Ecotourism and the Brazilian Amazon.

AuthorAitchison, Mark
PositionVIEWPOINT

Our hope is that organized tourism will contribute to the social well-being of our people and save our beleaguered wilderness at the same time. But have we made much progress here in the Brazilian Amazon towards these goals since the late 1980s when James Hansen declared the beginning of the "greenhouse world" and Bill McKibben published The End of Nature? Have we created an enviable model of sustainable tourism here in Amazonas state and turned our capital Manans into a truly green city for the 21st century? Or have we merely been playing the same old tune, a catchy refrain without substance, aimed at fooling ourselves and the watching world that we are doing something serious here when perhaps we really are not? As 2010 rears its ominous head, will the past twenty years of development be seen as economically and ecologically correct or as nothing more than the hollow echo of hype and broken promises?

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World economic crisis aside, neither the numbers nor the current state of affairs are encouraging. Any progress made seems to have stagnated in recent years. The promise and youthful energy of early years has been replaced by false promotions and hollow hype.

If we look at published numbers, the Brazilian Amazon--specifically, her largest and most prosperous state, Amazonas--has never once received more than 500,000 visitors in a single calendar year. And even that seems like an inflated figure. More than 1,000 tourists flying in and out of the capital city, Manaus, each day? I find that hard to believe. If that were the case we'd all be doing very, very well. But supposing these numbers are accurate, I'll bet half these visitors are business people, or are at least being counted twice--when they arrive and when they leave. For all I know they could even be the same people visiting Manaus a dozen times a year!

Letters from colleagues about the state of affairs here in recent years challenge these numbers. Occupancy rates at their lodges are at all-time low levels. Boat tour companies report fewer and fewer sailings and smaller and smaller groups. Numerous lodges and tour companies have even closed in recent years. One on the Negro River shut down last year after more than twenty years in business. Another closed recently in bucolic Presidente Figueiredo, the ever-popular wonderland of waterfalls, caves, and colorful birdlife, north of Manaus. Even the proverbial Arian Jungle Towers has fallen on hard times. A recent...

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