Until the early 1970s, the Mexican island of Cancun had a population of less than a hundred. Its inhabitants – descendants of the Mayas – made their living by fishing, and by gathering food from the scrub and forests on the mainland shore. Today, the same 15-kilometre stretch of sand is the scene of one of the greatest mass migrations on Earth. Every year more than a million people fly in to laze in Cancuon’s tropical sunshine, and the former ‘island paradise’ now looks like a gigantic and bizarre ship, laden with some of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the Americas.
The transformation of Cancun came about through the combined efforts of the Mexican government and private enterprise. Its aim was to earn foreign exchange, and in this it has been spectacularly successful. However, in environmental terms, a high price has been paid. Over the past two decades, much of the island’s original plant and animal life has disappeared, and the presence of so many visitors creates an enormous amount of waterborne waste that has to be absorbed by the shallow Caribbean coast.
Cancun is a particularly spectacular example of ‘pile ’em high’ tourism adopted by many countries in or near the tropics. In the quest for foreign currency, the emphasis is on numbers and turnover, and environmental damage is seen as an unavoidable by-product. Cancun brings in about one-tenth of Mexico’s annual tourist revenue of more than $5 billion and, although much of the money ends in the pockets of investors, some reaches people who very much need it. For many people in less developed countries, the destruction of natural habitats may be sad, but is not nearly as sad as being unemployed.
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LESS IS MORE
However, a successful tourist industry does not necessarily have to be like this. In Central America, just 1300 kilometres south of Cancun, the president-elect of Costa Rica believes that tourism can play a positive role both in economic development and in conservation. Jose Maria Figueres, who takes office next month, argues that instead of accelerating habitat destruction, tourism can sometimes slow it down. To do this, he plans to focus on a relatively new kind of visitor – the ecotourist.
Ecotourism is a boom industry. Wherever wildlife exists in a relatively undisturbed state, from the tropics to the poles, today’s ‘environmentally aware’ tourists are willing to pay large sums to see it. Ecotourists not only pay more, they also ask less. While traditional sun-and-sand tourists often demand facilities that are quite inappropriate to their surroundings, ecotourists are usually happy to accept a limited range of home comforts, and to adapt to local conditions.
Costa Rica is a small but unusual country. It lies wholly inside the tropics, and has an extraordinary variety of topography and plant life crammed into an area smaller than that of Scotland or Tasmania. In the north and east, flat and humid lowlands stretch out to the Nicaraguan border and to the Caribbean, but elsewhere much of the country is dominated by a chain of volcanic mountains up to 3800 metres high.
On the Caribbean slopes, up to 8 metres of rain falls each year and this supports a dense blanket of evergreen vegetation. The plant cover ranges from tropical wet forest near sea level, with trees that grow to a height of 50 metres or more, through rainforest on the foothills to the stunted trees of the cloud forest which covers the tops of the mountains.
These forests, like most wet forests in the neotropics, are extraordinarily rich in epiphytes, or plants that use others as perches. Almost every available surface is colonised by plants of some kind, with orchids, bromeliads and cacti high in the canopy while aroids, including the Swiss cheese plant Monstera deliciosa and its relatives, clamber up tree trunks. Near the forest floor, even individual leaves become covered with miniature gardens, as mosses and liverworts grow over their surfaces to intercept the weak light that filters from above.
NATURAL ATTRACTIONS
On the Pacific slopes, the southernmost forests also receive rain all year round, and have similar evergreen forests. However, farther north a marked dry season sets in. Here, the natural vegetation is dry deciduous tropical forest, and from late December to the end of March the trees are leafless, with their gaunt trunks baking in the intense heat. If you add to this mangrove swamps, coral reefs, freshwater wetlands and paramo – a form of stunted vegetation normally found in the Andes – you have some idea of the natural diversity in this tiny nation.
