Culture, Eco/ethical Travel and Impacts?

[dragon wench]

In correlation with some work I'm doing, I've had the opportunity to browse through a vast number of travel sites oriented towards the ethically and ecologically minded traveller.
What I mean is, the sort of person who is concerned about the size of their footprint when they go on a holiday...

This leads me to ask some questions. Many of these companies arrange trips to remote areas so that travellers can truly experience a culture and the landscape surrounding it. They try to do so in a way that respects the cultures they come into contact with, and they often do what they can to support local economies and livlihoods. Equally, all efforts are maintained to avoid environmental degredation.
Here are a couple of sites that give something of an example of the sort of thing I'm discussing. I look at these images, and there is part of me that thinks..."Wow, that looks really cool, I would love to do that.."

http://boojum.com/photographs.html
http://www.byndlimits.com
http://www.bangladeshecotours.com
http://www.dragonflyexpeditions.com


But, I can't help but wonder at the longterm impacts upon peoples and ecologically sensitive areas... Yet, at the same time.. in some areas the eco travel industry has become a lifeblood to survival and continuing a relatively traditional way of life..


Thoughts ?

[giles337]

We did a project on this in geography last year. Basically, from what research I did (nothing majorly echaustive) I found that, in attempting to prevent damage, most travel organisers still cause it, occasionally to an even greater extent. I'll try and dig out my research to support this comment tonight, until then, take it as read

[Moonbiter]

I've just put the Lord Of Snot to bed, so my thoughts are a bit jumbled, but.. IMHO the term "eco-travel" is somewhat misguided. I've spent most of my adult life going walkabout alone not to see but to actually meet new and different people and cultures. If you have that in mind, and you actually want to learn from them, then I guess it won't actually matter to their culture. However, a prime example of eco-travel gone haywire is Tibet, a place where every hippy reject started going after The Beatles made it fashionable. Every year a million+ chumps travel up the mountainside to trip on exotic drugs and fermented yak milk while some bald git serves up watered-out philosophy and nuggets like "The Crane flies in the moonlight, while duckballs sponge impossible!" Please donate at the door. Yank and German tourists spend fortunes travelling up north here to see "real native Same/Lapp culture" and are treated to snowscooter safaris and dinners of sauteed reindeer. With garlic and French wine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want real eco-travel, you have to be prepared for hardships and a lack of luxuries that you don't want to impose on the local population. You can't go visit the One-Legged Swrofitzkapicnic Tribe in central Borneo and complain that you can't get Coca Cola or toilet paper, which it seems a lot of these supposed eco-travelers are doing. People are going to places completely unsuitable for general tourism just to come back and post on the web "Ohmygawds, they had no television and take-away! How can they survive?" And the next time they get there you have cable TV and a McDonalds. One has to remember that enterprising entrepreneurs and big biz people are always scouting for new places to establish themselves, and if you've found your untouched haven away from everything, you shouldn't go out shouting about it!

[ik911]

Amen @ BS

But not going isn't going to solve that. It's like you say, BS, big biz hotshots will 'cultivate' the hotspots, eventually. I think that's fine, not good, but nothing to do about it. Not going there has the effect of a vegetarian on the meat industry. Some way or another the ancient cultures will 'taste' the modern ways.

So in general, the tourists visit spots that are ancient cultivated hotshot hotspots, and it isn't fair, because you go there with the intention to explore the ancient culture, which in fact has been altered. But that's the way entertainment works. In a zoo you won't find wild animals, on the television you won't find reality. (reality shows, yes...)

If you really want to explore that ancient cultures, you need to have the guts and the brutality to go to some practically unfound tribe or town or something, and there's a big chance you'll be disappointed because no-one will take you in their hut, or nobody can speak with you, because they won't know english, and maybe the town has moved some place else, or you just can't find it.

Well, in conclusion, you might wanna consider the cultivated area's... Maybe it's the trick to find a relatively uncultivated cultivated spot, when you want to experience the alien cultures. Or watch some television about the N'wawigumba tribe before going on holiday in Iowa. That way you'll have your culture without disturbing it, and your holiday. And it's cheap, too! http://gamebanshee.com/forums/images/icons/icon14.gif

[C Elegans]

Don't worry too much about the impact of eco tourism on genuine environments, DW. Regarding ecologically sensitive environments, eco tourism is hardly making a difference. Industry, changes in living style and normal tourism are the major dangers there. Eco tourism is probably a little better than normal tourism, and at the same time it must be noted that if there are any tourism at all, the area is already exploited. There is no tourism to untouched places.

