FYI AND MEDIA USE (Please forward to all contacts) 11/14/00


Do We Need the International Year of Ecotourism?

By Anita Pleumarom, Tourism Investigation & Monitoring Team


The first flush of ecotourism is running into trouble. Claims that we can
protect nature, benefit local communities and also bring national revenues to
the South are faced with a different reality on the ground.

From Thailand to Belize, ecotourism has opened the doors to more forest
destruction. Indigenous peoples in affected areas have been forced out of
their traditional lands in some cases. Reports are also growing that such
"tourists" are illegally collecting forest plants with potential medicinal
value for the biotechnology industry.

So when the United Nations proclaimed 2002 as International Year of
Ecotourism, many NGOs who have been monitoring tourism impacts went on the
alert. In October this year, an international coalition of environmental,
human rights and indigenous peoples groups launched a call for a fundamental
reassessment of the UN Ecotourism Year 2002. They also denounce the lack of
transparency and failure to meaningfully involve indigenous peoples and
Southern organizations in ongoing preparations.

"We are extremely concerned that this UN endorsement of ecotourism in light
of all the fundamental problems related to the industry - in many cases
another greenwash - will destroy more biodiversity and harm even more local
communities," said Chee Yoke Ling, a representative of the Third World
Network based in Malaysia.

"I really think this is going to be worse than the launch of package tours to
the Third World," commented Nina Rao from India, Southern co-chair of the NGO
Tourism Caucus at the UN Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD).

The UN General Assembly had adopted a resolution (A/Res/53/200) in November
1998 to prepare for Ecotourism Year 2000. The UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the UN-affiliated World Tourism Organization (WTO) are to organize
activities and projects around the event, and one highlight will be the World
Ecotourism Summit, to be held in Quebec, Canada, in May 2002.

Critics argue the UN has given approval and is making preparations for the
Ecotourism Year, without proper examination of the nature of the ecotourism
industry and its many negative impacts on the tourist destinations. A letter
to UNEP's tourism programme coordinator, Oliver Hillel, signed by more than
20 groups from the South and North, says, "Too often, international
agencies have used the South for misguided and outright destructive
development experiments, and … we oppose the idea that the International Year
of Ecotourism serves as an instrument for ecotourism experiments in
developing countries, which are likely to cause more harm than good."

The coalition letter vigorously questions claims that the ecotourism approach
rectifies the economic inequalities, social injustices and ecological
problems associated with conventional tourism. Rather, it warns, such
developments have "opened opportunities for a whole range of
investors to gain access to remote rural, forest, coastal and marine areas",
and "more encroachments, illegal logging, mining and plundering of biological
resources occur, including biopiracy by unscrupulous and corporate
collectors."

In the letter, the groups also point out that "governments are utterly ill
equipped for the International Year of Ecotourism" and often "promote all
forms of rural and nature tourism as ecotourism, while frameworks to
effectively scrutinize, monitor and control developments are poorly developed
or non-existent."

Ecotourism promoters primarily target indigenous peoples and their lands,
ecosystems and cultures, and this has especially attracted criticisms from
indigenous and Southern rights activists. Deborah McLaren, the coordinator of
the US-based Rethinking Tourism Project that works for
protection and preservation of indigenous lands and cultures expressed
worries, "that much of what passes as 'ecotourism' is designed to benefit
investors, empower managerial specialists, and delight tourists, not enhance
the economic, social and ecological health of the host communities."

Rodney Bobiwash, director of the Forum for Global Exchange's Center for World
Indigenous Studies stressed the need for a broader vision of indigenous
concerns: "More than anybody, indigenous people realize that the discussion
of tourism must be situated within a larger discourse encompassing the
discussion of environmental and habitat protection, sustainable development,
traditional knowledge, intellectual property regimes, biological diversity,
access and benefit sharing, biopiracy and cultural property."

"Any discussion carried on without consideration of the cumulative impact of
all of these processes will not only lack credibility but will also limit the
opportunities for indigenous participation in the discourse," he said.

