By ROGER HAMILTON

That message was vividly conveyed at a special film screening and discussion at the IDB's Washington, D.C., headquarters in March. The event, which featured "The Whales' Paradise" and "The Other Side of the Plateau," both produced by tve Bahia, examined ecotourism as both a potential boon to local economies and as a tool for saving threatened ecosystems. The screening was part of an annual Washington, D.C.-area film festival that features environmental films from around the world.

The film on whales delved into the natural history and environment of the humpback whale, beloved for its docile temperament, acrobatic leaps and its "songs." Once hunted nearly to extinction, this species is on the road to recovery and now numbers some 15,000 worldwide.

One of the best places to observe the whales is around the Abrolhos Islands, which lie 43 km from the community of Caravelas in southern Bahia. Each year during the Antarctic winter, the whales come to this marine wonderland of blue water, coral reefs and mangrove swamps to breed. In so doing, they become part of an ecosystem that includes colonies of sea birds, sea turtles, and local fishing communities.

The film documents efforts now underway to protect the whales and the Abrolhos ecosystem as a whole from increasing pressures caused by overfishing. The focus of conservation efforts is an IDB-supported program called Projeto Abrolhos 2000, a partnership between Conservation International, the Brazilian environmental agency ibama and the Humpback Whale Foundation, together with local communities.
The partnership has developed a management plan that includes research and monitoring, education, tourism promotion and enforcement of regulations in the National Marine Park. The goal is to ensure that this productive environment will continue to provide a living to local communities through fishing and tourism.

The second film was also linked to the sea, but in this case to one that disappeared millions of years ago. The main legacy of this ancient sea was thick deposits of limestone that today make up Bahia's Diamantina Plateau. Where it was exposed above the ground, the rock was sculpted by wind and rain into vertical surfaces on which paleo-Indian groups left drawings of animals, people and large numbers of handprints. More than eight million years old, the rock art is becoming an increasingly popular tourist attraction.

Below the ground, the same limestone has been acted upon by slightly acidic water to create another tourist lure: extensive networks of caverns, one of them 10-km long, full of fabulous geological features, such as chambers crowded with stalactites and stalagmites. Local groups are taking the initiative in protecting the fragile underground environment, in some cases requiring tourists to remove their shoes before walking over particularly delicate mineral deposits.

Following the film showings, the IDB's Raul Tuazón described the increasing support the Bank is providing for ecotourism projects in Brazil. He also noted the findings of an IDB-financed study that found a substantial increase in ecotourism among Brazilians themselves.
"This is a very positive sign of a growing constituency for biodiversity protection at both the national and local levels," he said.

Many of the 500 small-scale projects financed in Brazil through the IDB-funded National Environmental Fund have promoted ecotourism, said Tuazón. A second stage of that successful program will shortly be getting underway.