1.

Introduction
Ecotourism is about travelling responsibly into nature, conserving the environment and improving the well-being of local people. In other words, Ecotourism is about uniting conservations, communities, and sustainable travelling. In this essay I will look at the meaning of Ecotourism, its history, the impact of ecotourism on the environment, the local people, and the sustainable development in Suriname.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

2. Definition
Ecotourism can be defined as responsible travelling to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people. This form of tourism involves visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial tourism. Those who participate and practise this theory should follow the ecotourism principles, such as, minimizing impact, sustaining the environment and respecting cultural differences, providing positive experiences for visitors and hosts, providing direct financial benefits for conservation, and empowerment for local people and raising sensitivity to host countries, political, environmental, and social climate.i Ecotourism offers a long-term market solution and provides an effective economic incentives for conserving and enhancing bio-cultural diversity and helps protect the natural and cultural heritage of our beautiful planet. It also offers employment opportunities, and empowers local communities around the world to fight against poverty, sustained development and promotes greater understanding, appreciation and attraction for nature (flora and fauna), local community and respect for different cultures (culture heritage) and human rights. ii

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

3. History
Ecotourism has been around for a short time. The real history behind ecotourism started in Africa when people could go on eco-adventure tours based on hunting the wildlife. Ecotourisms main purpose was to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and human rights. Ecotourism was widely compared too and often misinterpreted as any form of tourism that involves nature especially with the term jungle tourism. It was Claus-Dieter Hetzer, an academic and adventurer from Berkley CA, who first started with the ecotours in early 1970s and Hector Ceballos-Lascurain, Director General of Standards and Technology of SEDUE (The Mexican Ministry of Urban Development and Ecology) and founding president of PRONATURA (an influential Mexican conservationist NGO), in 1983, who campagned for the conservation of the wetlands in the northern Yucatn as breeding and feeding habitats of the American Flamingo. iii With the hunting of wildlife, came the negative part of ecotourism. The negative part was that a lot of animal species became distinct, such as birds, fishes, mammels, and amphibians. The protecting of animals came about in 1903. In this year President Theodore Roosevalt create the first National wildlife refuge in Florida, to protect wood storks, brown pelicans, and other endangered water birds. From this came the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1916 and the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966, 1969, 1973 an 1978.iv During the years that follow, several animals went on the endangered list, such as the polar bear and leatherback turtle. This protecting of animal species in their natural habitat, lead to the definition of ecotourism. Ecotourism became famous with the rise of education on the environment. Ecotourism and the environment became not only important to the governments, travelers and businesses, but also to the local communities. According to the majority, ecotourism has been the fastest growing sub-sectors in the tourism industry since mid 1980s. The growth came from the change in tourist perceptions, increased environmental awareness, the benefits of conservations and protecting the planet, and an urge to explore natural environment. With the continueing of the Ecotourism activity however, there are continuous arguments about biodiversity preservation, local and social benefits, and environmental impact. This is why there are several definitions for ecotourism by environmentalists, special interest groups, and the government. The groups focuses on different things, such as nature and product. Some groups use different terms for ecotourism, as green tourism, bio-tourism, and nature tourism. There are many more terms used, but they are not the same as ecotourism. The using of the different terms and definitions have cause a great deal of confusion among tourist and academics. There is also a dispute among the groups because of the green washing, which is practising ecotourism that is not sustainable, nature based, and environmentally acceptable. Eventhough the concept is distructive, economically exploitative, culturally insensitive, and misleading, groups that practise this concept obtain tremendous profits, because it associates with ecotourism. v It has only been recenty that this green washing has been brought to the center of attention. It has become and issue in presidential elections and in industries. Efforts have been made to teach the community about the environment by educating them. Education was given in the form of commercials, demonstrations and classrooms lectures.
3 Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

While protecting the environment that has been longstanding, institutionalizing the information and teaching it to the public has only been going on for the past five to ten years. Since the increase in information about how people are negatively impacting the planet, there has been a huge influence applied to the travel industry. The urge to explore ones natural environment may depend on the individuals social identity, education, and income, but with more people demanding green hotels, restaurants and transportation, ecotourism is becoming more popular.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

4. Impact of Ecotourism
The positive impact of ecotourism Jobs for local people Income for the local economy Helps preserve rural services like buses, boats and village shops. Increased demand for local food and crafts Tourists mainly wants to experience the wildlife. Promotes cultural awareness and can help preserve local culture and traditions. Natural features that attract tourists can be protected using income from tourism. Native communities are learning the tourism business. Communities have more control of the message getting out.

The negative impact of ecotourism Damage to the landscape: litter, erosion, fires, vandalism (environmental hazards). Traffic congestion and pollution. Physical displacement of the local community. Shops asked prices based on tourists Demand for holiday homes makes housing too expensive for local people. Violation of fundamental rights Jobs are mainly seasonal, low paid with long hours. Travel agents, airline companies and hoteliers benefits more than local companies when holidays are booked to destinations. Ecotourism channels resources away from other projects that could contribute more sustainable and realistic solutions to pressing social and environmental problems. Destroy local culture and traditions.

