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Ecotourism May Be Travel Field's Wave of the Future
November 2005
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Ecotourism travel operations that bring people to exotic lands while helping to conserve those lands and improve the well-being of local residents now makes up a $77 billion market in the United States alone. A panel of experts in the field told listeners at the Stanford Graduate School of Business recently that ecotourism is the fastest growing portion of the tourism industry a robust area for entrepreneurs, nonprofit professionals, and philanthropists alike who wish to make a mark by helping people make less of a mark all around the world.
The past decade has seen the birth of partnerships between indigenous communities, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations that are giving local people more control over their lands and livelihoods, said William Durham, professor of anthropological sciences at Stanford. "The key elements to making such a community-based tourism operation work," he told listeners at the 13th annual Net Impact Conference, "are a unique natural attraction, a local population that knows the region well, and outsiders who can bring capital, business knowledge, and market access."
Posadas Amazonas Lodge in southeast Peru is one of 150 such enterprises currently in the Americas, said Durham. A lodge and expedition center, Posadas capitalizes on the area's special natural wonder: a spectacular gathering of brilliantly colored macaws and parrots that arrive to lick the clay each morning at a local river. At Posadas, he said, local residents hammered out a legal partnership with business owners that channels 60 percent of the profits from the center to the local community and gives them 50 percent control of the management. "By 2017, the entire operation will belong to the residents," Durham said.
The lodge is a good example of a "triple bottom line" business, Durham said: It makes money while helping preserve the environment and enhance the local economic picture. On the environmental front, the presence of the lodge has resulted in less hunting and clearing of the rainforest in the region, he reported. Socially, it has benefited the community by funding local health, educational, and economic enterprises. It also has given indigenous people the opportunity to gain business skills through managing the organization and has helped local artisans make a living off of tourist purchases. Importantly, the operation also has given local residents control of their own destiny and renewed interest in their own traditions.
Members of the audience expressed concern whether ecotourism in fact may erode local cultures, promote unhealthy dependence on tourism, and create economic distortions that lead to rivalries and inequities within local communities. Countered Wendy Wood, executive director of Friends of Africa Foundation: "The key is making sure there is community control."
Wood described the new field of travel philanthropy that has emerged out of ecotourism, as travelers with funds to spare have developed ties to their favorite destinations. Travel organizations such as the safari company Conservation Corporation Africa channel donations toward good works in the areas in which they operate, she said. Her Friends of Africa Foundation works with the philanthropic travel community and others to help sustain Africa's wildlife heritage through empowering its people. "We've always had relationships with community development forums and tribal communities to direct tourist dollars so that they don't go to things the tourist may be interested in but are actually low priorities locally," Wood said.
Martha Honey, who has written extensively on ecotourism and now is executive director of the Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Washington, D.C., described recent industry efforts to develop standards and certifications to help travelers discern the truly socially minded operations from what she called "ecotourism 'lite.'" Acknowledging that when done poorly ecotourism can destroy both nature and culture, she said, "No matter how tourism is conducted, it changes things. Certain areas do need to be kept off limits. The question is: Who decides those limits? Local people should be able to say no to tourism or to articulate the terms of any agreement." At its best, she affirmed, ecotourism has the potential to become a powerful force in the long term for sustainable development and the preservation of the planet.
—Marguerite Rigoglioso