Africa Geographic July 2003 [antikvár]

Editorial NUMBER I U LY 2 0 0 3 It is one of the grand ironies [of tourism] that destinations become the victims of their own success I have been a consistent protagonist of tourism as a powerful force for good in Africa. Tourism brings people, comparatively rich ones, who spend money and who need local people to take care of them as they relax in exotic places. Airlines, hotels, national parks, private lodges and retreats, car hire and taxi companies, restaurants, shopping centres - they all benefit from the increased business and as a consequence all-important job opportunities are created. This might be a somewhat simplistic overview, but it is substantially correct: tourism generates money and employment. Statistics prove it - tourism is one of, if not the largest industry in the worid, and more people work in it than they do in any other. So, what's the catch? Well, because tourism represents a multi-billion-dollar industry it attracts all the worst aspects of business as well - greed, outright exploitation and insensitivity to local cultures being high on the list. Again at the risk of oversimplification, imagine a beautiful, unspoiled coral island with warm, clear lagoons, reefs teeming vrith life, white crescents of beaches fringed with forest just the place for that idyllic battery-charging break, isn't it? Now, imagine the scene 10 or 15 years down the track. You could well be looking at a beachfront of ill-conceived hotels and blaring nightclubs, speedboats thundering across those same lagoons, 4x4 trails cutting through the forests, an international airport Not quite the same place? And what of the locals - would they have benefited? Some might, but the majority (if they are lucky enough to have jobs) will be working for foreign-owned tourism bosses who leave little of their profits on the island. The scenario is not so outrageous as a construct, as things like this can and do happen. It is one of the grand ironies that destinations become the victims of their own success, with the attributes that attracted people in the first instance being, often inadvertently, destroyed by those very same folk through the infrastructure needed to support them in their 'paradise'. The past few decades, however, have seen the growth of a new brand of tourism, one far more sensitive to the environments and cultures that support it. The term ecotourism was born to describe this 'tread lightly on the earth' travel ethic. But ecotourism (sadly, the term has become so widely applied that it is something of an overworked cliché in its own right) is no cure-all for the problems caused by tourism, and I urge you to read Nick Garbutt's thoughthil article on the situation as he has witnessed it in Madagascar (see page 26). There are aspects of tourism that disturb me greatly, as they do Nick, but on balance 1 agree with him that ecotourism has a vital role to play in African economies - with the caveat that it must pay more than just lip service to natural systems by ploughing funding back into conservation and community projects.