To What Extent Has Ecotourism Contributed To Environmental Protection And National Development At Large

In spite of this increasing popularity in terms of participation, studies and research, many frequently get the definition and the concept of tourism wrong or better still accurately know what it is. This situation of variance due to the coloring by the background of the definition makers is vindicated by Morley (1990) and has tried in his article to find how best this disparity could be harmonized. The meaning of tourism is so diverse even to professionals that it becomes necessary to give a definition only in context. Many define it in the context of the activity and others do so considering the industry itself whilst a few combine the activity and the industry. In this article, the meaning of tourism is limited only to the activity. The National Statistical Coordination Board defines tourism as that which comprises of ‘activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited’. This is in agreement with the definition that tourism is ‘the all-embracing term for the movement of people to destinations away from their place of residence for any reason other than following an occupation, remunerated from within the country visited, for a period of 24 hours or more’. Inferring from the fact that the definition of tourism has deep roots in the reasons for traveling and being cognizant that people travel for various reasons, it is not surprising that there are numerous forms of tourism. Among the list are adventure tourism, cultural tourism, heritage tourism, water tourism, sustainable and ecotourism to mention a few.
In time past tourist just as now have been making trips to nature areas for recreation. This concept in recent years has been developing gradually. Today there has been much regard and special intentions for such travels and or tours. This has now been given the lingo ecotourism. “Ecotourism can be simply though of as tourism and recreation that is both nature-based and sustainable. By the 1980 ecotourism was unknown until around 1988 when the popularity was given birth to. This growth was as a result of concerns of the impact of mass tourism on the environment. By the middle of the 1990s ecotourism has become a catchphrase. The growth of this aspect of tourism has not left behind the expansion in the number of ecotourism operators. The activity has reproduced fire brands of specialist tour wholesalers and retail travel agents who are in charge of marketing the products.
In this article the extent to which ecotourism has contributed to environmental protection and national development will be discussed.
Ecotourism has recently made news in all circles. Some tour operators have even taken advantage of the lingo for sales strategies. One may wonder what is in the name ‘ecotourism’ which is creating this popularity. Is it the word ‘eco’? Probably, because of the much awareness created for environmental consciousness by the United Nation and nature and environmental lovers, it seems like every business is trying to attach the word eco to everything either for selfish gains, to win the hearts of people, for solidarity etc.
The Ecotourism association defines ecotourism as a “responsible travel to natural areas which conserves the environment and improves the welfare of the local people”. This definition leaves much question unanswered. What is responsible travel? Can the travels really conserve the environment and how can that be evaluated? Is the welfare of the local people improved directly or indirectly by such trips?
If the answer to the above questions could all be positive, then it would be easier to say there is ecotourism and that ecotourism is contributing positively to environmental protection and national development. Nature/ecotourism has been classified into the following

Each of these groups allows us to understand what is happening in the tourism world, what people stand for and what their intentions are.
Sometimes people confuse ecotourism with sustainable tourism. Many people use it interchangeably. It is therefore important to mention here that Sustainable tourism does not consist of only ecotourism, but rather any other form of tourism that does not reduce the availability of resources and does not inhibit future travelers from enjoying the same experience. In short it is making use of the available tourism resources without jeopardizing the use of the same resources for the future generation. Because ecotourism by itself (in principle) seems sustainable without any external efforts, it is easy to refer to it as sustainable tourism. So in the opinion of this writer, the main difference between ecotourism and any other tourism form that is sustainable is the fact that ecotourism is by itself be sustainable whilst the others need extra efforts to be sustainable and that eco tourism focuses only on natural areas.
It seems the appearance of the phrase natural areas is the main engine giving ecotourism the much enjoyed publicity as compared to the others. The question now is, is ecotourism being achieved? How responsible are peoples traveling to natural areas? How is our nature protected? Are the locals benefiting from the associated travels? And how is ecotourism contributing to environmental protection and national development.
These questions will be the central questions for this paper.
For ecotourism to be achieved, one expects to see a reduction of the negative impact that tourism is creating to the environment locally, a creation of a good environmental awareness, generation of finances that can be used for the conservation and protection of the natural areas and a form of benefit in terms of empowerment for the inhabitants of the region where the tourism takes place. This article seeks to find answers to these questions in the next sections
One of the major areas ecotourism is concerned about is the environment. This is because it is involved with travel to some of the relatively undisturbed areas (reserve areas). As this tourism product is often dependent upon nature, negative impacts upon that resource are possible and as such it aims at minimizing them since even the most conscientious tourist will have some degree of impact on the environment and so ecotourism should therefore attempt to minimize that impact
Often, environmental concerns are focused on resource conservation, nature preservation, and pollution of air, water, soil and land. As mentioned earlier the central question is, has ecotourism affected these dimensions and in what way?