Regarding genuine cultures, worry even less I'd say. No companies ever go to the places where there is a genuine culture to destroy. Media, western influences etc, reaches remote places long before tourism.

Eco- and adventure tourism sell their packet trips to people who want to get the feeling of "untouched", "unspoiled" wilderness and genuine culture but still also want to keep comfort. I checked the links you posted and what areas they had trips to, and none of these areas are remote or "wild". Some areas are however very beautiful, and they are still less touristed than Yellowstone or the Alps.

Originally Posted by Moonbiter

I've spent most of my adult life going walkabout alone not to see but to actually meet new and different people and cultures.
<snip>
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want real eco-travel, you have to be prepared for hardships and a lack of luxuries that you don't want to impose on the local population.

This I totally agree with. As I have posted elsewhere here at SYM, I've travelled around by myself for long periods. If you want to experience untouched, remote wilderness - by definition, there will be nothing there and it will be difficult to get transport there. The trouble start already at home when you try to find a means of transport close enough to your desired place. It can take weeks of intercontinental telephone calls before you can find out if it is even possible, and if you contact a travel agency they will just ask you "Bwahana-what?" So you have to solve all the practicalites and find all the information yourself. At location, you simply have to carry your stuff, walk for weeks and wash every third day or so if you can stand the cold. If you want to experince genuine native cultures, you have to live with them, their way, and you may have to eat insects and intestinies and pick tics off your body. You will learn new ways to keep yourself clean and handle your body waste.

Personally, I think "eco-tourism" is an excellent choice for people who are not interested in the ordinary charter resorts but at the same time are too lazy, fearful or comfortable to travel by themselves.

[HiRo11er]

However, a prime example of eco-travel gone haywire is Tibet, a place where every hippy reject started going after The Beatles made it fashionable. Every year a million+ chumps travel up the mountainside to trip on exotic drugs and fermented yak milk while some bald git serves up watered-out philosophy and nuggets like "The Crane flies in the moonlight, while duckballs sponge impossible!" Please donate at the door. Yank and German tourists spend fortunes travelling up north here to see "real native Same/Lapp culture" and are treated to snowscooter safaris and dinners of sauteed reindeer. With garlic and French wine.

Absolutely hilarious!! I know several people who consider themselves to be as hippie as today's society gets, and they've been talking about a trip to Nepal just the last coupla weeks! If you don't mind, I'll memorize some of your phrases, throw 'em at 'em, & see what they say. LOL! I just read it again, and it's just as funny second time around... I'm a sucker for well-phrased comedy...

Regarding genuine cultures, worry even less I'd say. No companies ever go to the places where there is a genuine culture to destroy. Media, western influences etc, reaches remote places long before tourism.

Very sad, and very true. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Michael Jordan and Hollywood has done more for spreading US influence (imperialism? )than any country's army has been capable of in the history of civilization...

[ik911]

Originally Posted by HiRo11er

Very sad, and very true. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Michael Jordan and Hollywood has done more for spreading US influence (imperialism? )than any country's army has been capable of in the history of civilization...

It's the new era of business imperialisation, better known to some as globalization. (I could be wrong)

@CE, yep, my view exactly.

[Ideal Maxima]

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[jopperm2]

This thread reminded me of a chapter in PJ O'Rourke's book All the Trouble in the World.

Originally Posted by PJ

I'd flown to Peru flor Florida. There's a corner of Miami INternational Airport devoted to off-brand Latin American airlines: Chacha Air, Trans Mato Grosso, Mavinas National, Aero Tierra del Fuego, and so forth. American "eco-tourists," seeking solitude in untrammeled wilderness and lonely communion with the natural world, jammed the ticket counters. There's a look about these sightseer. They haven't been out in the weather enough to get skin-cancerous, and they haven't been in an office or shop for fourteen hours a day either. Theris is the healthy glow of people without enough to do. They are in their thirties or fourties but sit on the airport floor cross-legged as though they were fifteen. They touch each other a lot and make prolonged eye contact, and their conversations are filled with little noises of affirmation. The men are not actually unshaven but look as though they are nerving themselves not to shave. The women wear their hair plain and their faces scrubbed and go undecorated except for large pieces of "native" jewelry--that is, jewelry from cultures where women spend as much time dolling themselves up as they can spare from baby-having and yam-field-tilling."

Ahead of me in line was an all-female tour group, Amazon-bound, as it were. They talked about being an all-female tour group. This, they told each other, was meaningful. Also meaningful were herbal medicines, spiritual healings, astral projection, auras, and other things not subject to empirical observation or experimental proof. Natural creatures showinf appreciation of nature by holding natural science in contempt--nature is mysterious.

That describes the group of people Moonbiter metioned before.. I'll post more about his actual trip next..

