LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS?

Hosted in a new luxury hotel on the ecologically fragile outskirts of Belize City-the construction of which ne- cessitated stripping the protective man- grove cover-two recent major inter- national conferences on eco-tourism highlighted the conflict between envi- ronmentally conscious activists and entrepreneurs who have seized upon eco-tourism as a convenient market- ing tool. The keynote speaker at the First Caribbean Eco-tourism Conference in 1991, Voit Gilmore from the American Society of Travel Agents, promised “millions of Americans just waiting to come.” Howard Hills, a U.S. investor speaking at last year’s First World Con- gress on Tourism and the Environment, promised money. Eco-tourism, Hills argued, is just like any other business. He boasted that his Overseas Private Investment Corporation would lend up to $50 million to any “environmentally sound” tourism development, condi- tional upon a 25% U.S. stake in the project. Environmentalists consider such sentiments anathema to the very ethos of eco-tourism. They argue that a small- scale, locally controlled and ecologi- cally sensitive industry can neither sus- tain many visitors, nor be a big money- maker. In contrast to the Belizean government’s view of eco-tourism as a way to develop economically and to earn foreign exchange, environmental activists see eco-tourism as an economic justification for ecological and cultural conservation. An incredulous anthro- pologist from Scotland’s Edinburgh University could only express dismay at Hill’s remarks. “The whole idea of eco-tourism,” he said, “is that it is like no other business.”