Ecotourism and ethics

by Belisa Amaro

Seeking nature and unfamiliar cultures, tourists are visiting the world's most remote corners in record numbers. No other segment of the tourism trade is growing as robustly as ecotourism. According to the World Resources Institute, while tourism in general has been increasing at a rate of 4 percent a year, nature travel is growing more than 10 percent annually.

Concerns about the harm tourists can cause to host communities and the environment are well-founded. Tourists may inflate local prices, increase pollution, render employment seasonal, use scarce resources, and interfere with local cultures and values. Studies have shown, however, that, when properly planned and implemented, ecotourism can promote the conservation of natural resources, encourage sustainable development, alleviate poverty, and raise environmental awareness. So, before signing up for a particular eco-trip, it's a good idea to make sure the choice you've made is an most ecologically conscious one.

Defined by the Ecotourism Society as "responsible travel to natural areas which conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people," ecological tourism is a term with considerable marketing power that is vulnerable to abuse. One particularly egregious example is a giant casino in Laos that bills itself as an eco-resort. Some well-intended projects have suffer from a lack of foresight and planning, exacerbating ecological and social problems.

Flying dollars
To make Americans aware of their responsibilities when searching for nature-related trips, the Ecotourism Society is launching a campaign called "Your Travel Choice Can Make a Difference." Supported by a number of environmental magazines, next year's ad campaign will alert ecotourists about ways they can help to preserve the places they plan to visit. "The main point is to make sure the money spent in your trips stays in the visited countries and towns," explains Megan Epler Wood, Ecotourism Society's executive director. "We want, for example, to encourage people to reserve locally-owned hotels instead of big chains such as Hilton. Nowadays, with the Internet, communicating directly with local entrepreneurs to make hotel reservations on the other side of the world has become easier," emphasizes Epler Wood.

Tourist dollars often do not stay in the countries where they are spent. Foreign-owned and -staffed hotels serving imported goods characterize the tourism economy in much of the world. The World Bank estimates that less than 45 percent of the money tourists spend ever makes its way to the local economy. In some developing countries, that figure is as low as 10 percent.

To make ecotourism a sustainable activity, local hiring and buying must be encouraged. Productive partnerships must be formed between local groups and trip promoters. "Responsible nature tour operators want the community working as partners, not as employees. They don't hire every high season and fire when things slow down," says Gary Cook, director of Baikal Watch, an Earth Island Institute project promoting trips to former Soviet-bloc countries. Cook and other ecotourism advocates know that locals need to be able to maintain substantial control over tourism projects in order to preserve their culture and maximize the benefits from it.

Mount Alkhanay, a Tibetan Buddhist site on the border of Russia and Mongolia, is an example of a successful ecotourism project overseen and controlled by the community. Locals were able to use tourism to prevent the destruction of its natural resources and rich cultural heritage by the gold mining industry. With the help of international NGOs, the community started a visitor program to this religious site. As a result of this project and the funds it raised, locals were able to successfully fight their invaders; last year, miners' licenses were revoked, and the region is now in the process of being converted into a national park.

The same happened in Chapada dos Viadeiros, in western Brazil. Threatened by poorly managed tourism, real estate speculation, and mining, the community acted. Small hotels, commercial businesses, and flower pickers organized themselves and demanded from the authorities a project to preserve the endangered wildlife. Now Chapada dos Viadeiros is a national park where many ex-miners work as tour guides.

Understanding the many implications of ecotourism is the first step in selecting a genuinely ecological trip. Advice from experienced and ethical ecotourism advocates can help you to judge the credentials of travel operators and to avoid being duped by phony green claims. Below you will find some questions you should ask tour operators before making a reservation. Some of these tips where taken from the Ecotourism Society web page <http://www.ecotourism.org>.

How committed with local conservation is the ecotour operator? Involvement with local projects is a good sign. Non-trivial donations to local NGOs is another. At present, the Ecotourism Society is still compiling and analyzing data from a survey called "Ecotourism in the 21st Century," which includes a sample of 13 small tourism companies located around the world. However, a preliminary analysis shows that 11 of them together contributed more than one million dollars to 60 NGO's over the last five years.

Does the ecotourism project directly benefit local inhabitants? The operator should employ locals or work in partnership with them. If a natural attraction injects money into the local economy and generates jobs, then it will likely induce community members to commit themselves to its protection and preservation.

Does the tour operator have a waste management policy? The company should have a recycling and waste reduction program. The conscious travel operator will advise you to minimize the quantity of disposable products carried on the trip and make sure you understand that no trash can be left in the visited areas.

Are the negative effects of your visit minimized? The tour operator should educate its clients about how to protect natural resources, interact with wildlife, and avoid the invasion of community members' privacy. Are the levels of visitation to fragile areas monitored? The number of visitors should reflect the capacity of the natural ecosystems that receive them.

Many ecotour operators recognize the need to meet the ethical standards implied in these and other questions. For example, the Green Travel Network <http://www.greentravel.com>, a large online resource for adventurous travelers, requires that all tour operators advertising on its web page fill out a responsibility form answering questions such as the ones above. "To be accepted as members of our organization and advertise on our web site, ecotour operators need to prove their commitment to the environment," says Andreas Kristinus, the company's director, "After they've been accepted we continue to monitor their activities through interviews with their clients."

By itself, ecotourism cannot save the planet. But, in spite of the challenges, it can serve as an efficient and practical means of helping to protect the environment. As the environmentalist David Brower says: "Better beer bottles than bulldozers." In other words, even with some limited negative side-effects, if ecotourism can keep the trees standing, then it's probably worth a try.

Belisa Amaro is a Brazilian journalist now living in California, and a departing (and missed) Earth Island Journal intern.