Ecotourism: Ecotourism debates Raise Some Important Points About How, Who And For What Do We Need To Conserve The Environment

Ecotourism is perhaps very well known for encouraging eco-tourists to simply photograph the natural resources and leave their footprints at the places that they have visited. This is indeed a laudable aspect to ecotourism and a subject that should pass off quietly without much debate since almost everyone today would agree that we need to conserve our diverse natural resources and a good way to do so would be to leave it relatively untouched. However, everything in this world will give rise to difference of opinions, and perhaps it is almost unknown for everyone to agree about everything. Some may expound the benefits and there are sure to be many detractors as well.

Less Than Satisfactory State Of Affairs

There are a number of ecotourism debates that try to highlight the less than satisfactory state of affairs one experiences in ecotourism because such people feel that living in a capitalist society does not go hand in hand with doing much positive things for ecotourism and that not enough is being done with regard to conserving nature and providing significant benefits as well as conserving the host nation’s revenue and natural resources.

Such ecotourism debates are centered on the position that there is a ‘blue-green’ environmental spectrum in which even nature has a basic economic value. Such ecotourism debates raise the question that ecotourism has become a catch-all phrase to help market products and in the capitalist sense at least, cultures as well as societies are mere commodities that are to be consumed by external sources.

So, these ecotourism debates go on to take the position that eco-tourists are creating big economic as well as environmental and even social impacts through the simple process of merely arriving at an ecotourism destination that more often than not is in a developing country. Thus, there is hardly any perceivable difference between the eco-tourist and the mass tourist and the former do not have a great chance to minimize the impact that they are having during their ecotourism travels.

Furthermore, such an ecotourism debate goes on to take the position that novelty-seeking tourists are pursuing hedonistic aims that are more often than not no more than snobbishness and is nothing more than a mere pretence of roughing it out while on their travels. This may be seen as nothing more than a way of marking their social position in order to separate them from mass tourists. Denying them luxuries of mass tourism is no more than a need to demonstrate that they can live without such luxuries and only want to feel that they are not impacting nature as do the mass tourists.

Thus, while ecotourism debates rage on, it is nevertheless quite clear that in spite of the many problems, there is hardly any denying the fact that ecotourism does in fact encourage powers that be into at least thinking about conserving nature, though opinions will certainly differ on what need to be protected, and how as well as for whose benefit.