Promises and pitfalls of ecotourism

Abstract

[eng] Ecotourism theoretically consists of responsible travel to natural areas that confers environmental and social benefits. Despite those positive aims, there has been a scholar emphasis on the uneven results of ecotourism development, highlighting the gaps between its promised and observed outcomes. A growing number of academics assigns those failures to the capitalist nature of ecotourism and its role in sustaining neoliberalism expansion. They are calling for more research on this relationship, which this study is concerned with. The aim of the present paper is to understand and identify mechanisms preventing a fair and even application of ecotourism principles. In order to do so, cross-case study search for pattern methodology has been chosen, helping to assess ecotourism development in different contexts and scales as to identify common obstacles to the achievement of positive outcomes. The results accordingly allocate some of the negative impacts of ecotourism implementation to its intertwinement with neoliberal policies and practices, which triggers the following mechanisms: extension of neoliberal governance to the detriment of local population self-determination, modification of local culture towards market-driven logics and increased neoliberalization of nature under the form of commodification. In turn, those mechanisms ensue the studied negative social, political and environmental effects. To reduce those, locals should be empowered towards the decision to enter ecotourism and the way to conduct it, excluding dependency on external actors to avoid neoliberal hegemony.