Over the last few years, I’ve traveled to several places with emerging economies. These experiences have taught me a lot about the challenges faced by people trying to get by under difficult circumstances. Two such experiences, though, really stand out in my mind.
While driving a windy mountain road in Guatemala, we zoomed past a man in the middle of the road who was holding out a gorgeous bright, lime green parrot for sale. It was hard for me to decide who to pity more, the man trying to make a living, or the parrot that had clearly just been captured in the forests above.
In Cartagena, Colombia this past fall, we visited a monastery atop a hill that allows incredible views of the city. As we were leaving, a man approached us with the opportunity to take a photo with his friend… a magnificent three-toed sloth. Immediately I was enthralled; the animal was so beautiful!
A sloth | Source: Flickr/clintjcl
But remembering that bright green parrot, I knew it was safe to assume the sloth had experienced a similar fate, likely being snatched from his rainforest home while peacefully sitting in a tree. By paying the man to be photographed with the sloth, I would be encouraging the act of taking animals from their natural habitat. When I’m traveling and constantly exposed to new situations, it’s easy to make this sort of mistake, even though I have good intentions of traveling responsibly.
Money Drives Everything
In travel, as in life, everything we spend money on provides somebody, somewhere an incentive to give us more of what we buy. We constantly vote with our pocketbooks. What we pay for lives on, and what we don’t dies out. It would be so easy for me to judge those men in Guatemala or Colombia and be appalled at their actions.
But they are just trying to survive, the same as I am. And while their actions have a more immediate and obvious impact on the environment, there is no doubt that my actions do more damage to the planet. I have options to make a living beyond trafficking in wildlife, and the simple fact of the matter is that these men probably do not. If I were in their situation, would I act any differently?
So Why is Ecotourism More Important than Ever?
Many of the remaining tigers live in zoos.
Throughout Africa, elephants are being slaughtered at a startling pace. Rhino horns are now more valuable than gold. There are only 42 viable wild tiger populations left on the planet. I could continue this list for thousands of words, but I’m hoping the point is clear. The time for action is now. If we miss this opportunity, the only place to see some of the most amazing life forms our earth has ever seen will be at a zoo.
Ecotourism provides the only sustainable solution to this problem. Surrounding each of these ecosystems is a human population that can be convinced of the fact that an elephant, rhino, tiger, or giant rainforest tree is worth more alive than dead. When you visit these communities and use your tourist dollars to reward conservation, you give the incentive for people to protect those newly valuable resources. You can read about an example of villagers protecting Kenyan wildlife here.
Governments, militaries, and wildlife rangers can improve the situation in some of these environments, but in nearly every case, the natural environment hasn’t been safe until an ecotourism economy could turn the poacher into the protector. What’s “big money” to an elephant poacher, after all? $50! That’s it! (?!?) $50 will save one elephant’s life. To me, that’s fantastic, because a solution to this problem is realistic.
After all, have you priced out a jungle or savannah safari in Africa, lately? You can’t even get picked up at the airport for $50. But if you’re going to spend thousands of dollars on the adventure of a lifetime, you can find a company that invests heavily in the local community by employing experts native to those lands. The more profits that stay local, the more vested the local community will be in conservation efforts. The environment isn’t just these peoples’ home, it’s their livelihood.
When It Goes Right
The Andean Cock of the Rock in Mindo, Ecuador
Compared to heavily deforested Guatemala (and frankly, other parts of Ecuador), Mindo, Ecuador is a success story. Instead of selling the native toucans, cuckoos, motmots, parrots, and other colorful birds into the exotic pet trade, the locals protect the wildlife and reap the tourist dollars that have started to flow into town. Some open shops or lodges, and others become bird guides. Much of the land is protected in a conservation trust.
Our guide, Irman Arias, spoke English and took us to all the best spots in the area. On a morning in late October, we paid Irman and our driver about $80 (he gets far more in high season). In addition to working as a bird guide, his family owns a lodge in town. Because of ecotourism, Irman’s living depends on the health of the environment.
Finding the Right Balance
Even when a local community works hard to protect their natural resources and benefit economically from their work, sensitive environments can only handle so much human activity. In Mindo, as more tourists discover the wonders of the place, there will be more demand for access to the wildlife, and more need for infrastructure to support all the extra people. Perhaps the Ecuadorean government, or even a local regulatory body, can control growth in a sustainable way.
On the Galapagos Islands, where there is great demand to see the many fascinating species unique to the region, they face the same problem. The Islands themselves were exploited mercilessly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and as a result, many of the iconic species have either been completely decimated, or stand on the brink of extinction.
But despite this, the country is working hard to conserve the land and fix the problems that tourism has caused. Through strict regulations limiting the number of tourists that are allowed to enter at any one time, and by levying fees on the current tourist demand, they are able to raise revenue that is allowing them to invest in island conservation and better protect the landscape from future destruction.
It is my hope that more sensitive destinations will realize the benefits of ecotourism in sustaining and improving their communities for generations to come.
Excellent article. I would have probably paid to take that photo with the sloth… now you’ve opened my mind.
Thanks, Lorenzo. And don’t feel bad, it isn’t always easy to tell if we’re doing the right thing. We can only try to think carefully about things and do our best… and learn from our mistakes!
