Essay: Invest More In Ecotourism To Promote Sustainability.

Benefits of ecotourism

Explain, Should more be invested to promote ecotourism?

Ecotourism is the well-known form of tourism that involves visiting fragile, pristine and peaceful natural areas. The ecotourism can be placed as the small-scale alternative to the standard commercial tourism. There are several benefits of ecotourism in both environmental, social as well as the economic aspect. It helps to educate travelers, provide funds for ecological conservation, economic development and political empowerment of local communities. Environmentalists have considered Ecotourism as a significant effort since the 1980s (Bulbeck 2012). Thus, governments should invest more on ecotourism to ensure that future generations would be able to experience destinations, free of disturbing human interventions.  The strategic partnership is required for sustainable management of the ecotourism related initiatives and developments. For the huge scale of maintenance, high amount of investment is required for promoting ecotourism in different parts of the world (Lu and Stepchenkova 2012). Therefore, it can be said that more investment is required for promoting ecotourism and sustainability. However, regulation strategies are very important. The main arguments include the proses and positive impact of eco-tourism on environment and economy. A number of initiatives has been taken, but there are huge number of opportunities where more investment can promote sustainable ecotourism projects.

Lu and Stepchenkova (2012) argued that, nowadays ecotourism projects impose negative impact upon enviornment and wildlife. Thus, more investment is not needed in this field. However, there are some benefits of eco-tourism, which are attracting private investors to invest more in the ecotourism related initiatives.  As eco-tourism provides the wide range of benefits, thus, investments can be enhanced for enhancing these benefits. One significant benefit of ecotourism is the biodiversity conservation. In 2005, the US Foundation grants for the environment, animals and wildlife were estimated t be approximate $US 1.04 billion. On the other hand, Tourism Satellite Accounting research spent more than $US 6 trillion on travel and tourism (Jaafar and Maideen 2012). From this huge amount of investment, it can be argued that the investors have found something promising from ecotourism, which can be enhanced with more investment. Ecotourism offers investors both conservation and a development strategy. However, it has also been claimed by Jalani (2012) that without applying the universally accepted standards, ecotourism can be over-used and have negative social and ecological impacts. In this context, ecotourism can hamper the achievement of community and environment development and sustainability funding objectives. Therefore, ecotourism projects should be planned with a sustainable strategy to attract investors. 

Challenges of ecotourism

Sukserm et al. (2012) has argued the dominated group of investors including the international lending agencies is pumping millions of dollars into their ecotourism related projects under the banner of sustainable rural development, biodiversity improvement, local income generation, infrastructure development and institutional capacity building. It has been reported that after 2001, funding for ecotourism and sustainable tourism began to decline, as it was difficult to support the sustainable development through the ecotourism projects. This decline made the investment relatively risky in this field. The risk was caused due to the inherent finance challenges in the ecotourism model. Most common issues include the fragmented nature of tourism projects and related lack of market data. However, the huge investment in 2005 for ecotourism projects ensured this niche field as one of the fastest growing sectors or the travel industry that is expanding three times faster than the entire global tourism industry. U.S. grantmaking foundations provided this report, which helps to represent the benefits of funding in ecotourism industry and its sustainability.  Researchers have found that within 2001-2010, minimum US$9.43 billion have been poured into 363 ecotourism projects around the world (Hammerschlag et al. 2012). It has been found that there are different sources of funding for ecotourism, bilateral donors, multilateral donors, corporate philanthropy, internationals foundations, big international NGOs and development banks. These investors should undertake in depth research in this field and then should think about more investment.

Chaminuka et al. (2012) claimed that, ecotourism has been shown as a potential economic and environmental savior in Latin America. However, it was argued that the explosive foreign investment in eco-tourism projects raised a significant question regarding the validity of sustainable development related to ecotourism. It is evident that in some cases, it has been seen that ecotourism projects are putting stress on wildlife and the local population, in the absence of proper regulation and management. Another major counter argument is that ecotourism often converts the local economy to a tourist economy, by damaging the natural economic prospects of the local area for serving wealthy foreigners (Miller 2012). However, it is the most common way for small investors to gain huge profit from this industry. It can destroy local industry and agriculture by reducing worker’s attraction from the industry, thereby leading to an economic downturn. These kinds of activities can make the local economy to be dependent on foreign funds. In this situation, investment by the local investor is very important and can be more profitable.

