EcoTourism: Another Perspective

Susan Place, Geography and Planning (photo KM)

Once upon a time, in the not so distant past, the seacoast hamlet of Tortuguero in Costa Rica was virtually unknown. There were a few inhabitants of Afro-Caribbean extraction, but the place was not connected by road to anywhere else, and so thickly forested that getting there took real effort. Green sea turtles, however, knew it very well. They had been coming to Tortuguero for thousands of years. Only here did they drag themselves up on the sand to excavate nests with their flippers and lay their eggs, and only between July and mid-October every two to four years.

In 1970, the Costa Rican government established a National Park in Tortuguero for the turtles' protection and, a few years later, excavated a canal between Tortuguero and the larger city of Limon. Word got out. People traveled by boat to the park, mostly middle class Costa Rican families at first and, later, travelers from all over the world. Geography professor Susan Place was among the first outsiders to come to Tortuguero; her experience there and, more recently, as a member of a photo safari in Tanzania last summer, formed the basis for a stimulating presentation as part of the fall 1998 International Forum.

Is so-called ecotourism the boon to local populations and species it's been painted to be? At first glance, it certainly seems so, Place said. Local populations, sometimes struggling to survive in the modern world, get an infusion of tourist dollars, which provides incentive to protect the environment and help preserve the habitat. Tourists, meanwhile, get the opportunity to visit far-flung places where they can increase their awareness of nature and indigenous cultures. "It's a powerful experience, so it's easy to sell," Place said. And sell it, nations have. After the economic recession of the mid-eighties, Costa Rica realized that its most valuable resource was its incredible biodiversity, which it then began to market aggressively around the world. Now visitors come to the country by the plane load.

Not everyone in Tortuguero has been thrilled with the change. Some local inhabitants lost farmland when the park was established, and they also lost access to the turtles. A few entrepreneurs had better luck, though not for long.

Using slides to help make her point, Place showed some of the more dramatic changes wrought in Tortuguero by the influx of ecotourists. When Place began visiting the area in the early 70s, a thatched hut occupied a stretch of sandy beach that seemed otherwise fairly empty. After the park was established and the canal dug, the owner of the hut built a series of modest wooden "cabinas" she rented out to visitors, at that point still mostly middle-class Costa Ricans. City folk rented from locals, ate with locals, and when money changed hands, locals pocketed it. When Place returned in 1994, however, Tortuguero was practically unrecognizable. Landscaped grounds fronted a large purple souvenir stand built with outside capital in the dead center of the village. Wealthier tourists found the cabinas uncomfortable and preferred more sanitized accommodations. Many of the original inhabitants had been forced to leave; even the local midwife was gone.

"People who seem so distant and different from us are in fact connected to us through the dynamics of global economic policy," Place said, pointing out that global capitalism has gone farther and farther to ever more isolated places and then commodified what it has found there: nature and, not uncommonly, culture. This last was especially apparent to Place when she visited Tanzania last summer. In a somewhat rueful account, she told of her excitement at finally seeing the migration of the wildebeests, a long-time dream of hers. The tour was timed perfectly. All the large mammals she had hoped to see were there. The park was spectacular. But the local inhabitants, the Masai, weren't faring so well, she discovered. The establishment of the game preserve had forced them from their traditional hunting grounds and into agriculture instead, a practice they had always looked down upon. In an effort to maintain their standard of living, the Masai had taken to selling themselves as photographic subjects. The capping irony? At day's end, the Masai repaired to their traditional homes while the ecotourists holed up in kitschy re-creations of African huts—for $200 per night.

Tourism is one of the world's largest industries, with ecotour-ism having gained a rep as a more socially conscious way to go. Place's presentation asked us to take a longer, closer look at this supposedly "non-consumptive use of natural resources."
BAS