[jopperm2]

Here's how Mr. O'Rourke says one of these tours begins.

The ten loud women were assembled by theri tour guide and led loudly away. The guide for my tour, Julio, came to get us in a bus made of wood, like one of those arts-and-crafts-store toys that people without children without children give to kids.

"Where can we get a beer?" said Tom, an ex-rodeo rider. Tom turned out to be a Republican. His wife, Susan, may have been one, too. . . .
If so, we were the first eco-tourist group with a Republican majority since Teddy Roosevelt explored the Amazon in 1913.

On the accomodations:

ALthough this tour company is owned by an urban corporation, the people who run it and who build its facilities are either Indians orriberenos, the poor people who live along the river banks and are a mixture of Indian, Spaniard, rubber planter, river boatman, and whatever. It would be interesting to know what people who live in humble circumstances think of creating humble circumstances for people who live in luxury to come visit. But they were too polite to say.

Whatever the employees' opinion of their task, they accomplished it with grace. The lodge had ice for drinks, plenty of hammocks, fresh fruit, fried plantains, wonderful little Peruvian potatoes, and excellent (very large) catfish fillets. And, except for a biology professor from Lima and his assistant, we were the only guests. THere was twice as much staff as us. A perfect wilderness adventure, or it would have been except Julio inveigled us into a nature hike.

Sounds like saving the earth to me.. This is what he said about nature hiking and how horrible it is.

In my reading about the rain forest, however, I have found very little description of what it is like to actually be in a rain forest. There's a good reason for this, the same reason little girls' baby dolls don't actually smell like babies. Not that the rain forest smells. You'd think something so wer, hot, and biological would stink like boiled Times Square, but it doesn't. Jungle has a nice fresh scent, the reason being there's so much life in the jungle that anything which dies or is excreted or even gets drwsy is immediately a picnic for something else.

But what is it like to actually be in the rainforest is hot and sticky. When you get out of your hammock and go nature hiking, you're immediately covered in sweat. your underwear clings, your shirt clings, your pants cling, and things that EEK! aren't part of your clothing at all cling to you. You're also immediately covered in bugs. And the rain forest is, as its name would imply, rainy. Hence, WHOOPS! slippery. You're immediately covered in mud, too.

On the incredibly proactive conservationist activity of birdwatching:

I did like the flocks of parrots. They'd all sit together in a tree sayin, in unison, "I'M A PRETTY BOY!" No. But I don't see why, wiht patience, they couldn't be trained to do so. Even the beautiful things in nature can be made interesting if you put your mind to it.

It was strange to see parrots, toucans, macaws, and c0ckatoos flying around without perches, cages, or a jungle covered in newspapers. Actually, the toucans and macaws weren't that wild. They were hanging around the lodge, squawking and begging like New York homeless. A Macaw ate the shudder release off Shelly's camera, and one of the toucans stuck its huge beak into Michael's coffee cup, slurped the contents, and got jittery and irritable.

Sounds like they were conserving the wildlife to me.

He then discusses harassing estuarian dolphins in the river, and buying bootleg rum from riberenos.

[jopperm2]

And now for the number one reason not to endorse eco-tourism...

After a long nap we went on an Indian Embarrassment tour. We hiked ten minutes through the jungle to a muddy clearing. Here the tour company had paid members of the once-fierce Yagua tribe to build a traditional communal house. It was fifty-foot long, twenty-foot high, loaf-shaped construction thatched all the way to the ground. It looked like a big pile of leaves. THere were no windows. The inside looked the the inside of a pile of leaces, too, sort of vegetable dirndls. They had streaked their faces with Max Factor, donned fish-bone and parrot feather necklaces, and stuck Indian-type things in their hair. THe women covered thir breasts with something that resembled a large baby's bib, made of cotton and not, I think , part of the original Yagua dress code.

We were supposed to "trade" with the Yagua. The tour-company brochure had been firm on this point. We were encouraged to bring "trade items" such as clothing, fish hooks, pocketknives, and the like. But er weren't supposed to try to give the Yagua money. "Money is not of much use on the river" said the brochure in a palpable untruth. We consulted among ourselves and discovered we'd all brought stupid T-shirts. I'd gone to my local gun-nut store and gotten some with big Stars and Stripes across the fronts and mottoes such as TRY TO BURN THIS FLAG, <expletive>! The yagua brought balso wood carvingd and decorated gourds and various items of jewelry from parts of animals that hadn't been, our brochure was careful to assure us, killed or anything like that. "they do not kill animals for this purpose," said the brochure, "but use the leftovers from their kitchen."

