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ECOTOURISM
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Jump-starting ecotourism in the Brazilian Amazon
Nine Amazonian states join to prove that natural ecosystems can be good economics
By Roger Hamilton
In the shadows of a forest clearing, a group of Brazilian tourism officials and international experts gazed up at what would be the climax of their afternoon’s site visit. It was a steel tower, measuring 50 meters from its concrete foundations to its topmost observation platform. The structure swayed slightly as the guy lines groaned and creaked.
An ecolodge in the state of Mato Grosso had built the tower for a very good reason. Most of the life in a rainforest is concentrated in the tops of the trees, where the leaves convert the sun’s rays into the energy that powers the thousands of plants and animals that live there. Although the ground-bound observer will see many wonderful things, the forest only reveals its staggering biological diversity high up.
A young tourism official from the state of Tocantins stepped forward. He adjusted the strap of his laptop and attacked the tower’s staircase with the resolute air of a conqueror.
But some of the others clearly wished they were back in the hotel meeting room discussing ecotourism rather than experiencing it firsthand. With sweaty hands they grasped the spindly railing, looking neither up nor down.
An official from the state of Amazonas managed to climb just a little way before she sat on a step and let the others squeeze past. The owner of the ecotourism lodge went a few steps higher, and settled down with a sigh. This reporter called it quits at the lowest of the three observation platforms, where he was passed by an environmental specialist from the Inter-American Development Bank.
Finally, sorted by degree of acrophobia, the tower held most of the principal players in a new program that aims to transform the Brazilian Amazon from an ecotourism backwater into a world-class destination.
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Waiting to happen. Brazil is an ecotourism paradox. Its territory includes the major portion of the Amazon, a universally recognized brand name that conjures up images of adventure and teeming biological diversity. Yet Brazil lags far behind some of its South and Central American neighbors in attracting ecotourists. Apart from a cluster of ecolodges and river cruises operating near the Amazonian city of Manaus, and a few ecotourism outposts elsewhere, nature tourism in Brazil is in an almost primitive state.
“There’s no place in the world comparable to the Brazilian Amazon,” says Richard Ryel, president and founder of International Expeditions Inc., a U.S. nature tour operator. “It’s just sitting there waiting to happen.”
Part of the problem is that the Amazon is hard to get to. For example, U.S. visitors wanting to visit this lodge in Mato Grosso must travel two days just to reach to the nearest town. Add an extra day if bad weather grounds a local flight. Getting to the lodge itself is another half-day trip by vehicle and boat.
Another problem is marketing. Individual ecolodges are too small to get the attention of a dispersed worldwide audience. Municipal and state governments lack both the experience and the information to publicize their local green attractions. So ecotourists often must do their own trip planning. But while a bookstore in the United States may display a half dozen tour guides on tiny Costa Rica, several of them specifically focused on natural attractions, a Brazil-bound traveler finds only one or two. Moreover—and this is of crucial importance to birdwatchers, who make up the great majority of serious ecotourists—there is no readily available field guide to Brazilian birds (read Book in a plain wrapper).
Date posted: February 2002
Part 1 | 2
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