“Eco-terrorism at Hachet Cay” snapped a headline last year in the popular Belizean weekly Amandala. The newspaper was taking umbrage at a U.S. resort owner who had allegedly blown up part of the coral reef to make his resort more accessible to visiting boats. The widespread media coverage and public outrage over the incident reflect Belizeans’ new awareness of environmental issues in the wake of what the U.S.-based Eco-tourism Society has coined the “Eco-tourism Revolution.” The episode also illustrates how the original vision of eco-tourism—as small-scale, locally controlled, and ecologically sensitive—is beginning to erode.
Eco-tourism is the new rage in vacation travel. In a nutshell, the Ss of oldstyle mass tourism—sun, sea and sand—are out. Today Westerners are seeking out alternative tourisms variously called appropriate, sustainable, and eco—what the Caribbean commentator Auliana Poon terms “new tourism.” Tired of being chaperoned through staged cultural experiences, cocooned from the realities of everyday life, and complicit in ecologically destructive vacations, eco-tourists are looking for new lesser visited, out of the way destinations. In tune with the growth of new social movements concerned with environmental and cultural issues, these visitors are demanding vacations in pristine environments with “uncorrupted” local culture.
On the surface, Belize would seem to have high-brow appeal to these new middle-class travelers anxious to distance themselves—both physically and socially—from the standard tourist. This former colony of British Honduras which gained its independence in 1981 is blessed with abundant natural endowments, among them a stunning barrier reef (second only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef), large, well-preserved tracts of tropical rainforest, and idyllic tropical island cayes. Belize also boasts part of the impressive archaeological legacy of the ancient Maya civilization now a major draw within the regional Ruta Maya. Yet, until recently, this small, officially English-speaking Caribbean nation along Central America’s Atlantic coast was visitedby few, and faced minimal environmental threats.
Before the 1983 election victory of the right-of-center United Democratic Party (UDP), tourism received little government support. Sensing a change in the type of vacations that Westerners were dernanding, and the emergence of a new “greener” market niche, the UDP started to promote tourism as a way to earn much-needed foreign exchange and to further economic development. Tourism was further boosted with the return to power in 1989 of the People’s United Party (PUP), a nationalist, and like its political rival—from which it is now indistinguishable—pro-U.S. and freemarket-oriented party. Although previously opposed to tourism, the PUP, eager to capitalize on this new trend in vacation travel, placed tourism second on its agenda of economic priorities.
A new international airport terminal now greets arriving visitors, and a number of luxury hotels—including the Royal Reef Ramada—have recently been built in Belize City. The government has established a range of nature marine and archaeological reserves to ensure that tourist attractions are well maintained. It has also encouraged local communities to tap into the tourism potential. The government’s strategy is premised upon the concept of sustainability; that is, it endeavors to preserve the now highly prized local flora and fauna and to promote the sense of natural and cultural authenticity which the eco-tourist seeks. The Community Baboon Sanctuary at Bermudian Landing and the Sandy Beach Women’s Cooperative run by local Garifuna women at Hopkins Village in the South are two projects which have taken the government’s cue. Similar projects are sprouting up elsewhere.
These efforts are beginning to pay dividends. The number of international tourists to Belize has risen steadily from fewer than 100,000 in 1985, to a quarter of a million by 1990. Revenue from the tourism industry is estimated to account for about 26% of the Belizean GNP. Underlining the country’s key position in the eco-tourism wave, Belize has hosted two international conferences the First Caribbean Eco-tourism Conference, and the First World Congress on Tourism and the Environment.
—Old Tourism in New Clothes?
Despite some promising results, much eco-tourism in Belize merely replicates the problems characteristic of traditional mass-tourism—foreign-exchange leakage, foreign ownership and environmental degradation. A case in point is the proposed multi-million-dollar Belize City Tounism District project, which will no doubt involve the capital of foreign developers, or large-scale borrowing from U.S.-dominated lending institutions like the World Bank.
New Orleans-based architects have completed a U.S.AID-sponsored initial study for this waterfront-style regeneration project. The planners hope to build an exclusive downtown area complete with new hotels and shopping facilities, a promenade with seafront restaurants and cafes, an ethnic crafts and food market, and a marina for small yachts cruising the Caribbean. Such a development will transform the seafront district into a vacation pied-à-terre for would-be eco-tourists, who presumably will feel safe and protected there from the urban problems that have become legendary in guidebooks to Belize.
