Peru, March 2009
Editor’s Note: I apologize in advance for any typos in this entry. I didn’t really have time to proofread it. — MT
As I told you previously, I have spent this last week locked up in a room with approximately twenty of my colleagues, in something akin to a writers’ boot camp. We have short seminars each morning and discussions around the lunch table. We’ve talked about free writing, publication strategies, and revision. We’ve commented on readers’ remarks – and how we handle them. But, mostly we write for hours at a time.
No wonder my brain hurts.
Today, our morning started with an assignment – one where we are supposed to take our projects and do something called “Provocative Revision.” Our seminar instructor gave us four different techniques: limiting, adding, switching, and transforming. I’ve decided to latch onto the last one of those strategies – transformation. The general idea is to take your essay or article and transform it into a different form. It can be a poem, a dialogue a Power Point or photo essay, a promotional brochure.
Me, I’ve already started writing my article from a Power Point essay, so I’m already doing transformative revision. I’m taking what was essentially a presentation aimed at high school and college students and making it into an academic article. The original piece was a mixture of concepts and my spin on the policy process as related to ecotourism – combined with a bit of travelogue. It had photos and quotes, a blurb from my former blog, and information taken from a few academic articles and the UN website.*
Now, I am taking my article in progress and transforming it into a blog entry. Sounds fun, right? {Okay, maybe fun for me, but not fun for you? Who knows?}
The obvious place to start is to talk a bit about my project. In case you don’t remember, I am going to New Zealand in January to work on a project related to the politics of New Zealand’s antinuclear movement. I even received a chunky grant from my University to help fund the trip. But, I’m also going to be presenting a conference paper at the Seventh International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability. The title of my paper: Is Ecotourism an Ethical Form of Environmentally Sustainable Development? A Comparative Case Study of the Galapagos, Uros, and Taquile Islands.
This week, I’ve been working on the paper and it has exploded. I’ve gotten far, far away from the ethical questions that should be at the heart of this paper and have been focusing on an institutional analysis of ecotourism policies from the international to the local levels. So far, I have researched the various definitions of ecotourism, the international “governing documents” related to ecotourism, and found links for the national level policies in Peru and Ecuador. Sadly, the Peruvian information is in Spanish, so that’s going to take a bit of time to plod through. And, as for a definition of ecotourism, I ended up chucking it for the broader definition of sustainable tourism.
Still interested? Keep reading after the break …
So, the definition of sustainable tourism comes from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and was promulgated in 2004:
“Sustainable tourism development guidelines and management practices are applicable to all forms of tourism in all types of destinations, including mass tourism and the various niche tourism segments. Sustainability principles refer to the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development, and a suitable balance must be established between these three dimensions to guarantee its long-term sustainability.
Thus, sustainable tourism should:
- Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.
- Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.
- Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation.
Sustainable tourism development requires the informed participation of all relevant stakeholders, as well as strong political leadership to ensure wide participation and consensus building. Achieving sustainable tourism is a continuous process and it requires constant monitoring of impacts, introducing the necessary preventive and/or corrective measures whenever necessary. Sustainable tourism should also maintain a high level of tourist satisfaction and ensure a meaningful experience to the tourists, raising their awareness about sustainability issues and promoting sustainable tourism practices amongst them.”
The concept of ecotourism nests well within the framework of sustainable tourism. The term was actually coined by a Mexican architect named Hector Ceballos Lascurain in the early 1980s as he was lobbying for the conservation of the Yucatan wetlands. The basic idea is that ecological tourism – ecotourism – is tourism that:
“[I]nvolves travelling to relatively undisturbed or uncontaminated natural areas with the specific object of studying, admiring, and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals.”
Now, I consider myself to be a fairly decent environmentalist with the exception of my Mustang, Sally. We have insulated our house. We set the thermostat at 60 in the winter. We eat as local as possible in the summer. When we travel, we follow the signs. We ascribe to the idea of “leave no trace.”
But, when I went to Peru, I felt more than a little guilty. Machu Picchu is considered to be a place in peril by Lisagor and Hansen (2008). They write:
“Today, Machu Picchu’s remoteness is no impediment to madding crowds, and many worry about the city’s structural ability to handle an estimated 2,500 visitors daily. In 2003, the UNESCO heritage director, Francesco Bandarin, remarked that the relentless march of tourists threatened to irrevocably damage the stone houses, farm terraces, temples and plazas. The organization warned that if conditions weren’t improved and the number of visitors slashed, Machu Picchu would land itself on the World Heritage in Danger list, which would be a profound embarrassment to the country.”
This guilt is what led to my recent efforts on studying the ethics of ecotourism. Now, I could ramble on a bit more about these issues, but I am sure that you are starting to get bored. Plus, talking about my research seems slightly self-indulgent. Now that I’ve had this brain dump, I’m going to go back to writing my real conference paper.
* You’ll be seeing my Peru entries soon enough. I’m thinking about posting them while I am traveling through Dublin. 