Naturally attractive
p. 25 · Read in the full issue
ECOTOURISM has become the travel indus try buzzword of the nineties offering an idealistic avenue to many struggling Third World nations, including Pacific Islands, to generate revenue while at the same time protecting vulnerable natural resources.
Focussing on the promotion of nature and often dubbed nature travel, ecotourism aims to attract a limited number of paying customers to remote areas with minimal damage to the natural, social and cultural environments.
It is based on an unusual alliance between conservationists and tourist developers and Sierra Club’s founder John Muir’s idea that people who experience a plate first-hand are more likely to be concerned with preserving it.
The Ecotourism Society says that nature travellers must not only go and see but must
also do that they must contribute to a sustainable future for the destinations they visit. Some tour operators make donations to local conservation projects. Others organise trips on which participants contribute time to reafforestation, construction or conservation projects.
It is still a small part of the S 2 trillion international tourism industry but its potential has caught the eye of entrepreneurs from as far afield as Kenya, Nepal and Papua New Guinea.
While general tourism has increased at a rate of about four per cent a year, according to a report for the World Resources Institute, nature travel is growing by up to 30 per cent. More than 300 United States companies sold wildlife and nature tours to five million Americans last year.
In developing nations, which are prime destinations for ecotourists, nature travel accounts for more than 20 per cent of total tourism receipts. It is little wonder then that Pacific Island leaders will meet this month to discuss this rapidly growing industry and its impact on small business develop ment.
The conference will be in Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia and is jointly sponsored by the United States Department of Commerce, the Pohnpei State Government and the Pacific Business Centre at the University of Hawaii.
Pohnpei is a particularly appropriate venue for the meeting.
It recently won an inaugural PEC award for ecotourism for its Village Hotel which offers a series of bungalow lodgings for a limited number of visitors. Another venture on the island of Yap has been singled out by the Ecotourism Society as a model for future development.
Yap’s Pathways Hotel has scattering of thatch-roofed cottages set on a steep hillside. The units are built of locally available materials and were constructed by local labour. This is another key aim of ecotourism-to ensure that profits flow back into the local community. Far too often they do not.
The World Bank estimates that even in the best of circumstances 55 cents of every tourist dollar spent in developing countries leaks back to developed countries. In less developed areas where large percentages of food, supplies and transportation must be brought from other areas, the locals receive as little as 10 per cent of tourist revenues generated.
Many Pacific development experts believe that for the small islands of the Pacific, ecotourism, which they prefer to call
friendly tourism, offers a way to avoid the devastation wreaked by mass tourism.
“If tourism in fragile environments isn’t conducted with conscientious attention to con
servation principles and managed properly, it
can destroy the very qualities and resources that originally attracted visitors to them,” says the newsletter of the Pacific Business Centre at the University of Hawaii, It is also a way of stimulating local business which has a better chance of providing small scale tours requiring less financial outlay such as bush hikes or bicycle and camping trips or reef dives.
Recently the Marshall Islands announced that it is preparing to promote ecotourism. Gordon Benjamin, the country’s chief of trade, industry and tourism, says his nation would rather have
visitors who are “ecologically minded, the more educated and married types and those who are more adventurous” rather than the mass tourism packages offered by many other communities.
US Greenpeace activist, David Rapaport, has just completed a study tour of three northern Pacific islands assessing the potential for alternative tourist developments. He says the adverse affects of traditional mass tourism are evident on Guam where scientists have measured alarming results indicating that coral reef reproduction is being undermined by the run-off of tourist facilities such as hotels and roads.
The tourismm threat to such small Pacific islands is “very real. They can’t afford to make many mistakes,” he says Greenpeace wants developers to study the use of alternative technology to reduce the amount of pollutants and run-offs.
It believes Pacific islanders offer an excellent opportunity for solar power, for innovative sewage disposal and with a little bit of pre-planning, the avoidance of plastic and toxic chemical
products.
Ecotourism is still largely in the hands of small independent operators who first led small groups into the outback while the
industry’s mainstream concentrated on marketing large
records. But mainstream companies and other operators are getting into the act. Last year the Thomas Cook Group, one of the largest international tourism outfits which in many ways epitomises the practice of mass tourism, said it was “joining the gentle tourism revolution.”
The prospect of mass tourism invading realms of ecotourism has alarmed many conservationists. They point to evidence of destruction caused by poorly planned nature trips such as in Nepal where the demand for wood by people on cco-treks caused deforestation.
“I’m concerned that all sorts of dubious characters are leaping onto the ecotourism bandwagon suddenly everyone is an ecotour operator,” said Vivan Newman, from the Sierra Club.
The National Audubon Society has warned that the frenzy of activity means that even nature-loving ecotourists could end up “loving nature to death.”
“Tour boats dump garbade in the waters of Antartica, shutterbugs harrass wildlife in national parks, hordes of us trample fragile areas ... ecotorism threatens to destroy the resources on which it depends.” □