Costa Rica is estimated to have at least 1000 species of tree and altogether about 8000 species of flowering plants. It is home to more than 200 species of mammal, including sloths, tapirs and ocelots, and 800 species of bird (nearly one-tenth of the world total) including scarlet macaws, quetzals and some 50 species of hummingbird. More than 150 species of amphibian live in its forests and wetlands, and estimates of its insect species range upwards from 35 000 to twice that number. The majority of the animals are forests inhabitants, and it is the forests that Figueres believes ecotourists can help to save.
In 1940, about 75 per cent of Costa Rica was covered by trees, and the human population – just over half a million – concentrated in the central plateau. Since then, the population has grown swiftly to 3 million, and the country has experienced one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world. Population growth has now begun to slacken, but after fifty years of wholesale destruction, less than 20 per cent of the country retains its original forest cover.
In the mid-1960s, however, politicians gradually woke up to the fact that one of the country’s greatest natural assets was in the process of disappearing and, if left unprotected, would cease to exist. As a result, the government set up a system of national parks, and about 12 per cent of the country’s land area – including the remote island of Cocos in the Pacific – is now protected by the state. A further 15 per cent has partial safeguards, forming a network of buffer zones and wildlife corridors that connect different habitats.
The oldest park, the Santa Rosa National Park, was founded in 1966 and presently covers an area of about 37 000 hectares, including tropical dry forest, coastal swamps and important turtle nesting grounds. The park has an education centre for schoolchildren and students, and a research centre where Daniel Janzen, an American tropical ecologist, has carried out most of his work. Janzen first visited Costa Rica in 1963 and, with the help of more than 150 contributors, produced Costa Rican Natural History, the first comprehensive reference work on the country’s flora and fauna. Other parks protect the summits of several volcanoes, lowland wetlands, sea bird nesting islands, and even two of the busiest tourist beaches in the country.
Costa Rica’s 20 nat-ional parks are run by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mines, in close cooperation with the Costa Rica Tourist Board. Pressure on land in Costa Rica is intense, with every available piece of open ground being used to grow crops, or to graze cattle. Every hectare that is denied to agriculture therefore has to be seen to pay its way, and the national parks are defended on the grounds that they attract tourists. However, as deforestation continues to press against their boundaries, the position of parks is beginning to look precarious. Last year, tourists brought in US $506 million, which represents about a fifth of the total foreign earnings. However, despite the fact that about 76 per cent of foreign tourists visit at least one park during their stay, the income this generates – just over half a million a dollars – is insufficient to maintain the park network.
In a region better known for instability and dictatorships, Costa Rica has a long tradition of lively democracy. During the recent presidential election, which took place on 6 February, the future of the parks, and of tourism in general, were major issues.
During the campaign, the advocates of high-intensity tourism, as adopted by Mexico and the Caribbean countries, lined up against those who take a more cautious approach. The outcome – by a slim margin – was success for Figueres and the National Liberation Party, who argued that tourism should directly contribute to conservation.
In an interview shortly before the election, Figueres showed himself to be against a free-for-all dash for growth. ‘What we should not do,’ he warned, ‘is copy the example of industrialised nations that have said ‘let’s first grow economically and then take care of nature’ only to discover, after they have grown, that it’s too late.’ His strategy is to sell Costa Rica to environmentally aware tourists as one of the world’s most diverse tropical landscapes, and to price the natural attractions so that they become self-financing.
Ecotourism has a short history in Costa Rica, and is far from fully exploited. More than a hundred privately owned ‘ecological’ tour companies already exist, but only a tiny fraction of their earnings are ploughed back into the national parks because the entrance fees are low – US $2 is typical. The industry is also hampered by a shortage of suitable accommodation, because Costa Ricans understandably like to take their holidays near the beach, and not in forests or on wet hilltops.
However, things look set to change when the new president takes office on 8 May. Figueres plans to inject extra cash into the parks by raising entrance fees substantially – perhaps fivefold from $2 to $10 – and he intends to promote the development of small-scale hotels away from traditional resorts. Here visitors will be able to appreciate the country’s wildlife, and they will also be encouraged to minimise their own impact on the environment. Figueres believes that there are many simple ways in which this can be done. ‘For example,’ he suggests, ‘if you don’t want your towel washed today, you could save us gallons of water by using it again tomorrow.’ It is not an approach that would go down well in Cancun.
