Indigenous communities, which have otherwise been left untouched by traditional tourism activities, have now been targeted for a new tourism venture, ecotourism. A relatively new variant, ecotourism is described as environment-friendly, sustainable and nature-based. It came about as a response to the world’s growing environmental awareness. This activity involves “visiting relatively undisturbed natural areas with the aim of studying, admiring and enjoying the scenery, wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural aspects.” Ecotourism now accounts for 25% of all leisure trips abroad. However, it is important to note that ecotourism destinations are more often than not in the Third World. Tourism here has been increasing by 6% annually, as compared to 3.5% in developed countries. After all, it is in these areas that relatively undisturbed and preserved natural environments and exotic areas are located. But it is also in these countries that the majority of the distinct indigenous cultures can be found.
Although ecotourism is a relatively new phenomenon internationally, it has existed for a much longer time in Africa. In the 1950s, the colonial governments of Tanzania and Kenya under the British legalised the hunting of wild animals by “white settlers,” paving the way for mass tourism. They set up zones for the exclusive use of hunters and prevented access to local inhabitants. Lodges and campsites were established near the preserves, making them major revenue earners. Some 70% of the protected areas and wildlife preserves, however, straddled lands of the Masai tribe.
Basically Pastoralists, the Masai used these lands for their economic activities and traditional practices. Forced out of their homeland, they were left with little or no support from the government. Even after independence, the government failed to provide them with basic social services such as education and employment. Alienated from their main economic activity and disadvantaged from job opportunities by a lack of education, the Masai were subjected to poverty. Even the Masai’s traditional socio-political institutions have suffered as a consequence of tourism. Lands outside the preserves where the Masai have been resettled are considered communal. In these areas, residents are registered, and the land and resources are to be distributed equally by a management committee. However, corrupt officials have registered even non-residents who have monopolised prime lands near the preserves. Land disputes have therefore arisen. Elders, traditional mediators of conflicts, have become powerless against non-residents who are often backed by powerful persons. Destruction of properties by wildlife has also been reported but the government has not given any compensation to affected residents. This has caused disruption in the relationship between tribes and the animals, which are given priority because of tourism. As a consequence, “the Masai are coming to abhor the very wild animals they have successfully coexisted with for centuries.”
Tourism has not spared the environment and biodiversity either. The rise in tourist arrivals in the preserves has increased deforestation, pollution and disruption in the ecological balance. In the Masai Mara National Park in Kenya and in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, forests adjacent to lodges and camping grounds have been cut down due to the demand for firewood. Hotels have dumped their sewage in Masai settlement areas, while campsites have polluted adjacent rivers. Masai culture has further been threatened and commercialised as negative Western values influence the Masai youth. This has lead to a loss of traditional values, prostitution, and the spread of AIDS.
It is in the interest of ecotourism to ‘preserve’ indigenous communities and their practises since exotic tribes with exotic practises serve as the main selling point to foreign tourists. Therefore, a very small percentage of the money made from tourism goes back into the community to provide the local residents with primary schools, basic healthcare and employment opportunities in the tourist industry. This is where the ‘sustainable’ aspect of ecotourism comes into play. These employment opportunities involve dancing or playing traditional music to bands of tourists, as in the case of the tribes that inhabit Kakum National Park. This is terribly degrading. Joan Carling of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance aptly summed up the effects of tourism on the indigenous peoples when she wrote “Tourism has facilitated the further disintegration of the peoples’ indigenous way of life. The commercialisation of their culture has led to undignified ways of seeking a livelihood such as allowing themselves to be photographed as souvenirs, or to do their indigenous dance for a fee. This practise was never a part of their culture.” Although indigenous people do see some of the benefits of ecotourism, there is rarely an acknowledgement-much less support- of indigenous people’s struggle for cultural survival, self-determination, freedom of cultural expression, rights to ancestral lands, and control over land use and resource management. What few benefits indigenous peoples derive from tourism are far outweighed by the damage it has caused them. They have been made to bear the brunt of an industry over which they have neither say nor control. Ecotourism, which has been touted as the fastest growing form of tourism in the Third World, has not proven to be sustainable at all. Rather, it has targeted indigenous communities as areas of destination and exploitation in the guise of being environment-friendly. Unless indigenous peoples have a direct participation in the planning, implementation, and regulation of tourism activities that affect them, and unless benefit-sharing mechanisms are put in place, tourism can never redound to their interest.
However, tourism is not the only threat to indigenous communities. Commercial exploitation of resources in wilderness areas began in the late nineteenth century with the rubber booms in Amazonia, the gold rushes in Yukon and Alaska and the appearance of the first rash of mining camps in the Australian outback at places such as Coolgardie in Western Australia. With the increasing demand for forest products and water and mineral resources in the twentieth century, the whole pace of survey, exploitation and production has quickened. Fig 1 shows the world’s mineral distribution. Many of the valuable minerals are only found in remote areas. Gold, for instance, is only found in a few parts of Africa, in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Northern Australia. When large reserves are found, extraction plants are set up with little regard to the environment and the indigenous communities.
