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Multivocality of Ecotourism
Yet, most ecotourism proponents initially held ecotourism as a body of economic and environmental planning that was an alternative to the seemingly more destructive forms of Western development. It was an opportunity to 1) generate financial support for the protection and management of 'natural' areas, 2) create economic benefits for communities adjacent to preservation areas, and 3) continue the local support of conservation and preservation areas (Buckley 1994; Ceballos-Lascurain 1996; Lindberg, et al. 1996). However, the intricate ways these three components interact, and which component is prioritized, can drastically change the final outcome of an ecotourism initiative. Thus, ecotourism has the ability to be both multivocal and contradictory.
This paper will therefore, explore how ecotourism is negotiated, by whom, and for what means. Specifically, the following issues will be addressed: problems in defining ecotourism and its components; the efforts to establish community-based conservation or Integrated Conservation Development Projects with ecotourism; and determining the distribution of benefits or damages derived from ecotourist activities.
The origins of ecotourism have often been tied to post-colonial 'glorifications of wilderness' and fascination with 'indigenous peoples.' Eventually this became integrated into the consumer culture of the post-World War II boom,
"making ecotourism a cultural and economic practice for those more sensitized to heightened environmental destruction largely amongst the middle classes. But the romanticism and nostalgia for sustainable living and a widespread organicism became linked with the exciting tourist experiences to be had in adventurous journeys, breathtaking scenery, and often, trips to exotic islands" (Bandy 1996; 542).
This presented the convergence of growing environmental agendas and the postmodern consumer culture of simulation, gaze, and spectacle. Consequently, it is unsurprising that many authors interpret ecotourism or ecotravel as an attempt to break away from the urban environments (McLaren 1998), to escape the mundane and monotonous realms of work life and find simplicity, beauty, and nature -- the idealized nature as it existed before humans came to dominate it (Boo 1990; Lindberg, et al. 1996). Simultaneously, ecotourism is seen as an opportunity to mediate the damage caused by splitting the sphere of the natural environment from the sphere of human practice, i.e., displacing people from land due to park or reserve area establishments (Brandon and Wells 1992a, 1992b; Brandon, et al. 1998). The ecotourism industry provides the economic and political rationale needed to translate the philosophy of preservation and national parks into reality. Of course, the financial backing from international aid and lending institutions that favorably looked at tourism as a development tool and conservation strategy helped cement ecotourism as a dominant theme throughout the world (Honey 1999). Yet, the actual elements that constitute and define ecotourism are still hotly debated.
According to Shores (1993), the goal posts for ecotourism "are spread so far that every attempt scores a goal ... [and] continued use of all-encompassing definitions in the nature-tourism arena weakens the power of the concept, contributes to ambiguity, and encourages misuse and abuse of the idea." Out of 19 articles, I discovered that each author generated their own specific guidelines for ecotourism and how their study, and thus research findings, would be framed. This expansive and self-defined nature of ecotourism is highly problematic. If a clear definition for ecotourism cannot be agreed upon by actors in the industry then there exists little hope to 1) generate some system or guideline for determining the validity of an ecotourism project and 2) perform cross-cultural and inter-regional comparisons on the benefits and damages associated with ecotourist activities.
It seemed that out of the 19 articles, ecotourism was most often characterized by attempts to produce responsible, low-impact travel to natural areas, conserve or sustain the environment, raise the well-being of local people or attributes to the local economy, build environmental awareness, respect local culture, and support human rights. Honey (1999) distinguished ecotourism further by describing it as a purposeful and focused activity designed to enhance or maintain the natural ecosystem. This clarification would separate ecotourism from other ecotravels such as wilderness tourism, adventure tourism, green tourism, or appropriate tourism where the primary tourist motive is an experience, an immersion in an idealized nature or a specific activity. Meeting one or more of these goals has proven quite difficult when implementing an ecotourism project (Amend and Amend 1992; Blangy and Nielson 1993; Buglass 2000; Fish and Gunther 1994; Marien and Pizam 1997; Wahab 1997). Other problems that are still present is not all authors call upon all the above ecotourism attributes when defining their study, and more importantly, if and when all the attributes were present, many authors gave primacy to certain attributes over others.
