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The power of positive thinking |
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by Philip Briggs
Edition 35: Summer 2006
It has, I
suspect, become rather trendy to portray tourism as an intrinsically
destructive activity. In recent weeks, I have been barraged by travel
articles whose writers have dragged in a few half-baked ‘issues’
relating to the negative impact of tourism, in an apparent attempt to
boost their own credibility.
I keep coming across safari operator websites which claim that their
eco-product stands out from the exploitative crowd when all they appear
to be offering local communities are breadcrumb benefits. Meanwhile, amid the growing use of catchphrases such as ‘responsible
tourism’ and ‘giving something back’, a respected newspaper columnist
has nominated tourism as a Fifth Horseman of the environmental
Apocalypse that threatens our planet…
The assumption that tourism is a broadly negative thing concerns me. Of
course, tourism can sometimes have a detrimental effect on host
communities, particularly where visitor densities are high and
monitoring levels are low. But in Africa, is it not more salient to
dwell on tourism’s potential to create employment, provide other
economic opportunities and encourage grassroots conservation
initiatives?
Many of the negatives that one might on a gut level associate with
tourism have more to do with how tourist-related interaction exposes
the educational and material gulf dividing Africa from the West.
Understandably, many tourists are shocked when confronted by this
disparity. But laying the blame on tourism feels a bit like shooting
the messenger. Colonialism, maladministration, ill-conceived aid
schemes, corporate rapaciousness ‐ we can debate the causes of Africa’s
material poverty all night. Business opportunities would provide a
remedy, but these are in short supply throughout Africa. The continent
needs genuinely sustainable opportunities that encourage the
importation of hard currency, and tourism can fill that gap.
What of tourism as an ecological hazard? Well, no doubt we can all cite
localised examples of tourism-related degradation of the environment or
changes in animal behaviour. But the bigger picture is that tourist
revenue is often pivotal to the success of conservation efforts. Cut
off the stream of safarigoers to the game parks of East Africa, ban
people from tracking gorillas in the Virungas, close down those
innumerable community-run projects that preserve pockets of vulnerable
flora and fauna throughout the continent ‐ the net result, at
present-day population levels, won’t be a return to Eden, but
desertification, deforestation and poaching.
Viewed from south of the Sahara, the economic and ecological plusses of
tourism are blindingly obvious. But these trendy attempts to politicise
tourism have the potential to further diminish the already tiny
proportion of global tourist revenue that ends up in the world’s most
materially disadvantaged continent. Africa is widely thought of as
dangerous, corrupt, famine-stricken and war-ridden ‐ in short, a place
best avoided. Surely the travel media should be trying to correct this
misapprehension, rather than tossing an underlying sense of guilt into
the cocktail of wrong-headed reasons to stay away!
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