Reasons to Support and Reasons to Oppose Ecotourism Essay

Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving visiting pristine, fragile, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, purposed as a low- impact and small scale alternative to commercial tourism, which contributes towards both environmental and socioeconomic benefits. Ecotourism travel has significantly caught the attention of various individuals recently. There are a number of reasons supporting ecotourism and there are a number of reasons opposing ecotourism. Ecotourism invented to help conserving the natural environment, it also helps improving the cultural, economical and social situations of the developing countries. At the same time, it can also possibly leads to a destruction of natural habitats, it can be prejudicial as well as damaging the local communities. The reason opposes ecotourism is that ecotourism will cause the destruction of the ecosystem. Tourists would scare the animals in areas where animals live, such as woodland areas. Those animals live in the forest are wild, they are not tame, and may pose a danger to tourists. The presence of tourists will cause stress to the wild animals since they are not used to live together with humans. If those tourists are carrying food and try to feed them, over a period of time, the survival ability of those animals would decline and it is bad to them. On Mexico’s Pacific coast, bright lights from beachfront hotels disorient female sea turtles coming ashore to lay eggs, often preventing successful reproduction (Eco-tourism: Encouraging Conservation or Adding to Exploitation?;pg.2). If you have ever been to any national parks, you will know that the parks are very big and there are at least a few pieces of rubbish in different places. Examples of that include the large-scale habitat transformation to enhance ecotourism experience in Malaysia, track erosion in Costa Rican National Parks and severe pollution by garbage at certain points in the Himalayas in Nepal (The role of ecotourism in conservation: panacea or Pandora’s box?; pg. 592). There are many park rangers to manage the parks, but it is still difficult to find every single piece of rubbish in the parks. The rubbish can be harmful to the natural environments and animals, especially the plastic trash, for example plastic bottles and plastic bags which cannot be decomposed in a short period. The first reason to support ecotourism is that countries can receive the economic gain from developing ecotourism, especially for those developing countries. Tourism in general created only between 0.5 and 13.5%of the GDP for some developed countries (The role of ecotourism in conservation: panacea or Pandora’s box?; pg. 584), it’s because the developed countries concentrate in financial industry and the real estate industry. But for the developing countries, it could generate huge revenue, for example, hotel revenue, sites entrance fee, tax revenue etc. Goodwin (1996) predicted the revenue created by ecotourism and environmentally sensitive tourism to be 50 billion and 300 billion US$ in the year 2000, respectively (The role of ecotourism in conservation: panacea or Pandora’s box?; pg. 580). It can also generate foreign currencies for their economic development. Ecotourism can also generate employment opportunities for the local communities, they can have more type of work to choose. In Bhutan, ecotourism plays an important role in generating employment opportunities, because there are 80 % of people work in agricultural sector, but conservative figures by the Tourism Council of Bhutan estimate tourism’s contribution to GDP at US$90 million in 2010, and there are now 21,000people employed directly and indirectly in tourism (Bhutan, A Model for Sustainable Tourism Development; pg. 15). The living standard of the local people is increased and compare to the extractive uses of land that ecotourism is more sustainable that locals could gain the long term income. Another reason is, to the developed and developing countries, many of the lands have ecological value for economic development. Developing ecotourism can make the sites protected well because it can generate foreign currency which provides a strong incentive to the government to conserve the sites. The governments will protect the sites for sustainable development but not destroying it, for example hiring park rangers to manage the sites. Also they will promote sites protection to the local resident, since they may not notice about the place they live now is that beautiful and need to conserve it, develop ecotourism can increase their awareness on protecting the sites. Since sustainable development is important to the sites, the government will improve the maintenance of the sites and have a good management. The last reason is ecotourism can increase sense of mission among tourists on nature and tourists can benefit from the local cultures. They can gain more knowledge about the nature since they can experience that directly. Local residents can benefit from the environmental education ecotourism provides. Honduran schoolchildren from the capital city of Tegucigalpa are routinely taken to visit the La Tigra cloud forest visitor center, to learn about the intricacies of the rainforests (Eco-tourism: Encouraging Conservation or Adding to Exploitation? ;pg.2). Tourist always like shopping while traveling, ecotourism can let them have more interaction with the nature, local residents and have a relaxing time, not just shopping but also enjoy the natural environment and try to travel on foot. Tourists are able to have an opportunity benefit from local cultures and understand the country more deeply. Some countries will promote that supporting local cultures by eating foods which are locally grown, having lunch in local-owned restaurants, taking part in their traditional activities, buying food at stores. The rise of interest in ecotourism is beneficial to many aspects, the government can achieve economic gains, and the local communities have a higher income. Also, it is beneficial to the ecotourism sites that the sites can be protected well and beneficial to the tourists that they can gain more knowledge about the nature. Although ecotourism may cause some habitat alterations and pollute the area, it can still be balanced between sustainable development and economic development if it is managed well and can be developed in more and more countries. So the advantages of development of ecotourism outweigh the disadvantages. It can also conserve the environment, which is good to all of us.