This latter example is a primary complication that arises out of the amorphous and expansive nature of ecotourism and is aptly termed 'contested prioritization' -- disjointed convergences of economies, cultural lifestyles, political systems, environmental health, sustainable development, and social movements where one element is given primacy over another. Usually one component is adversely affected at the expense of the prioritized component. That is, conservation may take precedence over local resource extraction activities possibly resulting in local economic decline. The result is a positive feedback system that ultimately ends in degradation, analogous to the self-destruct theory of tourism that was first proposed in the seventies at a conference hosted by the Canadian Banff School of Management. Some questions that come from this perspective of contested prioritization are what exactly should ecotourism accomplish? Who should benefit from ecotourism? What is the role of the local community in ecotourism? Whose voices in the community should be amplified? Who should determine the course and nature of ecotourism? Is conservation or development the primary objective? What is the role of the ecotourist? Are the needs and satisfaction of the ecotourist crucial? A host of other questions and situations could come to mind; however, to avoid a laundry list example, it should be sufficed to say that these convergences between various actors and institutions are in desperate need of further analysis. For example, while a conservation biologist frets over the environmental impacts of ecotourism, tourist agents are focused on expanding travel programs and member services. Which should be prioritized? Is an 'importance hierarchy' even necessary? Or can one not exist without the other? Imagine the difficulties in having a successful ecotourist project without both environmental conservation and satisfied ecotourists.
The struggles to have one attribute of ecotourism prioritized over another are both vital and detrimental to the field. On the one hand, these struggles provide an opportunity to engage in dialogues with other members in the ecotourism industry, in the hopes that certain concerns will at least receive equal or possibly greater recognition and implementation than others. On the other hand, these struggles between converged fields and institutions can result in the attempts to have only one component recognized as the principal attribute of the project, whereby friction results and the entire endeavor is damaged. A brief account of events in the Costa Rican Osa Peninsula concerning the Corcovado National Park (CNP) will serve as an example.
The Costa Rican government in 1973, under considerable pressure both within and outside of the country (most notably from the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy), recommended land in the Osa Peninsula be appropriated for a national park. In 1975 the Corcovado National Park was created. Indicative of the times, the initiative taken for park development "was undertaken with minimal involvement from the local population" (Donovan 1994; 218). Throughout the late 1970s, under the guidance of biologists, the state expanded CNP boundaries to allow proper animal migrations, seed dispersal, and natural processes take place. Six buffer-zone reserve areas constituted the procedure (Sayer 1991). In 1980 CNP furthered this by increasing from 34,346 ha to nearly 42,000 ha, forcing an additional thirty farmers off their land (Cuello, Brandon, and Margoluis 1998). This process of land acquisition forced families to resettle elsewhere under the condition that they would be compensated for their losses. The creation of the reserves and the expansion of CNP turned many residents hostile to the ideal of national parks and conservation agendas. While the government received economic benefits from its continued support of national parks and conservation, these parks were simultaneously displacing body, home, and income for local communities. Many families are still calling for land appropriations or economic compensation; this has been a constant thorn in the side of the Costa Rican government. Additionally, residents are now hesitant to engage with or leery of recent regional ecotourist initiatives.
In this example, the establishment and expansion of CNP was a result of the convergence of global environmental agendas and discourses of instrumentality, resource management, and conservation. Global pressures for increased conservation were brought into the Osa and the natural environment, via the state, where priorities were placed and the local was negatively impacted. What happened was not only a diminished role of the local community or native peoples in the planning process of CNP, but also an historically created distrust among the local communities directed towards conservation, national parks, and general ecotourism occurred.
It has been shown that this process of establishing reserves and national parks and excluding communities has proven extremely problematic (Allen 1988; Brandon and Wells 1992; Cuello et. al 1998; Donovan 1992; Lewis 1989; Sun 1988). The results have ranged from forced and violent removal of farmers, miners, loggers, and squatters from reserve areas to a continuation or intensification of deforestation. Many governments and development agencies believed that these "natural environments of exceptional potential richness in biodiversity should be protected from further human interference at least until fully assayed. In practical terms, this leads to sets of strict policy prescriptions to exclude humans from protected areas and to strengthen the capacity of state elites to enforce those exclusions" (Guyer and Richards 1996; 6). Obviously this type of approach in conservation and park establishment is not consistent with ecotourist objectives.