The expectation of environmental scientist is that tourism (whatever form) should be sustainable. Sustainability incorporates environmental, experiential, socio-cultural, and economic dimensions (Birnie and Boyle). Environmental being the conservation of the environmental compartments, experiential being the experience between tourist themselves, socio-cultural being the social and cultural effects on the tourist as well as the indigenes and the economic being direct, indirect or induced economic benefits that is generated from the tourism activity. As many tour operators are business people they intend to make of course profit in the efforts. In recent years many countries are making conscientious effort to make tourism a foreign exchange earner. Many African countries are seriously exploring this option. In Ghana and hopefully as in other African countries there is a whole ministry (Ministry of Tourism and Diaspora Relations) which has been established to use tourism to generate income for Ghana. In Ghana visits to ecotourism destinations are not uncommon. The Kakum national park, the Aburi botanical gardens, the Butri falls and many others are such destinations where tourist troop all year round. The balance between the goal of generating foreign exchange for the country through the attraction of tourist and at the same time the protection of these resources or destinations for environmental protection is a dicey one. It seems these two are confronting each other. Therefore sustainable development should entail a compromise between the natural environment and tourism activities aimed at economic growth. Sustainable tourism should be tourism whose activities generate more positive net benefits in general, than tourism activities that generate fewer positive net benefits. In recent times it can be obviously seen that lleisure activity which generates social capital is more conducive to greater democracy than leisure activity which does not (Hemingway, 1999). Many researchers are even on going to investigate if tourism can be used as means to create peace in post war torn regions. A case study was the Northern regions of Kenya
To achieve this goal there is the need to begin with a formulation of policy (Weiss 2001) (local, national or international) of economic growth that at the same time expresses or incorporates concern for the environment and vice versa.
It can however be realized that sustainable development has not been restricted only with the environment and economics of the nation that is hosting the tourism activity but also it has dragged along with the preservation of cultures and the community, economic welfare and good health of the people living in the host country where the development is taking place. Ecotourism whether it could be sustainable or not depends on so many factors which ranges from economic, demographic, socio-cultural, political, geographical and even sometimes environmental. Some researchers have shown concern global environmental issues like global warming is going to affect the tourism industry massively (Amelung, Nicholls and Viner 2007). Their fears is that global warming can create changes to destination properties like a particular nature area or culture getting extinct people of the climate change.
Though the impacts of ‘tourism'( any form) be it (positive or negative) and non tourism activities on the environment (land, soil and air) and socio-cultural resources are difficult to separate and analyze (Briassoulis 2000) it is necessary to surf around for both the positive and negative impacts of ecotourism and try to investigate how far the positives outweigh the negatives.
This difficulty in finding where the blame should be placed as between the tourist or the locals is because of what is recently known at the tragedy of the tourism commons. Healy (1994) and Hardin (1968) mentioned the overuse and over exploitation and lack of investment for the tourism commons. Bromley (1991) indicated that any resource that is unrestricted, or which is difficult for a ruling to be made on or enforced have users often having a free ride. This is the exact situation that certain nature areas are facing. This problem is making it difficult to evaluate whether it is the tourists which are having negative impacts on the environment, or whether it is an internally generated problem.
There has been quite a substantial growth in visits to natural areas, especially in the developing countries. Many economics have seen the need to include natural-area visitation as a means for providing employment in regions that have experienced decline, or lack of development, in other industries. In addition, conservationist and resource personnel are using natural area visitation as an avenue for enhancing natural area finance and providing conservation-related benefits, particularly to residents living near natural areas. Also there has been increasing attention on improving the sustainability of all tourism activities, including those occurring in natural areas.
Honey (1999) compares eco resorts with other destinations. She mentions the Maho Bay which was built with almost entirely recycled materials and the very interesting ecotourism project at Las Terrazas in Cuba “the Moka Ecolodge project”. This destination is connected to a national park and at the same time built with innovative and environmentally friendly architectural features. The projects also have very organic foods and green activities. She concluded that successful ecotourism projects apart from heightening environmental conservation and protection have also made travelers more aware of the importance of their environs. In addition, she mentions of the jobs created by the Moka Ecolodge to Las Terrazas inhabitants either directly in the lodge itself as guides in the reserve or indirectly in other community tourism projects. Some are employed as bakers whilst the rest work in the crafts workshop, the coffee shops and the restaurant. The article mentions that forty percent of the profits from the hotel go into the community development fund which is overseen by the neighbourhood committee, and another 10 percent go directly to the community’s health clinic, which also grows and uses herbal medicines. In addition, 60 percent of the profits from the various community businesses go into the development fund. It also reported that the earnings have also helped finance the schools, day-care centre, and a community-based radio project in Las Terrazas
However, despite the constructive contributions enumerated above there are a few negative impacts that visits to natural and conservation resources could bring. One can not adequately talk of tourism to natural areas by not looking at the impacts such visits have caused to the Yanomami in the Amazon region of Latin America (Seitz, 2002). The Yanomami consisting of about 20,000 people are believed to be the largest indigenous group in the world. They have believed to have lived in this region for over thousand years. Disturbing concerns have been raised through research that when indigenous people like the Yanomami come into contact with the modern world, they often lose their special cultural knowledge of natural healing methods and drugs and turn to depend rather on modern goods and services and in so doing end up destroying their-self-sufficiency, immunity and pride. They also indulge in vices which end up destroying them. Seitz (2002) report that the introduction of modern people in the form of miners in Yanomami lands ended up killing about 1500 of them within a period of two years. This is because modern people, any foreign persons who come in contact with these indigenous people have the tendency to introduce diseases which they have no natural immunity against.
