Impacts of Ecotourism on Local Communities and Biodiversity Preservation

6/7/20233 min read

black and white happy birthday signage
black and white happy birthday signage

Tourism in protected areas (“PAs”) can have social impacts on local communities even prior to visitation and as soon as a PA is delineated as a tourist destination. In order to forge a “satisfactory leisure and cultural condition” (Eagles and McCool 2002:39), governments have evicted and disinherited Indigenous and local peoples from their traditional lands in the pursuit of “creating” wilderness (Eagles and McCool 2002).

In highly visited areas of immense natural beauty, such as Bali, Hawaii, and Venice, locals have pushed back against the detrimental social effects often associated with the influx of tourists including disregard for local customs, noise, pollution, crowding, gentrification, and increased cost of living (The Washington Post 2023; Euronews 2022; The Guardian 2021).

From a cultural perspective, when tourism is permitted in PAs, and those PAs enjoy greater renown by reason of technological and informational advancements, those PAs may play a more significant cultural role locally and internationally (Eagles and McCool 2002). Indeed, on a broader scale, as more tourism and visitation occurs in PAs, and more tourists are able to experience the manifold benefits of the PAs, the more cultural capital and support could be rendered to PAs and the need for their preservation.

The establishment of an PA at the outset may result in an opportunity cost when the gazetted land is taken out of circulation for other economically viable uses such as agriculture (Eagles and McCool 2002). Tourist visitation of PAs may nonetheless also engender ongoing economic benefits for local communities such as strengthening the prices of the lands surrounding the PA, tourist expenditure on recreation and associated paraphernalia, the construction and maintenance of infrastructure connected to and serving the PA (Eagles and McCool 2002), and by generating local employment opportunities (Whitelaw et al 2014).

Ecologically, tourism has been observed to have negative impacts on the biological diversity within PAs, especially when visitation rates are so high as to result in actual damage to natural assets (Whitelaw et al 2014). Some direct detrimental ecological effects include “soil erosion, increased pollution, discharges into the sea, natural habitat loss, increased pressure on endangered species and heightened vulnerability to forest fires” (GDRC). Specific forms of pollution associated with immoderate tourism include “air emissions, noise, solid waste, littering, sewage, oil and chemicals, architectural/visual pollution, heating, car use” (Baloch et al 2023).

On the other hand, as more tourists visit a PA, they may become more educated about the intrinsic value of the PA and other PAs, and also contribute in terms of tourist revenues, thereby and hopefully indirectly facilitating the preservation of biodiversity (Whitelaw et al 2014).

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