The longstanding American bias towards strict wilderness preservation that dominated the international conservation scene has increasingly been recognized as unjust, politically infeasible, and economically ineffective for park establishment. Recognition of historic property claims, displaced residents, resource access, or local resource management techniques must occur (Agrawal and Gibson 1999; Brandon and Wells 1992a, 1992b; Little 1992; Western and Wright 1994). Development agencies and Third World state departments -- often under the aegis of multilateral financial institutions -- have implemented ICDPs as a means to recognize these elements and offer alternate economic opportunities for communities once residing inside or now living adjacent to protected areas (Fennel 1999; Mathieson and Wall 1996; Nuemann 1997; Olsen 1996; Place 1998; Wall 1997; Weaver 1999). With the apparent failure of many state led development schemes (Scott 1998), ICDPs have proliferated within the past few decades; ecotourism is usually a chief component (Belsky 1999; Brandon and Wells 1992a, 1992b; Molnar forthcoming).
As shown in the above example of CNP, communities adjacent to national parks or protected areas may contest drawn boundaries, especially when the locals have been politically, economically, and culturally marginalized (Alcorn 1990; Amend and Amend 1992; Cuello, et al. 1992; Mathieson and Wall 1996). The local need for food, shelter, and economy take precedence over most conservation efforts conducted at the state or national level. Friction between local and national parks are frequently exacerbated when land is appropriated (regularly without compensation) or access to resources is denied. The boundaries of national parks become vulnerable and resource extraction takes place inside protected areas.
While many of the ideas on strict park establishment under the heavy hand of the state and protection from human encroachment exist (Luke 1999; Peluso 1993), also known as the Yellowstone Model (Stevens 1997), "most of the current ideas about the community's role in conservation have changed radically: communities are now the locus of conservationist thinking" (Agrawal and Gibson 1999, 631; also see Breckenridge 1992). The integration of the local in conservation efforts is based on the premises that:
local populations have a greater interest in the sustainable use of resources than does the state or distant corporate managers; that local communities are more cognizant of the intricacies of local ecological processes and practices; and that they are more able to effectively manage those resources through local or 'traditional' forms of access" (Brosius, et al. 1998; 158).
It is through this involvement of the local community with ecotourist developments that proponents hope sustainability will be achieved and a more equitable distribution of benefits will take place.
One of the primary outgrowths from the juxtaposition of national parks and the growing reliance on local communities in conservation is ICDPs (Brandon, Redford, and Sanderson 1998). ICDPs were founded on the principle that if a program were to be successful it must include the knowledge, cooperation, and support of the local communities. The projects' aim is to promote socioeconomic development while simultaneously not threaten or deplete the biological or environmental resources of protected areas. To achieve the objectives ICDPs engage in three types of operations: strengthening park area management and buffer zones; providing compensation and substitution to locals who were displaced or lost access to resources; and encouraging local social and economic development (Brandon and Wells 1992a). It is important to note that one component is usually prioritized over another. (Summary sentence)
Theoretically the ideas of ICDPs are sound, however, numerous obstacles in meeting the conservation or development objectives have emerged. A pressing dilemma facing ICDPs is a lack in understanding social, economic, ecological or institutional characteristics of a community (Brandon and Wells 1992a, 1992b). To merge an ICDP with complex local structures, the context must be understood. "Although techniques such as rapid rural appraisal have been designed to generate large amounts of data in a short amount of time, they fail to capture many of the seasonal variations in ecology and socioeconomy of an area and the interactions between the two" (Brandon and Wells 1992a; 562). On the other hand, conservation movements often require immediate action to limit environmental degradation (Janssen and Mohr 1998). It is argued that waiting while baseline data is gathered may threaten the biodiversity and integrity of the ecosystem to the point of irreversible conditions.
