Ecotourism for the masses, not the elite classes!
‘Ecotourism for the masses, not the elite classes!’ is a slogan you’re unlikely to hear at a protest any time soon.
Sudipta Sarkar argues for an urban ecotourism for the masses that looks far beyond Western debates for inspiration.
It’s a “Good Tourism” Insight initiated by Tourism’s Horizon, a “Good Tourism” Insight Partner.
[You too can write a “GT” Insight.]
Ecotourism carries a variety of associations: Niche, small-scale, low-intensity travel; welfare for the visited; disapproval of human interferences in nature; and ecocentrism (valuing the natural world over and above human interests).
It assumes a certain moral authority in debates around tourism, especially vis a vis mass tourism. But this is not uncontested.
Ecotourism is criticised too: For some, ecotourism greenwashes commercial interests; that it is a ‘Trojan Horse’ that will eventually unleash damaging mass tourism.
Still others take a different line: Martin Mowforth and Ian Munt see ecotourism as a conscience-salving activity for the middle classes. Jim Butcher accuses ecotourism advocates of denying modernity to the poor.
Most agree that local perspectives from the ‘global south’ should be paramount. Locals can be aspirational. Host communities can desire modernisation. In some cases they can be resistant to development and industrial/technological progress.
Many in Western academic circles have elevated the latter view. But this ignores the former; that the masses of the global south also have material needs and wants, including a desire to travel, and a right to fulfil them.
Read other “GT” content tagged with ‘Ecotourism and nature-based tourism’
Romantic ecotourism
Part of the problem lies in a Western view of the human-nature relationship, which can be traced back to the age of Romanticism in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
Romanticism was an artistic and literary movement that saw in nature … Read Sudipta K Sarkar’s full “GT” Insight at The “Good Tourism” Blog.