The need for sustainable ecotourism projects

In Costa Rica, ecotourism can be promoted through the utilization of the natural resources, it has been seen that the ecotourism initiatives lack proper regulation and sustainability activities. Instead, the previous reports, it has been observed that promotion of ecotourism in Costa Rica had a significant positive impact on the environment and economy. Through years, ecotourism has become one of the main justifications for the preservation of natural areas throughout Costa Rica. It resulted in rapid expansion of national park system including seventy entities. The promotion of ecotourism in Costa Rica made it the leading country in environmental preservation throughout the Caribbean. In addition, Mohammadi et al. (2012) claimed that emphasis on natural preservation for ecotourism purposes promoted the reduction of wide spread deforestation of the countryside. From different aspects, ecotourism is an advantageous model for achieving the environmental prosperity and sustainability. However, in Costa Rica, there is a wide range of opportunities through which the ecotourism model can be improved. In this context, it can be said that better management and regulation can help to enhance the sustainability of ecotourism initiatives. For better regulation and management, increased funding is required. In the case of ecotourism in Costa Rica, for better management practices, better implementation, monitoring and evaluation is required, which require more human and financial resources (Fletcher and Neves 2012). Therefore, more investment can help to resolve these issues. The government needs to develop more creative ways for generating income. It will help in the maintenance of park system as well as for the training of park rangers and staffs, which would make them more efficient in managing park related issues. Therefore, from this discussion, it can be interpreted that more investment can promote the positive sides of ecotourism initiatives, which can help to enhance both environmental and economic benefits. 

There are some areas having a wide range of opportunities for ecotourism projects. Queensland is such a place having the natural competitive advantage in providing visitors with high quality ecotourism experiences due to the presence of excellent national parks and marine parks. However, promotion of ecotourism in Queensland also has some significant cons, regarding price, authenticity, reliability and communication, all of which needs strict monitoring and evaluation. Instead, the proses are higher. Queensland has five world heritage areas among the 19 such areas in Australia, such as Great Barrier Reef. Promoting investment would help to double visitor’s expenditure to$30 billion by 2020 (Jalani 2012). According to the report of Miller (2012), Queensland needs to build on competitive advantage for investing in new ecotourism products and experiences. Through the implementation of attractive investment model and probity, the government can attract private investors. Now the question is what is the way to achieve quality investment in ecotourism? Strategic planning can give the best answer. Creating positive business environment can ensure the investors the high amount of investment return (Jalani 2012). Therefore, it can be said that promoting more investment in Queensland can enhance the ecotourism related benefits.

In the previous paragraphs, all the discussion was done for analyzing the feasibility of promoting investment in ecotourism. From the discussion, both the pros and cons of investment in ecotourism have been derived. It has been revealed from the arguments and statements that, ecotourism is one of the fastest growing industries throughout the world, a huge amount of money has been invested in this field, however, due to lack of maintenance, and some quality related issues, investments have been decreased. Nevertheless, there are some areas throughout the world, where ecotourism projects have some attractive opportunities. Once these opportunities are exploited, both sustainable environmental and economic benefits will be achieved. Therefore, it can be interpreted that with strategic management and proper regulation, more investment can promote ecotourism.

Reference List

Bulbeck, C., 2012. Facing the Wild:" Ecotourism, Conservation and Animal Encounters". Routledge.

Chaminuka, P., Groeneveld, R.A., Selomane, A.O. and Van Ierland, E.C., 2012. Tourist preferences for ecotourism in rural communities adjacent to Kruger National Park: A choice experiment approach. Tourism Management,33(1

Fletcher, R. and Neves, K., 2012. Contradictions in tourism: The promise and pitfalls of ecotourism as a manifold capitalist fix. Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 3(1), pp.60-77.

Hammerschlag, N., Gallagher, A.J., Wester, J., Luo, J. and Ault, J.S., 2012. Don’t bite the hand that feeds: assessing ecological impacts of provisioning ecotourism on an apex marine predator. Functional Ecology, 26(3), pp.567-576.

Jaafar, M. and Maideen, S.A., 2012. Ecotourism-related products and activities, and the economic sustainability of small and medium island chalets. Tourism Management, 33(3), pp.683-691.

Jalani, J.O., 2012. Local people's perception on the impacts and importance of ecotourism in Sabang, Palawan, Philippines. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 57, pp.247-254.

Lu, W. and Stepchenkova, S., 2012. Ecotourism experiences reported online: Classification of satisfaction attributes. Tourism Management, 33(3), pp.702-712.

Miller, A.P., 2012. Ecotourism development in Costa Rica: the search for Oro Verde. Lexington Books.), pp.168-176.

Mohammadi, J., Ahmadi, D. and Godarzi, M., 2012. An analysis Seydan ecotourism with emphasis on sustainable development. Management Science Letters, 2(6), pp.2019-2024.

Sukserm, T., Thiengkamol, N. and Thiengkamol, T., 2012. Development of the Ecotourism Management Model for Forest Park. Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(1), pp.95-99.