The Ecotourism Year is clouded with questions and doubts since its priorities
and objectives are far from clear. Critics ask, for example, what will happen
if this initiative suggests that all UN member countries should encourage
ecotourism projects in rural and natural areas and many
thousands of communities around the world end up competing with each other
for a share of the tourism market? "…who will take responsibility, when
ecotourism initiatives make investments
based on miscalculated demand and later face decline, local businesses go
bankrupt and
entire communities are pushed into crisis?" ask the groups in the letter to
UNEP.

Another scenario is that the event will encourage all holiday-makers to
become ecotourists, resulting in hordes of travellers invading villages and
protected areas, rather than staying in the existing tourist centres.

Surely, such development could not be called "sustainable" and would have
more undesirable impacts to add on to the vast problems already found in
existing organized tourism.

The letter goes on to warn that ecotourism programmes that are promoted as
part of the economic liberalization and globalization wave are likely to make
matters worse. It states, "As supranational institutions such as the World
Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization are pressuring developing
countries towards trade and investment liberalization, national and local
governments are increasingly disabled to plan and manage tourism - and
ecotourism - on
their own terms."

It emphasizes that local concerns are at odds with the interests of "the
corporate tourism industry, (which) aggressively pushes for non-intervention
in companies' decision-making processes to expand their business and maximize
their profits."

"As nature-based tourism is presently seen as one of the most lucrative niche
markets, powerful transnational corporations are likely to exploit the
International Year of Ecotourism to dictate their own definitions and rules
of ecotourism on society, while people-centered initiatives will be squeezed
out and marginalized," says the coalition letter.

With the services sector under tremendous pressure in the World Trade
Organization to be opened to foreign corporations, there are signs already
that tourism in the South, a major service industry, is eagerly targeted by
transnational corporations.
Meanwhile, the NGO coalition's concerns have also been discussed within World
Bank circles. One official, Kreszentia M. Duer, acknowledged that "if we
don't take a strategic position on tourism development…, small-scale efforts
for community-based tourism will always be overwhelmed by the powerful
interests of big business and the enticements of the big pay-offs they can
offer to government officials."

"Without organizational efforts…and a multi-pronged, strategic approach,
community-based tourism will tend to remain ad hoc, piecemeal, and micro,"
she concluded, adding, "The 'International Year of Ecotourism' will be little
more than rhetoric, unless these challenges are addressed directly."

The debates around the Ecotourism Year have been heavily overshadowed by
politics and a serious conflict of interests has evolved. Critical NGO
observers complain that corporate industry and large nature
conservation/ecotourism organizations have colluded to lobby for the UN
endorsement of ecotourism and now want to exploit it for self-serving
purposes (e.g. to get free promotion or funding for their projects), while
voices that question the interests of the protagonists are excluded or given
only cursory treatment.

It is conspicuous, they point out, that only certain environmental NGOs and
The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) have been allowed to play a key
role in the preparations - exactly those organizations that have been
strongly criticized by grassroots-oriented and indigenous groups for ignoring
local people's concerns.

"In our experience, large nature conservation and development organizations
do not respect (local people's) right," says a statement presented by a
spectrum of indigenous peoples representatives and NGOs to more than 150
governments at a meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity in
Nairobi, Kenya, last May. "For example, several activities undertaken by the
Ecotourism Society, Conservation International and IUCN do not respect the
rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples and local communities,
particularly in regard to Year of Ecotourism activities, and often threaten
cultural and biological diversity."

Initially, the UN invited all concerned parties "to exert all possible
efforts on behalf of the success of the Year" (Resolution 1998/40). But the
question arises, success for whom? If the charges turn out to be true that
only certain parties will reap the major benefits of the Ecotourism Year, the
UN's integrity and its proclaimed mission to primarily work for the
well-being of the world's poor and disadvantaged will surely be put in doubt.

Given the great contradictions and ironies surrounding this UN programme, the
already shaky image of ecotourism may further deteriorate, to the point that
the grandiose Ecotourism Year scheme collapses like a house of cards. Is it
worth all the energy and money that the UN can ill afford?

(ends)

For more information on the Campaign on the International Year of Ecotourism,
please contact: Tourism Investigation & Monitoring Team at
tim-team@... and visit www.twnside.org.sg/tour.htm.

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This message is forwarded to you by the Rethinking Tourism Project. To
contact the Rethinking Tourism Project, email RTProject@... or call
651-644-9984 in Minnesota.