BootsnAll Travel Network



Eco-mania!

Ever heard of Ecotourism?  Did you know it has been around since 1980? In 2002 the United Nations even celebrated the “International Year of Ecotourism” and here in Costa Rica it’s everywhere!

They have Eco Diving Tours, Eco Trips to the Jungle, Eco hotels with Eco menus, Eco car rental places, eco gas stations (by the way, they are not selling bio diesel) and the list goes on and on. In Costa Rica even our Yodavan is an Eco van.

All the Eco-mania has left us a bit confused. What the hell is Ecotourism? The color “green” comes to mind. There is plenty of green in Costa Rica, but that can’t be all there is to Eco Tourism. The rivers in New Jersey are green (amongst many other colors) as well, but you wouldn’t go there for Eco Tourism.

Costa Rica is the world champion in Ecotourism. Like no other country on earth Costa Rica was able promote it’s tourism industry in an environmentally friendly and culturally responsible way and is able to attract over 1 millions tourists every year, despite all of civil unrests and wars going on in it’s neighbor countries.  Costa Rica has set aside about 25% of its land as national parks, never to be altered. Very impressive! But it seems to me that Costa Rica is becoming a victim of its own success. With that many tourists every year, coming on Eco Airplanes, driving Eco SUV’s on Eco friendly roads the environment takes a big beating. But all of those tourists bring another “Green” to the country. The Eco Dollar! And as long as long as there are a lot of green Eco Dollars in your wallet you can live with a little less of green forests. Unfortunately less and less of these Eco dollars end up with the local people (an important part of ecotourism), but with the Eco foreign investors. One group of Eco investors hired experts from Cancun to build a multi billion Eco Dollar mega resort on the northern peninsula. All it took was to bribe 2 or 3 Eco politicians and the project was under way. Luckily the project went bankrupt and the peninsula was spared a future like Cancun, but at least the Eco investors had business cards made from recycled paper.

I am a little disturbed by all of the Ecotourism hype, because of all of the greenwashing going on. The word Ecotourism is often simply used as a marketing tool to promote tourism that is related to nature, placing a hotel in a splendid landscape, to the promote the impression of being part of the ecosystem.
 

However of all the countries we have visited so far Costa Rica definitely is the most environmentally friendly, but that alone doesn’t qualify as Ecotourism. Part of Ecotourism is enhancing the cultural integrity of local people and creating economic opportunities for local communities. It seems to me that most local people don’t really benefit from it. First of all everything is getting more expensive and the salaries don’t raise at the same rate and second, a lot of the investors are foreigners who say that they provide the locals with jobs, but it can hardly be in the interest of the locals to be waiters and maids and see all the money leave the country. Costa Rica will have to make some big decisions which route to go with their tourism industry, the Ecotourism route, with the green forests or the Cancun route with the green wallets.



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-11 responses to “Eco-mania!”

  1. Nick says:

    Very interesting article that should be provided to the Costa Rican Tourism Marketing Department:-) There is a lot of truth in your thoughts and the worst news is that they are true allover the world. In nowadays Germany we pay pensions at the gas station and save rain forrest in South America while drinking a can of beer:-)

    Isn´t that weird? No: Thats Marketing for the sake of “Green wallets”

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