0.cached.png
By Newsweek Editors
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
With his white, bushy beard, shirtless paunch and thick forearms, John Gray seems an unlikely target for a gangland assassin. Indeed, for 20 years he was just another obscure tour operator shepherding customers through remote jungle rivers by sea kayak, pointing out monkeys and rare birds. That all changed when Gray discovered a series of exquisite tidal sea caves and isolated lagoons about a mile off the coast of Phuket, Thailand. Stunned by their crystalline waters, delicate stalactite formations and exotic fish stocks, he launched a classic ecotourism operation, hiring local tour operators and giving them control of the company. He limited the number of tourists taken in daily, making sure not to upset the fragile local ecosystems. The tours were a hit, and word began to spread.
That's when the trouble started. Soon rapacious businessmen arrived from as far away as Bangkok. Eventually no fewer than 19 competitors had set up shop. "These places were absolutely pristine--it was like a time machine to before humans were on the planet," says Gray. "Now it's like a popular ski resort where you have to wait to get on a lift. The place is mobbed." Armed collectors of highly prized edible birds' nests moved in, claiming it was their turf. Tourists began to rip down cave stalactites as souvenirs. In 1999 Gray started receiving death threats from local ruffians demanding kickbacks for the bird's-nest collectors. Gray resisted--until one day a gunman pulled up and shot his local operations manager, severely wounding him. "I'm not going to talk about that," Gray says. "We're trying to put it behind us." But, according to press reports, he gave in and is now paying the extortion money to avoid more trouble from the nest collectors.
Running an ecofriendly tour operation nowadays is not always as easy as it sounds. "Ecotourism" started more than a decade ago as a dubious tree-hugger concept to protect fragile ecosystems by marketing them to governments and locals as profit-making assets. The goal was to develop tourism not by destroying the environment but by inviting foreign visitors to experience it as if they were natives. By some measures, it has surpassed the expectations of even the most devoted idealists. Tourism today is one of the world's fastest-growing industries; Francesco Frangialli, secretary-general of the World Tourism Organization, estimates ecotourism is growing "maybe double, even triple," the rest of the industry. In May, 1,100 representatives from more than 130 countries convened at a special United Nations conference in Quebec to celebrate the International Year of Ecotourism. Aid agencies were on hand to expound on its development possibilities. Nowadays it seems even tin-pot dictators, former communists and ministers of war have little slices of nature they think are worth visiting (and thus protecting); both strife-torn Angola and Mozambique showed up, hoping to plug in to the money train.
Read More on News
Yet with that tremendous growth has come a mounting backlash, and complaints that maybe ecotourism isn't such a good idea for the environment after all. Sure, governments now have more incentive to protect fragile environments. But indigenous groups from Indonesia to Brazil complain of being forced off them by ruthless developers. So many travelers are eager to get back to nature that they end up trampling it in the process. In parts of Nepal, hikers and campers have cut down so many trees for Himalayan campfires that the area is becoming deforested. There's even a burgeoning movement of anti-globalization protesters and NGOs that have set up their own campaign called the "International Year of Stopping Ecotourism." Ecotourism, says Anita Pleumaron of the Tourism Investigation and Monitoring Team in Bangkok, "has led to more environmental destruction, and harm to communities in destinations. We are highly concerned that frenzied ecotourism promotion and the U.N. endorsement of the International Year of Ecotourism will make the situation worse in the Third World."
There's a lot at stake in this debate. With tourist trips expected to rise from 688 million last year to more than 1.55 billion by 2020, many see ecotourism as one of the best hopes for development in poor countries and the only path toward tourism that can be sustained in the long term--if it's done right. If it's done wrong, one need look no farther than the slopes of Mount Everest for a preview of what's to come: years of accumulated garbage and discarded equipment greet aspiring climbers like decrepit road signs all the way up the trail. "We have to find a direction to ecotourism before any more damage is done," says Roger Wheelock, executive vice president and COO of the Canadian Tourism Commission. "There's been a lack of understanding about what it is. And there are a lot of tourist enterprises that have gone into fragile environments that have not adopted [any] standards."