Ecotourism is supposed to be about low-impact practise, educational, ecologically and cultural sensitive travel that benefits the local communities and host countries. Looking at the travels that are supposed to represent ecotourism it is noticable that most of them do not meet these standards. While several studies are being done on ways to improve the ecotourism structure, some ecotourism corporations argue that these examples provide reasons for stopping it altogether. Ecotourism may provide solutions to the economic problems, but it causes lots of other problems such as contamination of the rivers by dumping sewage, pollution and littering. The community is effected more by the negative impact, because as mention above the effected areas are the environment, population, cultures and traditions. More should be done to educate the government, local community, and tourists about the importance of the preservation of flora, fauna and our culture. Education improves their awareness, and sensitize them to environmental issue. Tour guides and travel agents to the delicate places are a direct medium to communicate awareness of the importance of preservation. With the confidence of ecotourist and personal knowledge of the environment, they can actively discuss conservation issues. Personnel should be trained before and on the job of whats important about preservating our environment. Although ecotourists claim to be educationally sophisticated and environmentally concerned,
5 Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

they rarely understand the ecological consequences of their visits and how their day-to-day activities append physical impacts on the environment. As most ecotourist corporations belong to multinationals, these corporations are mostly out for profit from ecotourism. Profits ends up in the pockets of investers instead of reinvested into the local economy of environmental protection. They practise tourism on a large scale that causes excessive environmental degradation, loss of tradional culture and way of life and exploitation of labor. The lack of economic opportunities for local people may encourage the development of destructive markets in wildlife souvenirs, such as sale on endangered species and poaching from the environment. The shortage of sustainability focus the need for small scale, slow growth, and locally based ecotourism. The local community should have a greater interest invested in the well being of their surroundings, and therefore be accountable to environmental protection than multinational corporations. The loss of the resources, such as culture and traditions and endangering the environment are more important than the benefits of establishing large scale ecotourism. Several organizations now exist to protect and preverse these resources. The 2002 summit held in Quebec, Canada, led to the 2008 global Sustainable Tourism Criteria, which is a collaborative effort between the UN Foundation and other advocacy groups. Effective sustainability planning, maximum social and economic benefits for local communities, minimum negative impacts on the cultural heritage, and minimum negative impacts on the environment are the standards for the global Sustainable Tourism Criteria. In most cases ecotourism does not empowers the local people who make it worth while, instead it exploits and depletes. It has to be reoriented if it is to be useful to local communities and to become sustainable. At the local level ecotourism has become a conflict over control over land, resources, and tourism profits. Very few regulations or laws stand in place as boundaries for the investors in ecotourism. These should be implemented to prohibit the promotion of unsustainable ecotourism projects and material which project false images of destinations, demeaning local and indigenous cultures. Most of the time it is overlooked that ecotourism is a highly consumer-centered activity, and that environmental conservation is a means to further economic growth. With the Agenda 21 plan, actions are taken globally, nationally and locally by organization that is part of the United Nations System to protect and preserve the environment. The commission on Sustainable(CSD) was created in December 1992 to ensure effective followup UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and development), which was created in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The full implementation of Agenda 21, the Programme for Further Implementation of Agenda 21 and the Commitments to the Rio principles, were strongly reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August to 4 September 2002. vi There are 40 chapters in the Agenda 21, divided into four sections. Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions. Deals with combating poverty, promoting health, change population and sustainable settlement in decision making and changing consumption patterns.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

Section II: Conservation and Management of Resouces for Development. This includes protecting the atmosphere, combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity, controling pollution, and management of biotechnology and radioactive wastes. Section III: Strengthening the role of Major Groups. Includes the role of youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, businesses and workers and srengthening the role of indigenous peoples, their community and farmers. Section IV: Means of Implementation. Includes science, technology, transfer, education, internation institutions, and financial mechanisms. Agenda 21 for culture is the first document with worldwide mission that advocates establishing the base of an undertaking by cities and local governments for cultural development.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

5. Sustainable Ecotourism
For ecotourism to be sustainable, it must return as much back to the natural environment and to the local people of the region, because with every visit by a ecotourist to a remote place something is removed. A balance must be found limits and usage so that continuous changing, monitoring sound planning ensure that ecotourism can be managed. As one ecotourism article notes: take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, waste nothing but time. Ecotourism should provide visitors with an enriching, educational experience in return for their help in conserving and protecting our sensitive environment of the area, economically benefiting local people and participating in sustaining the development of the region or country. vii The product of ecotourism is the destination. For it to be sustainable it has to be as inviting to the last visitor as it was to the first. Developing small-scale ecolodges helps to limit visitation to the actual carry capacity of the region. Careful and thoughtful ecotourism encourages low to no consumption of natural resources, emphasizes observation and educational modes of interacting with local people, environment and wildlife. All effort must be made to conserve and protect the region. The people of the region must be enhanced with the sustainable ecotourism. This is done by their overall educational experience of ecotourism. As mention before, for ecotourism to be sustainable, the ownership of small businesses should be increased. This is beneficial for the economic benefits. These small businesses should represent people who cares for the region and culture. Keeping this balance is one of the essential tasks of sustainable, well-run ecotourism. But as seen in many areas and countries, the regulations of ecotourism are poorly implemented or nonexistent. This poorly implementation can be seen by catergorizing helicopter tours with camping, photography and wildlife observation. The lack of sustainability highlights the need for small scale, slow growth, and locally based ecotourism. viii Local authorities and other organization tries to make ecotourism sustainable by trying to implement the following things: Show visitors how they can be responsible tourists with events, leaflets, information centres, guided walks and events, signs and websites. Support outdoor activities that do not damage the countryside or harm wildlife. Encourage visitors to buy local products and food. Ask local communities for their views and ideas by setting up forums, groups and consultations. Reduce erosion caused by visitors, by creating and repairing footprints. Use planning policies to control the spread of buildings in built-up areas development. Encourage green energy-efficent buildings with planning policies and grant funding. Encourage small-scale renewable energy schemes, like solar panels, with planning policies and funding.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