Fig 1
Even though large amounts of money can be made from mineral extraction, it often has devastating consequences for the local people and the environment.
In the early 1960s, when huge oil reserves were discovered in western Siberia, Soviet ecologists sent oil drillers to the region to construct pipelines in swamps and underground, creating centres for extensive oil exploration and extraction. Due to the abundance of natural resources in western Siberia, the Soviet Union became dependent on the region in order to bolster its stagnant economy through the export of crude oil. Although the Soviet Union has since disintegrated, Russia continues the former Soviet practices of exploitation of western Siberia's natural resources at the expense of the environment in its efforts to support its national budget, and strive to compete in the world economic order. Oil production in the region which produces an estimated 186.5 million metric tons of oil (66% of Russia's total oil production) has had a devastating social impact on the indigenous peoples that have lived on and thrived off the land for thousands of years before the arrival of the Russians. One such tribe of indigenous peoples is the Khanty who are traditional hunters, and reindeer herders. Their once open wilderness has been polluted by oil and damaged through deforestation, thus causing the Khanty to alter their traditional ways of life.
The Khanty culture dates back to the second half of the first Millenium A.D. For thousands of years, the Khanty have lived along the Ob River adapting to the forest-swamp ecosystem in now what is known as the Khanty-Mansi Okrug in the Tyumen Oblast of Russia, long before the arrival of the Russians in the 17th century. The economy of the Khanty is supported by a combination of fishing, hunting and reindeer herding.
Since the 1960s when oil was first discovered here, houses have been built and large bonuses offered to industrial workers as incentives to move to the area to drill for oil and install pipelines. Two major cities were also built, Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk, to accommodate the influx of migrant workers coming from all over the Soviet Union. Recently published figures illustrate how rapidly the population has grown in Khanty-Mansi. In 1959, the population of Khanty-Mansi was 124,000; today the number has skyrocketed to over one million inhabitants, 22,000 of which are Khanty. Unfortunately for the Khanty, the increase in the population in the area has affected the availability of resources. For example, many of the oil workers fish and hunt, not just for food, but for sport, thus depriving the Khanty of animals they need to survive.
The scheme has been a disaster zone for the Khanty because at least one-half of the 57 million cubic metres of untreated waste from oil and gas production flows into water sources (Current Digest of Post-Soviet Press, p.21). Sturgeon, and the other fish dying from oil pollutants are leading to a shortage in the food supply of the Khanty who primarily rely on fish as their main source of food. Reindeer, which are important to the culture, are increasingly dying as well due to their consumption of oil contaminated berries and vegetation.
Oil development has alienated significant parts of the Khanty population from its traditional activities by cutting down or burning forests used by the Khanty and other indigenous tribes for building settlements and canoes, in order to make way for the construction of roads, housing for workers, and pipelines. As early as the late 1980s, 22 million hectacres of reindeer pasture had already been destroyed by fire and oil pollutants. Many animals important to the hunting culture, fox, sable, bear, and minx, have perished through these activities. The degradation of Khanty hunting grounds have caused a shift in migration to towns and cities, and increased social problems such as alcoholism and crime. The Khanty are being deprived of their main sources of income from the sale of deerskin and furs and are thus becoming impoverished. Today, it is estimated that less than 50% of indigenous peoples, including the Khanty, engage in traditional activities. As years go on, new generations of young Khanty will probably become more susceptible to the lure of powerful oil companies with their high technology, and altogether abandon their traditional lifestyles ultimately leading to the extinction of their unique culture.
Unfortunately, indigenous communities all over the world are being taken advantage of by resource developers. Their lands are being exploited. Major development programmes in the 1970s saw distribution of land for rubber production, agriculture, livestock and timber production without any reference to the indigenous groups. Governments are more concerned with money-making than they are with preserving part of their country’s cultural history. Legislation put in place in Daintree Rainforest, concerning the Kuku Yalariji, called for their “protection.” However, it actually involved European authorities rounding up Aboriginal groups, removing them from their traditional homelands, and placing them in missions. This piece of legislation served only to reduce the human value of the aboriginal people, and did nothing to protect them.
Not only are the indigenous communities gradually disappearing, so are the precious wilderness environments that they inhabit. As well as being of important cultural value, these wilderness areas are also of significant ecological value, and must be conserved. We must recognize that biological diversity is by no means evenly distributed over the surface of our planet, and that much of it is concentrated in a relatively few biologically rich regions that are often under severe threat. Clear priorities for conservation action in these regions must therefore be set. To be successful, strong partnerships must be established within the conservation community, the indigenous communities and the private sector. Otherwise, indigenous peoples will continue to be mere cogs in the wheels of these billion-dollar industries.