Another obstruction to successful ICDPs and ecotourist establishment is poverty and human growth. This has been recognized as an unfortunate consequence of much of the ecotourist activities in developing countries (Honey 1999; Mathieson and Wall 1996; McLaren 1998). The increasing demands for environmental resources and land from population growth, migrants seeking new economic opportunities, and ecotourists have produced severe habitat alterations and threatened the stability of surrounding ecosystems and national parks (Perrings, Maler, Folke, Holling, and Jansson 1994).
To return to the Costa Rican Osa Peninsula, the very survival of CNP relies upon intact and functional buffer zones, without these CNP will become an ecological island. The issues such as conflicts with government authorities, an animosity towards foreign investment in the region since national parks are seen as a creation solely for tourists (at the expense of locals), and a negative attitude toward conservation do little to ensure CNP's survival. However, there have been recent attempts to integrate local communities into park creation and design in the hope that it will create cooperation between the disparate groups. Specifically, an ICDP known as BOSCOSA was initiated in 1987.
BOSCOSA (the Osa Peninsula Forest Conservation and Management Project) has strived to arrest the rate of deforestation in the Osa by offering economic alternatives for the local communities that resided in buffer zones outside CNP. BOSCOSA has primarily been funded by international sources and kept separate from the Costa Rican Ministry of Natural Resources. This is beneficial since the Ministry has been viewed as a protectionist organization with little concern for local people. To work effectively at the local level, "BOSCOSA needed to gain the confidence of local people and be seen as working first and foremost in the interest of the historically disenfranchised local farmers" (Donovan 1994; 221). By this point in history it had clearly been shown that parks set up only as biological conservation projects rarely succeeded when pinned against the pressing needs of the local community. People need food, shelter, and clothing; a seemingly arbitrary boundary will do little to stop an individual from exploiting resources contained in a park or buffer zone. BOSCOSA designs and key principles are: development and the consolidation of local organizations; emphasis on local decision making; provide only technical assistance; local organizations and BOSCOSA will form partnerships to gain external funding; and local programs and proposals will be linked with the larger national efforts (Dovovan 1994; Cuello, Brandon, and Margoluis 1998). The results have proved more effective than past CNP policies.
Another example is the case of the Crater Mountain ICDP where Ellis (forthcoming) explored some of the contradictions that materialized from the interactions of two different economic and social systems -- a capitalist one and a rural Papua New Guinea one. It is in this context -- the convergence of international language on conservation, development, and bureaucracy of commerce (through craft stores and ecotourism) with the Papua New Guinea non-industrial and subsistence economy -- that three basic characteristics of capitalism have emerged: bureaucracy, division of labor, and social inequality based on an emerging class system. West (forthcoming) also revealed changes in land tenure and social relations and dissension in local conservation support in Maimafu that grew out of the Papua New Guinea conservationists' unquestioned underlying "assumptions about nature, culture, and development" (ibid; iii).
A possible resolution to such problems is the full integration of local perceptions on development, ecotourism, and conservation into the structure of ICDPs. According to Ellis (forthcoming):
"rather than attempting to control and transform [local] notions, practitioners of conservation might engage more fruitfully with local perceptions of development. Setting out with the commonly held assumption that local ideas about development are obstacles or 'cultural constraints' which must be overcome can be highly detrimental to relations with local people, and hence the sustainability and success of [ICDPs]" (ibid; 20).
Additionally, local histories and social relations "should be considered as the basis for an informed dialogue with local people about how to achieve improved communication and greater involvement" (ibid; 26). To address gender differences, ICDPs should employ females in their field staff to deal with the needs of local community women (West forthcoming).
While these are starting points to engage local communities with ICDPs and generate socially equitable and environmentally sustainable development, there are still intra-community variations that complicate the role of and benefits derived from ecotourism. This will be explored in the next section, with a focus placed on "community."
