(Re-printed from LINKS, July, 1965)

We must rethink, culture. We must rethink education. We must rethink tourism. We propose a program for the creation of competitive, UN-sponsored “parallel organizations” whose role it would be to actively design, promote, and implement RESPONSIBLE (“alternative”) TOURISM projects fulfilling our four main requirements:

1. minimum environmental impact
2. minimum impact on -- and maximum respect for -- host cultures
3. maximum economic benefits to host country ‘grassroots’
4. maximum ‘re-creational’ satisfaction to participating tourists.

Tourism, if it fulfills AT LEAST the above requirements, can be a healthy and rewarding activity for the visiting tourist, an economically sound investment for the host area, and an environment-CONSERVING feature -- an ecological tourism (“Eco-Tourism”).

At the national and international levels tourism has become a major factor influencing the environment, culture, and economics of people. With regard to the effects on some LDC’s (less-developed countries) one may even speak of a ‘new colonialism’ in the making, or the creation of a class of maître d’s, chambermaids, and taxi drivers.

As to the environment it could be said that, after having ruined their own environment (particularly in urban areas), people who can afford it are swarming out to destroy the environment of others in their frantic attempts to escape for a short while from competitive pressure, pollution, crime, and alienating work (the “rat race”).

Culturally the effects of tourism have not yet been much investigated, but the little we know seems to show a considerable contribution to cultural homogenization, destruction of community structure, and -- strange as it may seem -- misunderstanding and lack of real communication among people. Lack of respect toward hosts performing menial chores for the tourist hordes does not lead to real friendship.

The economics of tourism, looked at closely, have also rarely had the beneficial long-term effects on the development of host areas and host peoples that were initially expected. Tourism, like so much today, has become a marketable commodity in which human dreams and desires are manipulated for private profit by the travel ‘industry’ (where, at times, one even carelessly speaks of ‘bodies' transported, instead of people...) and with scant regard for the economic and other interests of the gross of the people in the receiving (host) countries who, in most cases, gain little or nothing from, and often develop antipathies to, all tourists. Large chunks of profits from tourism often go to absentee owners and large foreign corporations.

ARE THESE NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS INHERENT IN ALL TOURISM?

The answer is NO. Large environmental, cultural, and economic benefits CAN be derived from tourism for both the tourists themselves and for the people of the host countries: as with everything else, and within certain limits, it all depends on HOW it is done.

While the untoward effects of tourism are rapidly becoming apparent, and an increasing swell of discontent can be heard on the subject (mainly at the ‘grassroots’ level), little is being done to remedy the situation in any meaningful way.

THE ECOSYSTEMS APPROACH

As in other cases where different people’s values and interests are in open or hidden conflict (tourists, developers, airlines, tour outfitters, local people, agriculture, environmentalists, and so on), an ECO-DEVELOPMENT paradigm can be applied with high chances of success for a drastic amelioration of the existing situation. It is, however, of utmost importance to realize that the existing situation must be handled not only as another academic exercise in need of an avalanche of research studies, blue-ribbon panels, and international conferences, but as a practical real-world project or -- even better -- a series of projects (diversification helps...) amenable to positive solutions favorably affecting the concerned parties.

In essence, our proposal is to DO BETTER what CAN be done better. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with tourism (understood as “travelling for re-creation,” which includes education, health, spiritual search, and a host of other endeavors) and, in all probability, tourism will and should continue to be practiced.

To DO BETTER we propose to design, test, and carry through a comprehensive, multidimensional, ultimately self-supporting system involving environmental, economic, cultural, health, nutritional, psychological, and other perspectives closely related to tourism, for the express purpose of making tourism a useful instrument for ECODEVELOPMENT: useful not only for the satisfaction of the tourists’ perceived and unperceived needs, but of the environmental, cultural, and economic needs of the local, national and international communities these tourists come into contact with.

To be successful, such a program needs:
1). the support of the world community through non-governmental channels;
2). a dynamic, motivated leadership knowledgeable of, and committed to, the environmental, cultural, economic, AND practical factors involved in tourism per se and as a business;
3). support from -- cooperation with -- but not domination by -- academic, business, and government sectors interested in tourism as a re-creational and eco-developmental activity.

We propose a three-step approach:
A). design and development of programs (initial research and study, involving joint seminars/workshops and design labs, and a choice of pilot stage area(s);
B). pilot stage of program, for the achievement of a minimally self-supporting unit;
C). full-scale financially self-supporting operation of the program, with one part of the benefits going to other ecodevelopment/eco-tourism (environmental, cultural, economic) programs.

SUPPORT FROM THE COMMUNITY

A program such as the one envisaged here has, to our knowledge, never been submitted to the UN or anyone else. In its wide eco-developmental scope (which, in our opinion, is the only one likely to succeed practically), it functionally encompasses RESEARCH & STUDY, EDUCATION, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, PRACTICAL BUSINESS SENSE, DEMONSTRATION & GUIDANCE, CREATION OF RESOURCES AND -- as its most important aspect -- DIRECT INVOLVEMENT BEYOND THE ACADEMIC LEVEL IN ACTIONS SUBSTITUTING UNDESIRABLE PRACTICES BY HEALTHIER ONES. We also need moral and financial support: the moral support and sponsorship is needed for the full, continuing duration of the program, the financial one for a limited, introductory period only.

NOTE: SIZE & CO-OPTION: We must get away from the notion that “bigger is better,” and should focus on small and diversified ‘units’ of tourism. We must also avoid being “taken over,” or “co-opted,” by any one special interest, in other words, not replace one destructive system of stewardship by another. Let us strive for ‘low-impact’ living.