Not only do ordinary Belizeans stand to gain little from this up-scale project but, to add insult to injury, local representatives were not even consulted during the planning process. Belize City’s planning department first came in contact with the scheme when a three dimensional model appeared in the window of Brodies, a city supermarket. In this city of 60,000 where the govemment is strapped for money and poverty is increasing, the U.S. consultants lauded the scheme for allowing the city council to “concentrate its resources” on the upkeep of the district, including cleaning and road maintenance. Such activities, however, may have to be cut back in other neighborhoods in order to free up the necessary funds.
Elsewhere in Belize, the lure of the tourism dollar is causing equally dismaying results and raising questions about whether the term “eco-tourism” is now being indiscriminately applied to any tourist project in an attractive natural setting. The Ambergris Caye controversy, for example, has raised serious doubts about the scale and nature of tourism development. Touted as a major contribution to re-investing in the Belizean people—a reflection of the 1989 election pledge “Belizeans First,” the government bought back the northern two-thirds of the 20,000-acre Ambergris Caye from its U.S. owner. Most expected the newly established Ambergris Caye Planning Authority (ACPA) to have its jurisdiction and planning powers extended over the Pinkerton Estate, as the area was formerly known. Instead, a development corporation was created by legislation unbeknownst to the Authority.
Under the guise of the corporation, appointed by and answerable to the Tourism and Environment Minister Glenn Godfrey (who is also attorney general), a $50-million “sustainable development” has been proposed. Although its supporters claim it is “an integrated and ecologically sound resort development,” it will include the usual tourist sites: at least one international hotel, two “all inclusive spa hotels,” three to five upscale lodges, two golf courses, town houses and villas, a thousand luxury homes, polo fields and stables.
Half of the 20,000 acres have been put aside—at least for now—for conservation, and 2,500 acres are earmarked for Belizeans. Local people are enraged, however, by the transfer of the remaining 7,500 acres to the U.S. developers as part of the deal, and by the way the government attempted to foist this mega-contract on the Caye. Just two days before the contract was set to be signed, Godfrey presented the document to the ACPA for the first time, claiming that negotiations—to which the ACPA was not a party—had proceeded over two years.
“If the proposed agreement for the development of North Ambergris Caye is so good, why not let the people know?” demanded Fidel Ancona, a furious member of the ACPA. “When the government acquired the Pinkerton Estate, we were told in no uncertain terms that we were getting back control of the land and meaningful participation. To me, 75% to foreigners and 25% to Belizeans is not fulfilling this promise.”
Although the ACPA managed to temporarily stave off the signing of the contract, the inicident illustrates that with large-scale development projects, local control is compromised, if not absent entirely.
—Powerful Expatriates
Much of the tourism industry is already in the hands of the country’s small, but powerful expatriate community, estimated to number 1,500. Erlet Cater, a delegate at the eco-tourism conference in 1991, found that 25% of the registered delegates were U.S. citzens. More significantly, among the 43% who registered as Belizeans were many expatriate North Americans.
This expatriate community has come a resolute and well-represented lobby. Expatriate riverside eco-lodge owners in the western Cayo District, for example, have demanded strict zoning laws against further tourist development. The U.S.AID-initiated Belize Tourism Industry Association, an umbrella group representing private interests, faced turmoil during the 1992 election of officers, when disputes erupted among members over whether seats on its committee should be restricted to Belizeans, even though 65% of membership are expatriates.
For the time being, Belize confidently reaffirms its commitment to eco-tourism and basks in the warm praise it has received from the international community for pursuing this approach. “Conservation and therefore eco-tourism,” Godfrey told a receptive audience at an ecology and tourism symposium in Costa Rica at the time of the Ambergris Caye controversy, “thrives where the sunlight penetrates to the lowest levels of autonomous local community government.” He reiterated this stance in his speech at the Rio Earth Summit, assuring his audience “community-based eco-tourism” forms the government’s main marketing development thrust.
But it is far from clear that Belize has successfully resisted the “seductions of mass tourism” as Godfrey claims. The dream is fading of Belizean-controlled industry in turn with the local environment and cultural traditions. Instead, Belizean control is being sold off to the high bidder. As an advertisement for Ambergris Caye’s Club Caribbean in U.S. publication Belize Currents claims: “own your own piece of paradise … Prices start as low as $9,950 … Values are starting to soar.”
As foreign control of both small and large tourism enterprises increases, and as larger tourism-development proposals surface that will inevitably wreak irreparable damage on the environment, tourism in Belize appears to be spinning out of control. “Belize and Belizeans.”
as Amandala’s editor concludes from the Hatchet Caye debacle, “are beginning to be trampled in the rush by those who regard our laws and traditions inconvenient at best, and our
sovereignty as theirs.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Egberl Higinio is assistant supervisor at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of the West Indies in Belize.
Ian Munt is an independent researcher/writer based in London, England.
