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For those who are familiar with regional perspectives on tourism,
it may be surprising that South
Africa and Mexico
have more in common with each other than with their neighbors (for
example, comparing Mexico to Nicaragua or South Africa to Uganda).
Both South Africa and Mexico are large countries and are known
as major international destinations and have noticeable domestic
tourism potential with the disposable income and travel interest
of relatively large urban middle and upper classes. Both countries
have similar overall economic development levels with tourism a
growing sector, important for job creation and income generation.
Both countries have great beaches. Both have spoilt some - yet
luckily not all - of them for the nature tourists by lining them
with huge hotels. Both have deserts, forests and mountains ranging
both very remote and practically in the city like Cape
Town's Table Mountain or Chapultepec Park inside Mexico
City.
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SUSTAINABILITY AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
As a nature destination both countries offer high levels of biodiversity
with diverse habitats and endemic species. Yet both also have impoverished
local communities that feel that they do not reap the benefits from
their natural resources.
In addition to the natural assets, many communities have a cultural
heritage (due to large indigenous populations) of interest to national
and international tourists.
Both countries strive toward increasing the number of tourists and
tourist dollars as a formal development strategy, though this may
threaten the actual conservation of nature and there may be complications
with the distribution of this income (i.e. what benefits do the
actual local communities adjacent to the nature resource receive?).
These points are essential to understanding ecotourism. This term's
definition has caused wide debate (see: Ron Mader's Defining
ecotourism and John Shores' The
Challenge of Ecotourism), but in this article is used as: travel
to a natural location in a sustainable way, with a conservation
element and visible benefits for and participation of the local
community.
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NATURE TOURISM
Both South Africa and Mexico have marketable species like the Big
Five in South Africa (lion, elephant, rhino, leopard, buffalo with
the whale as a new number six) and in Mexico the sea turtles, whales,
butterflies, flamingos and jaguars.
In fact both countries use nature as a draw card for international
tourists, yet often in a superficial way, by simply using these
animals as symbols.
The concept of "sun and beach" tourism could be conceived
as pure nature, yet the connotations of beach holidays have become
linked to luxury resorts with excessive infrastructure in which
nature is little more than an exotic back-drop.
A game drive sounds intrinsically "eco", yet merely seeing
a spectacular wild animal while ignoring local communities can not
be called ecotourism. If operations are not run with an eye toward
sustainability, then today's tourists are merely witnessing nature
before it disappears.
There are also many established conservation and NGO groups and
an existing debate on ecotourism and the internet is full of ecotourism
links for both countries.
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AUTHOR
Gerhard Buttner has
worked as geographer, tourist guide and ecotourism consultant and
occasional freelance writer in South Africa, England and Mexico.
He tries to be an ecotourist (in various countries) as often as
possible and lives in Oaxaca,
Mexico. |
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