Sunday, May 30, 2010
A short opinion on ecotourism and Pacifica
I've been an ecotourist in South America, Asia and Africa. In all cases, only a very small handful of hotel owners and tour guides benefited, while daily life for everyone else consisted of trying to scrounge-up enough food for themselves and their families to make it through the day. Often the scrounging consisted of poaching in nearby national parks and wildlife refuges.
Ecotourism is better than nothing, but that's the most you can say for it. It's a last-resort economic plan when there's absolutely nothing else to base an economy on.
Until tourists become interested in admiring views of junkyards, abandoned buildings, and self-storage units from our hills, it won't work in Pacifica either. 30+ years of trying to promote ecotourism in town has produced nothing but failure.
Posted by Steve Sinai
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2 comments:
I liked this quote from Wikipedia's page on ecotourism:
"A tremendous amount of money is being spent and human resources continue to be used for ecotourism despite unsuccessful outcomes, and even more money is put into public relation campaigns to dilute the effects of criticism."
Its like they actually live in Pacifica . . .
Valuable opinions. Note from Jeff above in reference to ecotourism "...despite unsuccessful outcomes.." And, Steve's article observation in other countries. As Sarah says "how that eco-tourism thing working-out"?
"Our economy is another city council failure" based upon a radical philosophy, not logic or any abstract from basic economics.
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