches would spell doom for a sector that, by one estimate, brings in more than one tenth of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). But just over one year later, this doomsday scenario has largely failed to materialize. In 2001, international tourist arrivals dropped by only 0.6 percent, to 693 million. International tourism revenues contracted by 2.6 percent, but even this decline was well below most expectations.

This result would seem like good news for developing countries, which have increasingly come to rely on tourism as a key to economic growth. For the world’s 49 least developed countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, tourism is one of few ways to participate in the global economy. In some small-island destinations, including the Maldives, St. Lucia, and Macao, tourism now brings in more than 40 percent of GDP. The return to business as usual would appear to be nothing less than a godsend.

Not according to Tricia Barnett, director of the United Kingdom-based nonprofit group Tourism Concern. Writing in the Spring 2002 issue of her organization’s quarterly journal, In Focus, Barnett notes that tourism development worldwide has become "so misshapen and skewed that it can result in the poor getting poorer, the marginalised more marginalised, and the environment depleted." Barnett is particularly concerned about one of the fastest growing forms of tourism: ecotourism, commonly defined as tourism in natural areas. This sector has grown by 10 to 30 percent annually in recent years, prompting the United Nations to declare 2002 the International Year of Ecotourism.

International lending agencies have embraced ecotourism as a development strategy in poor nations, particularly as the social and environmental impacts of traditional revenue-generating activities — such as mining or oil development — have come under scrutiny. The Asian Development Bank, for instance, is funding tourism training and infrastructure projects in remote parts of Southeast Asia — including Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan province in China — to help transform the region into an attractive cultural and ecotourism destination.

However, such initiatives seldom question who benefits from the proliferation of ecolodges, beachfront resorts, safari parks, and other ventures in the world’s most breathtaking spots. Barnett argues that multinational hotel chains, big-city tour operators, and powerful foreign owners often engage in unfair trade practices that allow them to wrest economic control from local communities where the tourism activities take place. These practices, including low wages and discriminatory working conditions, are reinforced by international trade rules that push countries to privatize and open their tourism industries to outside interests.

The upshot is increased global tourism at the expense of local environments and residents. In her article, "The Big Clear Out," In Focus editor Sue Wheat presents case studies from around the world of instances where residents — typically indigenous peoples who cannot formally document their land claims — have been evicted to make room for luxury resorts and other ecotourism developments. In March 2002, for example, the police removed 250 Filipino residents from a lakefront village in Batangas province, demolishing 24 houses and injuring 17 people, in a push to transform the area into an "ecotourism haven."

Activists can help ensure appropriate ecotourism development only by promoting respect for the interests of local residents, argues Claudette Fleming, a representative of Guyana’s Kainamaro people. She describes how her small community of eight families first struggled to accept its loss of isolation, then came to embrace ecotourism as a benign path forward, compared with logging, cattle ranching, or gold mining. The Kainamaro are content to share their culture and creativity with outsiders — as long as they remain in control of their futures and the pace of cultural change. For example, the Kainamaro limit the number of visitors to their community and require that all outsiders be briefed on cultural sensitivities, such as not wandering into neighboring villages uninvited. Unfortunately, such community oversight of ecotourism is rare.

Are ecotourists themselves aware of the connections between their pleasure-seeking activities and the wider processes of globalization and cultural upheaval? Margot Sallows, with the United Kingdom-based International Centre for Responsible Tourism, suggests that there is hope for discerning tourists — if they do the necessary research before embarking on their travels. Efforts are now under way to create a Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council that would independently certify whether hotels, tour operations, and other tourism activities meet rigorous standards for environmental and social responsibility. Setting requirements for an entire industry will be a challenging task, but at current rates of global circumnavigation, the effort comes none too soon.