Ecotourism principles and sustainable travel practices

Ecotourism

The objective of this project was to develop a sustainable tourism initiative that would bring extra income into the community. At the outset, Pangayacu was a community in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The people were already engaged in cash crop agriculture. However, the nature of such agriculture meant that there was a risk further damage to the ecosystem could be done if the community does not find alternate sources of income. Another consideration is that Ecuador is a regional center for ecotourism. This has brought visitors to Pangayacu in the past. The community did not have control over these visitors and has felt that their presence was negative. If the community had control, tourism could prove to be positive.

The biggest concern with respect to this project was that it would further damage the way of life in Pangayacu. If the community loses its uniqueness as a result of the ecotourism business, the ecotourism business will dry up. It may be replaced with garden-variety tourism, but even that is not a given when the location of Pangayacu is taken into consideration.

Thus, we decided to try to run an ecotourism project. The first decision was whether or not to find expert help. Such help could ensure that we had better results, but involving outside help would divert some of the project's income away from the community. It was decided that we would run the project ourselves. This would also make it easier to end the project if the community was not satisfied with the results. From there we needed to decide whether or not to include the entire community in the process or have a small organizing group. Having a smaller group was deemed best for a couple of reasons. One is to keep decision-making simple and the other is because the ecotourism experience depends on authenticity - we want the others to work in the fields because it not only enhances the experience but it also continues the community's other income streams.

We decided to have people sleep in huts. Ecotourism is at this point only a supplement - the community is not in the tourist business and at this point it does not want to be. By keeping the experience rustic, we will limit the influx of tourists to an amount we can manage. We decided to put on a traditional cultural program. This is more interesting to tourists and keeps our traditions alive. At this point, we decided to keep tourist visits to their current levels - there is little buy-in from the community to support more tourism.

Since the community is bent on overhunting and clearing forest for cash crops, we are doomed to lose our culture and our economy. Still, if we invest in more tourist infrastructure, we will not solve the problems we are causing through overpopulation. Plus, we will spend a lot of money bringing tourists to an area that will soon lack traditional lifestyle. We could lose big. Indeed, this comes to pass and the tourism project is fading. We will now split off with Agustin for greener horizons, where the community supports the venture more and is less self-destructive.

The exercise, however, takes a left turn here. When we decide to split, we are not allowed to do so. This makes no sense whatsoever. Pangayacu is no longer a concern because we are not there; we are starting our new venture. Thus, the game exhibits a gaping logical flaw here, offering a chance to leave town and then insisting that is not possible.

Regardless, the game illustrates the balance that must be taken when developing an ecotourism project. The communal aspect is important because without it, the community will never buy into the project. If their current path is destructive, they will continue on that path. An interesting note is the cultural aspect - it is entirely unreasonable that 100 Westerners in a village would come to agreement about a major matter such as this. Perhaps for the Quichua, this is not the case. As an outsider, I should have deferred to the local leaders or other experts for guidance on this issue, something that I did not do at the beginning of the project.

The other thing worth considering is that of objectives. If we backtrack to the "success" case we see that preservation of the rainforest is one of the key success measures. Yet, knowledge of the rainforest is not passed down to new generations in this scenario.