Great article! As you say, tourism, done right, can save ecosystems and wildlife by providing jobs and income for local people, thus giving them an economic incentive to protect the wildlife. This is abundantly clear in the Ecuadorian Amazon where the government of Ecuador has deeded ancestral land to different communities. Many of those communities have turned to oil exploration, logging, and palm tree plantations for income, while others have created eco lodges and tourism operations (Napo Wildife Center, Sani Lodge, Huaorani Ecolodge, etc). Where the community has an eco lodge, the rainforest is in pristine condition, and the wildlife populations are healthy and even increasing. The community members have more money than they thought possible, and they are able to maintain their traditional lifestyle in their ancestral home. In the communities with no lodge, the rainforest is being cut down rapidly, and the lifestyles of the community members has changed dramatically. Tourism can make a positive difference. Thanks for the article.
Thanks for your valuable comments and examples, Greg. Any thoughts on why some communities turn to these less sustainable practices? Do they not know the benefits of growing their tourist economy, or do they perceive a different solution to be faster and more lucrative, at least in the short term? I’d guess that it’s a little of both. These are great things to keep in mind in places and projects to look for when you travel!
I just read an article that shows how sometimes, things aren’t always so simple. Could ecotourism help save the Hawaiian Monk Seal as well? The fact that the seal isn’t exactly an exciting animal, coupled with hundreds of years of mistrust between the local people and the federal government stand in the way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/who-would-kill-a-monk-seal.html
Thanks for this posting this, Cassie. I totally agree, and we just came across a similar situation in St. Kitts. We had just pulled into port, and I was already pretty tired from the other island visits that I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to get off the boat. The locals try their hardest to make an easy buck off of tourists by just constantly harassing them to buy their goods. Well in St. Kitts, we saw at least 10 different men with little capuchin monkeys! A couple of the men even had up to four monkeys all over him. They want tourists to stop for a photo op, and I just couldn’t believe it. You just knew in the back of your mind that they had to have gotten these monkeys in some illegal way, it made my heart/stomach churn.
Yesterday in Dublin here, we had made our way over to their zoo. And I know some people can really be against them, but Andy and I had learned so much from their signs they had posted. An Asian tiger can bring in well over $20,000 in the black market in China! It just makes me so sad that people find money more beautiful than that creature.
So sad that people resort to these tactics. And I agree about zoos. They have gotten a bad rap in the past, but today most of them have modern facilities do really important species conservation and public education work. The public needs to understand and appreciate wildlife if we want to protect it!
Thanks for writing about this important topic. It would be a great idea to highlight places that people should support to help the average person (not rich people who can afford to stay in the nicest eco-resorts) make positive decisions while traveling.
Hi Jenna,
That’s a great idea for a post!
But to answer your question in the briefest way I can think of, I would say that sustainability in tourism isn’t so much about whitelisting a bunch of “good” people or places and blacklisting others, but rather it requires people to think about how they are spending their money and to think about what their money is motivating people to do more of.
In that way, money is truly power. As you know, especially in countries like Ecuador, what seems like a small amount of money to us maybe actually be quite substantial there. So in these cases, even those who don’t consider themselves wealthy can have a huge impact.
But it’s the thinking that’s really the hard part. There are so many new experiences in foreign places that it can be overwhelming to process it all and really think about the consequences of our actions. If I’m in Thailand, why not ride an elephant? Maybe I didn’t know how badly they are treated an how my money just motivates people to keep on treating elephants that way.
The rich might be able to afford some luxury eco lodge and pat themselves on the back for living so sustainably, but the rest of us can do the same thing if we just think things through.
Happy New Year
Jenna, as to your thought about destinations, frankly I haven’t a clue as to how to assess responsibility of destinations and tour operators before you go, but it’s something I want to learn more about. There is so much greenwashing and I suspect that the legitimate certifiers are only working with bigger companies who can afford to pay their fees. In the meantime I guess we just have to think about ‘ecotourism’ as going beyond the branding as its currently used by resorts and tour companies into the more general “sustainable travel”, making smart choices and thinking like Kevin said, and the other ideas Jenna wrote about in this post: http://thisismyhappiness.com/2013/11/11/tips-sustainable-travel/
Cassie & Kevin, thanks for taking the time to share some excellent points on this important topic. I agree with Kevin’s comment above about it not always being easy to tell if we’re “doing the right thing.”
A few years ago, we spent half a day at an elephant refuge in Laos. We’d researched the elephant treks in advance, and had concluded that this was a respectable organization (there was a veterinarian on duty, other visitors we met had positive experiences there, locals were employed, and it was billed as rescuing elephants from the logging industry, etc.) During our visit, there was nothing that we observed that concerned us about the treatment of the elephants, but I’ve since read more about the industry and am now uncertain. Indeed we continually “vote with our pocketbooks” and it’s important to ask the questions you pondered when considering activities in which to participate.
Tricia, thanks so much for reading and commenting! Another thing maybe I should point out is that a lot of people ask the question, “Yeah, but what can I do about it?” My answer is, “A lot more than you think.” Each one of us has the power to make a small difference. In a large world, a lot of small differences adds up to something VERY big. But rather than preach to people about what they should and shouldn’t do, I prefer to show them how much power they didn’t know they had. Empowered, informed people can be counted on to make the world a better place. I believe that very strongly.