The worst scenarios are when tourists engage in illegal activity which will adversely affect indigenous resources such as water, soil and air.
Also the argument of Margaret Lowman in her article ‘Ecotourism and its impact on forest conservation’ is a real food for thought in the assessment of the impacts of ecotourism on national development. She explained that although the revenue from ecotourism could be used wisely for other national development of a nation one should not forget about the negative impacts it brings to the landscape due to the influx of visitors. A case in question is the Galapagos, where the growing numbers of visitors strain the sensitive and fragile islands. The impact of these visitors, manifested by disease, fire, and theft, altered the natural balance of the island ecosystems. However she concluded that ecotourism when coupled with research has a potential to affect forest conservation in a positive way in that it offers a way to promote conservation in the ecologically fragile areas and that ecotourism could open avenues for people (tourist) to see many more isolated people, wildlife etc whilst the local folks benefits from the revenues.
Apart from the impact of ecotourism on the physical natural environment, it has possibilities to affect the socio-cultural environment. Tourism areas usually are susceptible to experience considerable socio-cultural change as different cultures meet often with the locals and exchange values (Mathieson and Wall 1992). If the socio-cultural impacts on the whole become too negative, the local sustainability of ecotourism may be endangered.
In many areas local residents have been quite unhappy with ecotourism development such that they have sabotaged the natural resource on which this development was based. Whereby because of ecotourism the locals are constrained or restrained from having basic simple and normal use of resources e.g. the collection of old wood for fire wood could spark off tensions. In Netherlands many immigrants do not visit the national parks because they feel the rules and policies conflicts with basic human rights. Their complaint was that it was not normal for fruits in the parks to fall and get rotten whilst they are forbidden to pick and eat Atiapah and Walle (2006).
The economic aspect of the contribution of ecotourism to a region cannot be underscored. Most stakeholders in ecotourism, from operators to natural area managers to local communities have stake in the financial benefits it generates. This is usually expressed through the sales and profits for operators, user fee revenues for natural area management, or jobs and income for local communities.
Many natural areas managers lack finance or at least are faced with some level of financial difficulties. This has forced natural park operators and environmentalists to incorporate financial elements in ecotourism as a source of revenue, as a means to at least cover the ecotourism-related park costs that historically have been financed by governments Atiapah and Walle (2006). This situation has affected certain tourists who would want to visit nature. Atiapah and Walle (2006) recorded that more than 50% of immigrants living in Netherlands who would love to visit nature areas have been restricted because of cost.
Although there are strong economic reasons for charging user fees one being that ecotourism generates costs that would otherwise need to be financed by non-users in the case of developed country visitors to developing country public natural areas, it is particularly inappropriate for relatively poor local non-users to subsidize the visits of relatively wealthy users (Lindberg 1991). Local dissatisfaction may alienate residents from their resource base. Generally anytime users come to a destination, the local community feels initially threatened and this may create a failing attitude to develop their own self-restraint. They may even compete with the use of the resource (Ostrom 1999).
Job creation is one of the few tangible benefits of ecotourism in its existing society. In some cases, these jobs can provide direct alternatives to practices, such as poaching of forest products that threaten natural area conservation. In other cases, the jobs will simply, but importantly, diversify local economies.
Infact, assessment as to whether ecotourism has helped in environmental protection and national development is difficult to answer. It depends on the stakeholder who is analysing the situation. This varies from political, technical and sometimes personal points of view. First of all, the impact of ecotourism is difficult to evaluate because there are only few environmental parameters that meet the requirements needed to establish such truths. It could be seen that many studies, researches are opinion based than real. The measuring tools be it Multi-Criteria Analysis, Scorecard methods, Cost Analysis methods all depend on who has stake in the work and the research Li and Xu (2006).
Research carried out show that use-impact relationships generally are non-linear and vary across parameters and as such difficult to reach conclusions since the measuring parameters are different from all situation and conditions (Hammitt and Cole 1987).
Finally to answer whether ecotourism has contributed to environmental protection and national development depends on who is looking at it, from which angle and for what interest. Some authors and research are very positive about it in terms of its help in creating of awareness for species and nature preservation, improvement of local economies through creation of jobs both directly and indirectly, whilst at the same time a source of recreation for many who want to relax and enjoy nature. Other researchers and writers are very particular about the intrusion it causes to reserve and conservation area. Some have even mentioned its impact to certain cultures like the Yanomami. Its impact on biodiversity was not overstated. Looking at the interesting issue linking tourism to climate changes prompts all people especially policy makers to understand that policy making should be integral. A problem in environmental carelessness could affect tourism and affect the economic situation of the country.
However all writers are of the view that if ecotourism is carefully and sustainably practiced, it will be beneficial in environmental protection and nation development.