But how realistic is it to finance conservation entirely through ‘enlightened’ tourism? Will enough people arrive and pay up? Some idea can be gained from the mixed results of Costa Rica’s privately run conservation projects. These range in size from small botanic gardens to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, which was founded in 1972 by American biologists and is now run by the Tropical Science Center, an organisation based in San Jose. The reserve originally covered just 300 hectares, but now protects more than 10 000 hectares of mist-shrouded forests straddling the continental divide. Monteverde has more than 400 species of birds, and – until its mysterious disappearance – was the home of the endemic golden toad (see ‘Decline and fall of the amphibians’, New ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´, 27 June 1992).
Despite the fact that it is at the end of a long and rough unsurfaced road, and that it is in rain or fog most of the year, Monteverde is one of Costa Rica’s premier natural attractions. It draws more than 15 000 visitors a year, and its forest paths have to be ‘rationed’ on busy days. Even so, the reserve is unable to sustain itself on the $8 entrance fee, and depends on donations from individuals and bodies such as the World Wide Fund for Nature. In recent years, donations have allowed the reserve to expand but it is obviously impossible to build future plans on such an unpredictable source of funding.
According to Amos Bien, an American ecologist and former student of Janzen, ecotourism alone cannot and should not be expected to pay for Costa Rica’s forests. Instead, Bien sees their future being secured by a mixed bag of sustainable enterprises. Tourism, he says, should be just one ‘crop’ among many, the exact mix depending on local conditions and market forces. Unlike many with strong opinions on the subject, Bien has tried to put his ideas into action in the shape of a private reserve which combines research and ecotourism.
Rara Avis is Bien’s pilot plant, a 1300-hectare expanse of hillside forest that abuts the Braulio Carillo national park. It contains both original forest cover and areas which have returned to being forested after earlier clearing, and has two lodges – one purpose-built and one a former penal colony – where visitors are brought into close contact with the area’s wildlife. Here they can watch toucans breakfasting in the tree-tops, pick up arrow-poison frogs on the forest paths and dodge bat-sized Rothschildia moths as they hurtle around the lamps after dark.
Set up in the early 1980s, Rara Avis can now accommodate up to 60 people. Rates for visitors vary – the most ‘luxurious’ quarters cost about $90 a night, but biologists and students qualify for large discounts. So, too, do long-term visitors; although most people find that two or three days of wading through lukewarm mud in the torrential rain is enough.
At Rara Avis the aim is not only to generate income from visitors, but to study the feasibility of various forms of sustainable exploitation of the forest. These include selective logging, farming pacas (large rodents prized for their meat), raising Heliconia and Morpho butterflies for export to collectors, and harvesting selected plants for a variety of ends ranging from potential sources of medicines to use in horticulture.
MAKING IT PAY
For Bien, a key aspect of the project is the involvement and employment of local people. Rara Avis is surrounded on three sides by a ragged patchwork of recently cleared land, where brama cattle graze in pasture that is strewn with felled trees. Without alternative employment, locals have every incentive to fell more forest and graze more cattle. However, if Bien can demonstrate that it is possible to make a living from the forest without destroying it, local people would be more likely to support conservation than if it is simply imposed upon them.
Since Rara Avis was set up, many other private reserves have appeared all over country, albeit usually on a smaller scale. Their existence is evidence of a willingness to invest in ecotourism, even if the long-term prospects of this new source of income are uncertain.
In the past, Costa Rica has received wide praise for its efforts in conservation, but its future progress, using tourism to slow the destruction of habitats, will be keenly observed. Sceptics of the value of ecotourism can rightly point to several features that make Costa Rica a special case. Its small size, extraordinary biodiversity and stable political climate make it uniquely equipped to lure tourists. If ecotourism cannot succeed here, its role elsewhere looks distinctly doubtful.