The Yagua were bored. So, for that matter, were we. Michael grew up on the Texas border and speaks Spanish, or used to. He said his vocabualry had evaporated with years of living in New York and using his Spanish for nothing byt readint the cigarette and hemorrhoid medication ads on the subway. Maichael told a half-dozen small Yagua children that Tom and Susan and Shelly and I were "bestias--no humanos." He said the could tell because we were so big and old and still could not speak one word they could understand. We came from a frightening place with little bitty rivers ("poquitos mini-rios"). It was very far away and filled with T-shirts. And we ate--nouns failed him--cigarettes and hemorrhoid medication.

One man had pulled out all the stops in the authentic-dress business. He had a grass skirt so elaborate that he was lucky he hadn't been declared an endangered ecosystem from the waste down. The old man produced an wight-foot blowgun and some darts made from thin wooden splinters as long as a hand, with little cotton wool wrapped around one end and the other end dipped in a poison frog--devil's Q-Tips. The blowgun itself was crafted from a think, rule-straight sabling that had been split and hollowed and bound back together with rattan. The old man took the blowgun, aimed it at a tree, and missed six times. Tom said he'd like to try and hit the tree on first puff. Then we were truly embarrassed. I only hope the Yaguas cheated us hugely on the
T-shirt deals. As we left, the children lined up and waved happily "iAdios, no humanos!"

We walked around the corner to where thej INdians really lived--in wood and tin houses like everyone else. A radio playing mariachi music was hooked up to a car battery. They were all wearing stupid T-shirts.

That about sums it all up for me. From what I have heard, no matter how satirical his narrative is, Mr O'Rourke hits the nail on the head with this one.

[fable]

"From what you've heard"--from whom, Rush Limbaugh? My wife and I actually went on one of those 5-day trips paddling down the Canaima River to Angel Falls, sleeping in hammocks, etc. A few years later we returned to another part of the Amazonas. We didn't do it because it was eco, but because we wanted to experience at least three different cultures in Venezuela during our three weeks there, on each occasion. Allow me to correct a few of the satirical non-facts which you have found ever so true:

The ten loud women were assembled by theri tour guide and led loudly away. The guide for my tour, Julio, came to get us in a bus made of wood, like one of those arts-and-crafts-store toys that people without children without children give to kids.

Our group was typical. No more than 8 people including the guide (no more could fit in a hollowed out tree trunk canoe). Two were women in their 20s from French-speaking Switzerland; two were a young Brazilian diplomat and his girlfriend. One more was a young gent from Germany, and the other pair were my wife and myself. We saw other tour groups beforehand, and afterwards. There was nothing resembling the "ten loud women." You don't tend to get ten loud women to agree to paddle large canoes through tropical rain forests. They tend to cluster in Starbuck's locations in the US, where they discuss how there aren't any homeless in Iowa, discounting 19,000 or so.

We were supposed to "trade" with the Yagua. The tour-company brochure had been firm on this point. We were encouraged to bring "trade items" such as clothing, fish hooks, pocketknives, and the like. But er weren't supposed to try to give the Yagua money. "Money is not of much use on the river" said the brochure in a palpable untruth. We consulted among ourselves and discovered we'd all brought stupid T-shirts.

Most of the Indian tribes of the Amazonas (such as the Yanumami, which we dealt with) never trade for objects, and they never, ever bargain. The Yagua of Peru sound like they've hung around tourists such as O'Rourke too long. By contrast, the local tribes we encountered wanted only local currency, because they use it to buy and repair metal cooking implements. They otherwise want nothing to do with the local inhabitants, or visitors, whom they consider hopelessly involved with unimportant things.

Whatever the employees' opinion of their task, they accomplished it with grace. The lodge had ice for drinks, plenty of hammocks, fresh fruit, fried plantains, wonderful little Peruvian potatoes, and excellent (very large) catfish fillets. And, except for a biology professor from Lima and his assistant, we were the only guests. THere was twice as much staff as us. A perfect wilderness adventure, or it would have been except Julio inveigled us into a nature hike.

Between groups arriving and leaving, there were usually 3 or 4 tour groups there at "headquarters" at any given time. That means 20 or so people, with 3 people handling the meals. This was true of both the small camps we visited, on our separate visit.

As for a nature hike, I sincerely doubt that would happen. We went twice to the region: once to the Amazonas near Brazil, and another time at the border to Columbia, on both occasions from the Venezuelan side. There weren't any walkable "nature trails," since it only takes a few days for the rain forest to grow over any attempted path or clearing. At best, a local tribe periodicially (once a week or two) hacks out a route for quick travel to the riverbank, which acts as a sort of highway. It sounds like Mr. O'Rourke took one of the easy, high-luxury tours at some distance from the Amazon, and decided it would make far better fun to satirize that. It would also have kept him nice and safe, in the company of those loud women where he fits in so well.