6. Sustainable Ecotourism in Suriname

Suriname is a small country in the North of South-America. Suriname is rich with different cultures. The different cultures came from the ancestors which were African, Asian, indigenous and Europeans. Besides a rich and unique culture, Suriname is also rich with rainforest, rivers and fauna, which, if handle correctly are very important in the development. All these attractions offers Suriname significant opportunities to receive profit upon its competitive advantage over other tropical tourism destinations. Suriname is unknown and unspoilt, hence, creating a good base to attract visitors worldwide. With the growing interest and longing by visitors for exotic, unknown, and unspoilt destinations and interest of the local people in the field of preservation of the precious resources, Suriname may turn out to be a very important tourism destination in the future. The joint venture of local people as well as visitors are ensuring the sustainability of the natural assets. Even though Suriname was the first country in South America to erect a tourism office in the seventies in New York and also one of the first countries to carry out a successful rainforest tourism, Suriname has no real tourism tradition. Suriname has been through a lot of political instability in the past. After democracy was restored in the nineties, tourism was re-established when the ministry of Transport, Communications and Tourism was created. With this ministry establish, measure were taken to re-establish tourism. One of these measures were to re-opened the government owned company, the METS. METS would support the initiatives of indigenous inhabitants and develop tourist activities. Their is responsible for the agreement between owners of facilities, promotion of goods and services from local people, providing education, public health, setting up facilities in traditional style using local materials, and minimizing impact on nature and culture. METS try to stick to their own definition of ecotourism, which states that ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas which conserves the environment and improves the wellfare of local people. With this in mind, they try to limit the number of visitors to a resort to maximum fifteen people per tour. They try to make the ecotourism sustainable by informing the visitors in advance what to expect from the indigenous villages and also by educating their employees. The golden rule must always be remembered, which is respect yourself, respect others, respect your village, and respect your country. Even with this in mind it is still difficult to keep a good balance between tourism, conservation, and culture. ix In the table below are a few examples of ecotourism resorts in Suriname, such as, Raleigh falls, Blanche Marie falls, Awarradam, Kasikasima, Kabalebo, bird watching at Warappakreek and observing the beautiful turles at Matapica. I have visited some of these resorts and some of them I would like to visite. These are also examples of why the country is unique. Awarradam

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

Raleigh falls with Volts Mountain

10

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

Blanche Marie falls

Kasikasima

Kabalebo

11

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

Warappakreek: bird watching

The blue frogs (Dendrobates azureus), known as Okopipi, . Can only be found in the valleys of the Four Brothers of Mamia, a small mountain range on the Surinamese border with Brazil.

12

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

The Marine Leatherbacks The northern coast of Suriname is one of the best places in the world to view this beautiful creature. This critically endangered reptile is the only species left in its family of Dermochelyidae.

This is an animal that survived the demise of the dinosaurs, but may not survive us.

The following organizations needs to work together to make ecotourism sustainable. They are: STINASU: the foundation for nature conservation in Suriname. METS: Company for the exploitation of tourism lodges Inbound Tour Operators Outbound Tour Operators Local N.G.O. Local and National Government Sponsoring Organizations Resource Managers Travel Agents Ecotourist: Independ traveller and students

13

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname

Bibliography
http://www.ehow.com/info_7888781_sustainable-ecotourism-definition.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

http://www.ecotourism.org/what-is-ecotourism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotourism http://www.mapsofworld.com/surinam/tourism/ecotourism.html http://www.surinamevacations.com/ http://environment.research.yale.edu/documents/downloads/0-9/99akum.pdf

Endnotes
i ii

http://www.ecotourism.org/what-is-ecotourism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotourism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotourism http://www.fws.gov/endangered/laws-policies/timeline.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotourism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

http://www.ehow.com/info_7888781_sustainable-ecotourism-definition.html http://www.ehow.com/info_7888781_sustainable-ecotourism-definition.html

iii

iv v

vi

vii

viii

ix

http://environment.research.yale.edu/documents/downloads/0-9/99akum.pdf

14

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development in Suriname