Other countries’ experience with ecotourism shows that there are many pitfalls to be avoided. One hazard is ‘spearheading’ – the inadvertent role of ecotourists in opening up previously untouched areas. This is currently causing concern in the Antarctic (see This Week, New ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´, 17 July 1993), and is a problem in many other areas, from tropical forests to remote mountains. Wherever ecotourists venture in search of the ultimate ‘unspoiled’ destination, some form of development inevitably follows.
And there is another problem with ecotourism – ‘leakage of benefits’, in which the income generated by tourism by-passes rural people and ends up in the pockets of city-based businesses. In Costa Rica, more than 50 per cent of the tourist-generated income is diverted this way, but this still leaves a significant amount for the benefit of local people. By contrast in East Africa and India, where wildlife tourism is long established, tourism produces very little revenue for local people. As a result, instead of welcoming ecotourists, local people view them as being indirectly responsible for the theft of valuable land.
When ecotourism does take off in a big way, a third problem enters the picture – the temptation to overexpand. The Galapagos Islands, a destination that has become one of the ultimate ‘environmental experiences’, provide a good example of this. The Galapagos belong to Ecuador, and the entire archipelago is protected by national park status. The Ecuadorean government charges a tourist tax of $40 and sets limits on the number of visitors, but the earning power of the islands has proved irresistible and these limits have crept inexorably upwards. Twenty years ago, the ceiling was 12 000 visitors a year, but by 1990 it had risen to 60 000. Today, the number of tourists actually landing on the islands may be 80 000 or more. Each additional tourist brings in valuable income, but adds to the burden on the island environment by using rare resources such as water, and by creating pollution. If Costa Rica is to avoid similar problems, the lure of ever-increasing numbers will have to be scrupulously avoided.
To ecological purists, there is no such thing as ‘environmental’ tourism, and the only way to avoid adding to habitat destruction is to stay at home. But the reality in a country such as Costa Rica is that tourists are perhaps the only way to preserve biological wealth. Short of another oil crisis, mass tourism is here to stay. When Costa Rica’s new president takes office in three weeks’ time, he is pledged to take a gamble on the positive potential of tourism. The first years of the next century will show if his gamble pays off.
David Burnie is a natural history writer based in Gloucestershire. His book, How Nature Works, was joint winner of the 1992 junior Science Book Prize.
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Enter the ecotourist
Wading through thick lukewarm mud may not be everyone’s idea of a holiday, and nor is getting soaked to the skin by torrential rain, or having to spend the evening searching your body for unwelcome passengers. But, for a growing number of people, such discomforts are a small price to pay for experiencing tropical forest at first hand.
According to figures published by the World Tourism Organization, more than 400 million tourists visit foreign shores every year. Without allowing for people who travel more than once annually, this is equivalent to about one-fifteenth of the world’s population. In the 40 years from 1950, international receipts from tourism – excluding fares – have leapt from about $2 billion to about $200 billion. The WTO estimates that by 2000, the number of foreign trips will have increased by 60 per cent.
Tourists generally are motivated by four factors: enjoying sunshine at the seaside, experiencing foreign cultures, encountering wildlife and wild places, or visiting far-flung relatives. As yet, there is little hard information about the proportion of tourists who travel with the third aim in mind, but the proliferation of specialist tour companies shows that this type of travel is a major growth area. If ecotourism forms just 1 per cent of the tourism industry by 2000, it will generate several billion dollars of income, much of which will be spent in Third World countries.
For today’s ecotourist, a bewildering array of destinations is already on offer – at a price. For example, a 14-day bird-watching tour of Costa Rica costs about $2400, while a 7-night cruise of the Galapagos Islands can cost $2700. A 16-day gorilla watch in Uganda can be yours for just $1100, while two weeks in the rainforests of Borneo will set you back about $1500. For the really ambitious, a 20-day cruise of the Antarctic Peninsula, taking in the Falklands and South Georgia, can cost as little as $7500 if you are prepared to take a cheap cabin, and as much as $12 000 if you prefer a suite. Remember that these are prices for tours only; all air fares are extra.