It was strange to see parrots, toucans, macaws, and c0ckatoos flying around without perches, cages, or a jungle covered in newspapers. Actually, the toucans and macaws weren't that wild. They were hanging around the lodge, squawking and begging like New York homeless. A Macaw ate the shudder release off Shelly's camera, and one of the toucans stuck its huge beak into Michael's coffee cup, slurped the contents, and got jittery and irritable.

Clearly he never dealt with invasions of local spider monkeys (which have adapted to the climate after getting loose several hundred years ago), tarantulas, Brazilian private militia hired to eliminate locals, or boas. What, no comments on the structures that the various tribes used for living? No comments upon Indian languages, the different music of the tribes and the villages, the movement of goods, etc? Mr. O'Rourke looks more an more remote from the civilizations he's viewing with every second. And you're so very right to use him as a reliable source.

[jopperm2]

I thought I would such a response from you fable..

I was actually trying to be dsomewhat facetious as I'm sure PJ was too.

Btw, nice Rush crack, but no.. I don't support drug users.. I've heard from friends of mine.. I used to hang out with hippies and other such. Many of whom have gone on such trips only to be disappointed that the only difference between the trip and sitting in front of the discovery channel was no A/C.. A large portion of these things are highly commercialized gimmick machines like the one described above.

The trip that he took was designed for 30, but was only 6 due to violence in Peru at the time. The ten loud women were hippies bound for elswhere. I'm sure they were quite concerned with the .65% of people in the Hawkeye state that are homeless.

Like I said earlier, I used this example to point out how much of a farce a lot of these trips are, hence no native languages, or music. The natives in that area listen to Spanish style music and speak spanish just like everyone else in Peru.

[fable]

Originally Posted by jopperm2

I was actually trying to be dsomewhat facetious as I'm sure PJ was too.

That's not what this means: "That about sums it all up for me. From what I have heard, no matter how satirical his narrative is, Mr O'Rourke hits the nail on the head with this one." In other words, you're saying he's accurate, on the basis of no prior experience on your part, but because he's a guy who has the same political bias as you. All I have going for me is the fact that I know he's full of it, because I've been there a couple of times, and know his story doesn't check out. I realize that puts me at a disadvantage, but still...

I've heard from friends of mine.. I used to hang out with hippies and other such. Many of whom have gone on such trips only to be disappointed that the only difference between the trip and sitting in front of the discovery channel was no A/C.. A large portion of these things are highly commercialized gimmick machines like the one described above.

The Amazon isn't a place hippies go. It's a rain forest, not Costa Rica. So I've no idea what you mean in the above. The two packaged trips we tried in Canaima and Porto Ayecucho were certainly not "commercialized gimmick machines," and I find it difficult to believe that most such arrangements there would be. Nor have you provided any evidence they are. The information O'Rourke provided was on the very far side of unbelievable.

The trip that he took was designed for 30, but was only 6 due to violence in Peru at the time. The ten loud women were hippies bound for elswhere. I'm sure they were quite concerned with the .65% of people in the Hawkeye state that are homeless.

This is what Mark Twain meant by "lies, damn lies, and statistics." "Less than 1 percent of Iowans" sounds tiny, but 19,000 homeless people, two-thirds of them children under the age of 12, sounds a lot larger. It sounds larger still when you recall that you said there weren't any, in another post.

Like I said earlier, I used this example to point out how much of a farce a lot of these trips are, hence no native languages, or music. The natives in that area listen to Spanish style music and speak spanish just like everyone else in Peru.

We experienced two of these trips, and as I wrote above, none of it mirrors the heavy-handed satire of O'Rourke. If you have some honest, factual accounts of trips to the Amazon from your friends, with some detail, I'll gladly hear it. Until then, it certainly sounds like you're just buying O'Rourke's line because you like his politics, where humor substitutes for fact.

[Moonbiter]

Well, each to their own. IMHO this has turned into a bit of nitpicking, and moved pretty far from the purpose of the thread. BTW: I've been to the Amazon 4 times, and only once experienced what this journo describes. Funnily, on that trip I shared a boat with a flabby git writing for Brit "lad's mag" Loaded, and he returned to write pretty much the same as the guy above, only with more sordid humour. IMHO it's all a matter of an individuals ability to perceive things. If you want to see the manure, you will. Also, I would like to add that the Amazon is a pretty big place.

So has anyone here actually tried anything that could be clearly labeled eco-travel?