The negative impacts of ecotourism

Overview

Leakage in tourism, mechanisms by which leakage occurs and how ecotourism can damage fragile environments despite its small scale.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

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1. 1

   How can ecotourism lead to the displacement of local communities?

   Model answer

   Displacement occurs when land is taken out of local use to create or enlarge the attraction. Designating a national park or private reserve can involve moving residents out of the area, or excluding them from land they continue to live beside. Lodges and concessions acquire the best sites, often along rivers, coasts and lake shores, which are also the sites communities depend on. Rising land values around a successful destination price local households out. In each case people lose their homes or their access, and the loss is usually permanent.

2. 2

   What is lost when a community is excluded from a protected area, even if it is not physically moved?

   Model answer

   Access to resources on which livelihoods depend: grazing, firewood, building materials, medicinal plants, honey, fishing grounds, seasonal water and hunting. Access to sacred sites, burial grounds and places of cultural importance. Customary rights that were exercised without formal title and are therefore easily disregarded when the area is designated. Communities may also bear new costs, such as crop and livestock damage by protected wildlife they may no longer control, while the compensation and revenue-sharing promised in return frequently arrive late, partially or not at all.

3. 3

   Discuss the ways in which ecotourism can threaten indigenous cultures.

   Model answer

   Through commodification, where ceremonies, dress and daily life are performed to a visitor timetable and altered to meet expectations, so that meaning is lost even as the outward form is preserved. Through intrusion, where visitors photograph people, enter homes and attend rituals without consent. Through the demonstration effect on young people, who may come to regard visitor lifestyles as aspirational and local ways as backward. Through unequal distribution of tourism income within a community, which can create new divisions. And through dependency, where a community reorganises its economy around visitors it does not control.

4. 4

   What is leakage in tourism?

   Model answer

   Leakage is the proportion of the money spent by tourists on a destination that does not remain in the destination's economy, but flows out to other countries. It is the central reason why headline figures for tourist expenditure overstate the benefit a host country actually receives, and it is generally higher in LEDCs and in small island economies, where studies commonly estimate that a substantial share, in many cases around a third to a half or more of gross receipts, leaves the country.

5. 5

   Explain the mechanisms by which leakage occurs.

   Model answer

   There are four principal mechanisms. Foreign ownership: where lodges, hotels, airlines and tour operators are owned abroad, the profits are repatriated to the parent company rather than reinvested locally, and management fees and franchise payments flow out as well. Imported goods: destinations without a manufacturing or commercial farming base must buy in vehicles, boats, fuel, building materials, furnishings, equipment and much of the food and drink that visitors expect, so a large part of each bill is spent abroad. Expatriate staff: where skilled, technical and managerial posts are filled by non-nationals, their salaries are largely remitted or spent abroad, and the local workforce is confined to low-paid roles. And pre-payment abroad: where the holiday is bought as a package or through an overseas online platform, most of the price is retained by the operator, airline and platform in the source country, and only a fraction is transferred to the destination as commission. Debt repayments and imported capital equipment for building the facilities add further outflow.

6. 6

   Why is leakage often high even in ventures marketed as ecotourism?

   Model answer

   Because the same mechanisms apply. Remote lodges may be foreign owned; they import almost everything, from vehicles and generators to specialist food, precisely because they are remote; they frequently employ expatriate managers, chefs and naturalist guides on the grounds that visitors expect a particular standard; and the holidays are typically sold at high prices through specialist operators and platforms in the source country, which retain a large share. Long internal transfers by light aircraft or boat add further imported fuel costs. Being small and nature-based does not by itself keep money in the country.

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