In examining the rural ecotourism project in Gales Point Manatee, Belize, Belsky (1999) challenged the homogenous notions of community proposed by earlier researchers and stakeholders in the ecotourist industry. Their attempts to invent or authenticate group identities or traditions was part of a deliberate effort to engage tourists or raise the imaginations of outsiders, thus increasing the level of ecotourist revenues in Gales Point. The Gales Point project began in 1992 and within only a few years after its inception it was wrought with internal conflict and dissension. And while residents expressed solidarity when confronted with inter-community competition, they turned against each other when reductions in ecotourism income exacerbated intra-class differences. The importance here is that:
"attention was never devoted to analyzing community, or how community history, institutions, and social processes might affect outcomes on the ground. The conservationist imaginings of the Gales Point Community did not acknowledge differences within the community, how these differences could affect ecotourism and use of natural resources, local politics, strategies for pursuing multiple interests within and beyond the local community, or the complexity of layered alliances that extend across numerous levels of politics" (ibid; 661).
Similar issues on the politics of representation can be found in Adams (1995), Campbell (1999), Lawrence and Wickins (1996), Li (1996), Nuemann (1995), and Slater (2000).
The obvious presence of intra-community variations, factions, and differences can be exaggerated or pronounced due to ecotourist activities. According to studies by Campbell (1999), Lindberg, et al (1996), Slinger (2000), and Wallace and Pierce (1996) the majority of local residents were favorable towards ecotourist activity. However, there were some socio-economic factors and social differentiation that limited the desirability of ecotourism; this in turn contained a high degree of correlation with a lack of support for conservation or community development programs. Mehta and Kellert (1998) had a similar discovery with their research at the Makalu-Barun Conservation Area in Nepal. And Yu, Hendrickson, and Castillo (1997) found local support for ecotourism from communities surrounding two rainforest lodges in southeastern Amazonian Peru. Yet, in both cases intra-community friction emerged, often along class or economic and political lines.
The various conflicts that emerge because of unequal distribution of ecotourist benefits have prompted some researchers to suggest the need for stricter regulations on ecotourist activity and the local community's role (Campbell 1999; Lindberg, et al. 1996; Wallace and Pierce 1996). Yu, et al. (1997; 137) maintain that in order for ecotourism and environmental conservation to exist simultaneously, and not run counter to the interests of the local communities, "state involvement, including enforcement of local land titles and park boundaries, will be needed." Others fear that intra-community tensions and struggle for ecotourist revenue will lead to further damage of the environment, thus destroying the resource base of ecotourism (Perrings, et al. 1994; 6). The possibility exists. The survey conducted on the islands in north-west Mexico by Tershy, Bourillon, Metzler, and Barnes (1999) found that ecotourism had net increases of 7 percent, going from less than 15,000 tourists in 1986 to about 47,000 tourists in 1993. The growth has been accompanied by increased social differentiation and environmental damage. "Additional regulation may be necessary to limit visitor-caused disturbance and other negative impacts" (Tershy, et al. 1999; 215 emphasis added).
Perhaps ICDPs linked with ecotourism offer one of the best opportunities to merge local autonomy, sustainable development, and conservation. However, greater understanding of the social, economic, ecological or institutional characteristics of a community must occur. This requires long-term research and conservationist researchers abandoning many of their unquestioned underlying assumptions on conservation, development, and local communities. The problems posed in ICDPs are complex. Finding a happy medium in using economic development, coupled with ecotourism, to achieve biodiversity conservation is extremely difficult. Yet, the obstacles should not serve as a deterrent.
Some of the more prominent issues that need acknowledgment are intra-local variations and conflicts, questioning what are the exact goals and means of community participation in ecotourism, whose benefit is the conservation and development geared towards, recognizing that local participation is a time consuming process and the rushing of research and implementation can squelch local participation and end results, and understanding that macro-policies are going to impact local levels. This is a beginning to overcoming the difficulties in achieving a just, equitable, and sustainable form of ecotourism. Other factors will need consideration based on specific contexts and histories.
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Gregory S. Gullette is a Ph.D. graduate student in the Department of Ecological Anthropology at the University of Georgia with a focus on ecotourism, political economy/ecology, and ethnographic research methods. He can be reached via email: groundunit@hotmail.com
Eco Travels in Costa Rica Exploring Ecotourism
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