It was never supposed to be this way. Ecotourism grew out of the environmental movements of the 1970s and 1980s. A young Mexican architect crystallized the pitch. On weekend bird-watching expeditions, Hector Ceballos Lasurain noticed that scores of foreigners were also traveling to the same reserves. So when private developers unveiled a plan to move into pristine flamingo habitats in the Mexican Yucatan, the architect began selling a new concept he called "ecotourism." "I argued that tourists would come and it would help the local people," he recalls. "I convinced the governor of the state of Yucatan, and it has been turned into a very successful nature reserve in Mexico. There used to be fishermen complaining. Now they make income as guides. This story could be repeated in many countries around the world."
Indeed it could. In the years that followed, ecotourism became the basis for national tourism plans. In Ecuador, bitter battles raged over Charles Darwin's famed Galapagos Islands, with fishermen at times spiting environmentalists by slitting the throats of endangered sea turtles. But when a national policy was put into effect to protect the endangered habitat, and the area was marketed, tourists flocked from around the globe. Many of those same fishermen now work as guides--or have been chased away with security funded by park proceeds.
In southern India's Lake Periyar, poachers and impoverished locals were gradually destroying the state of Kerala's ancient wildlife sanctuary, which boasts some of the nation's older stands of cinnamon and sandalwood as well as wild elephants. With the population exploding, almost 50 percent of the jungle disappeared in just 15 years. Then NGOs hired poachers--whose years in the jungle had made them highly attuned to animal tracks and smells--as guides and guards, and began promoting the spot as a tourist destination. In the past four years, there has been no known successful case of poaching, and more than 150 people have been arrested by their reformed colleagues.
The potential for other success stories is virtually unlimited. For many poor countries, tourism may offer the best hope for development. "Even a country like Saudi Arabia is opening up," says the World Tourism Organization's Frangialli. "I was in North Korea talking to them. Iran is working on a master plan for their tourism. Libya paid $1 million for a study. They all want tourists. And people like to discover the world, they are tired of mass tourism. And many countries don't have beaches. They can offer mountains and desert and unique cultures. Ecotourism is the logical solution."
Yet if something isn't done, ecotourism seems destined to become a victim of its own success. There seems no end to the exploitation of the trend: in the Philippines, Malaysian businessmen are already promoting an "ecotourism casino." Even naturalists have begun to debate what exactly ecotourism connotes. Take East Kootenay, British Columbia, for example, a 20,000-square-mile pristine wilderness area in the Canadian Rockies. The government there has granted concessions to six backcountry ecolodges, 11 heli-skiing and heli-hiking operators and scores of other naturalists billing themselves as ecotourists. A good thing, right? Tourists can get back to nature and develop an appreciation for the area's rugged beauty. Not necessarily, says Katarina Hartwig of the East Kootenay Environmental Society. She claims the local caribou population has plummeted from 2,300 to 1,885. Rare local wolves are disappearing too. Nobody knows where they have gone. But Hartwig suspects the roar of the choppers is wreaking chaos. "It's endangering mountain caribou," Hartwig complains.
Solutions to the problems seem a long way off. In a series of meetings around the world leading up to the Quebec summit, community representatives complained about being left out of the planning process and of the problems caused by environmental damage. The result has been growing support among NGO types and activists for devising a uniform definition of ecotourism that encapsulates both local involvement and a respect for nature. Some countries are already working to set up some sort of accreditation process for tour operators that would force them to prove they are ecofriendly. "Tourism is not a smokestack-free industry," says Oliver Hillel of the United Nations Environmental Program. "It is exactly as polluting as any other major industry. Ecotourism should be the response to that."
But how would such a system be enforced? Even with such a scheme, can fragile environments survive the armies of tourists expected to flood the trails in the coming years? To many it seems unlikely. Just ask John Gray, who readily acknowledges he has had second thoughts about his decision to make a foray into his "timeless" tidal caves. He says: "If I had known then what I know now, I would never have taken people into some of those caves." In hindsight, perhaps environmental groups, too, might have thought a little harder about what exactly it was they were trying to sell.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines