Athens Institute for Education and Research ATINER ATINER ' s Conference Paper Series TOU 2014-1058 (original) (raw)
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Ecotourism in Amazonas: Future Prospects through Senarios
Athens Journal of Tourism, 2014
In its concept, Ecotourism generates issues of concern in a world that is growing more aware of its economic, social and environmental crises. As such, it requires alternative strategies to generate economic efficiency, environmental conservation and social inclusion to ensure competitiveness in a context of rapid and profound world changes. The state of Amazonas is known as a National Reference in Ecotourism. Thus, it is the main objective of this study to show scenarios built for the future of ecotourism in the Amazonas Tourism Hub, which is made up of 14 municipalities (15.3% of the state), 10 of which were chosen for this analysis. This hub has a large concentration of Conservation Units, forming the largest protected area (5.7 million hectares) on the planet (Proecotur, 2009). For our methodology, we used the Godet prospective technique to build these scenarios. This model attempts to produce reflections on the future of its local ecotourism in order to identify public policies consistent with sustainability. The results have pointed to three scenarios: "Rational Optimists (A)", "The Uirapuru Song (B)" and "Ajuricaba (C)". We have found positive influences in the scenarios in spite of shifts between uncertainties and risks. In a strict sense, there is no ecotourism activity as such in Amazonas since its activities are still in a disordered stage of inception and are driven mainly by market opportunities, which is the prevailing view especially among the administrators involved in its planning. On the good side, these scenarios indicate activity growth in the coming years, although its uncertainties and risks need to be resolved by public policies in the sector.
ECOTOURISM AS AN INCENTIVE TO BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION: THE CASE OF UAKARI LODGE, AMAZONAS, BRAZIL
By providing economic incentives to locals who live in protected areas, ecotourism has been seen as a strategy toward conservation of biodiversity. This paper provides a long-term case-study account of the attempts to associate generation of income and conservation goals in an ecotourism enterprise in a sustainable development reserve in the Brazilian Amazon. It investigates how ecotourism represented a motivation for the conservation of the Mamirauá Lake system. Using qualitative and quantitative data, the paper shows a linkage between tourism and the preservation of the lake. In the first years of its implementation tourism provided an incentive to stop external threats. But in relation to internal disputes, this linkage has proved to result in ambiguous outcomes. On one hand it has been a motivation for those who benefited from tourism to try and maintain the protection status of a lake which they saw as important for tourism. On the other hand, it has been the justification of those who wanted to change total protection status of the area.
A sustainable tourism approach to the protection of the Amazon rainforest The case of Peru
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present an institutional model of decentralized administration as a response to the challenge of the management of the development of sustainable tourism in the Amazon region of Peru. Design/methodology/approach -The paper provides an overview of the geography of Peru delineating the Amazon region and highlighting its importance as the most bio-diverse region in the world. The paper then outlines the protected area approach to the matter of bio-diversity protection, as employed by the government of Peru and then discusses the centrality of sustainable tourism to this effort. Finally, the paper offers a unique institutional model of the management entities as the administrative innovation of Peru for the management of sustainable tourism in the Amazon region. Findings -The management entity model is presented as an administrative experiment in response to the particular political management structures obtaining in Peru. The management entity seeks to harmonize efforts and inputs of actors from a plurality of sectors across the spectrum of political administration. Practical implications -Although focusing particularly on a made-for-Peru institutional model, this research has relevance to all tourism administrators in the Amazon region, as it stresses the principle of inclusivity in the management and direction of regional tourism programmes. Originality/value -Both from the standpoint of tourism scholarship and from the perspective of tourism administration and management this paper is of immense value and interest across the entire tourism management spectrum in the Amazon.
Sustainability
Alternative tourism (AT) contributes to conservation, valuing the environment and recipient cultures with minimal impact, especially in protected areas. In this context, this article identified, considering the residents’ perception, the possible environmental impacts resulting from alternative tourism in communities of the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve (RESEX), Brazilian Amazonia. Thus, between February and April 2019 a semi-structured interview was conducted with 122 residents of three communities of RESEX (Anã, Maripá, and São Miguel). The interview script was divided into three groups of questions: (i) interviewee data, (ii) socioeconomic data, and (iii) perception of the concept and environmental impacts of alternative tourism. We used a snowball sampling method, which consists of a form of a non-probabilistic sample. The majority (91.8%) of the informants did not know how to explain the concept of alternative tourism; however, for 87.7% of them, this tourism does not gen...
Tourism in the Amazon: conclusions and solutions
Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 2010
PurposeThe paper aims to present answers to the strategic question: “Does sustainable tourism offer solutions for the protection of the Amazon rainforest?” It also aims to capture the essence of conclusions of eight papers written by 11 tourism experts to the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) issue on tourism in the Amazon, South America.Design/methodology/approachThe paper integrates all solutions suggested in these eight papers and sought to provide a succinct response to the strategic question.FindingsWhile providing a helicopter view of the key challenges of sustainable tourism development in the Amazon, this paper proposes implementable solutions to those challenges. Using the 2009 WHATT roundtable discussion in Brasilia as the foundation, this paper addresses some of the most significant issues affecting the Amazon and its people in the context of tourism in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Suriname. In conclusion, 12 key suggestions are mad...
The growing involvement of ENGOs in tourism-related activities all over the world has brought new knowledge to these organizations, as well as to local communities, researchers and protected areas, amongst others. Where insular contexts are concerned, this relationship has its own singularities, with potentials and limitations yet unexplored. In this scenery, the idea of sustainable development as a basis for research integrates different dimensions of sustainability (environmental, cultural, social and economic), thus transforming the entire discussion on new developments in tourism, namely tourism in rural areas. In this paper, we discuss and reflect upon how the managers of Fernando de Noronha’s EPA and PARNAMAR perceive the role of local ENGOs in sustainable tourism. We conducted structured interviews with the managers and those in charge of the local ENGOs. In loco observation was also used during two diferente periods in 2012. We found that there is indeed an effective partnership between ENGOs and the protected areas when it comes to sustainable tourism, as the area’s managers recognize the importance of these organizations and mention their involvement in discussions about tourism planning, community training and tourist awareness.
This paper describes the main public policies for tourism in Brazil, highlighting them as instruments for tourism development in the Amazon frontier region. Public policies for the development of tourist activity, the goals and guidelines that guide the socio-spatial development of the activity, depend on the actions of government officials. In this sense, the development plan is fundamental in determining the priorities that will stimulate the growth of tourism in each region, that is, the tourism policy must work both in stimulating and directly controlling the development of tourism, as well as being concerned with the protection of the interests of society. This is a contextualization study based on a literature review. It was evident that public tourism policies can be elaborated, implemented and supervised at the municipal, state and federal levels, however, it is at this last level that the guidelines of public tourism policies in Brazil are concentrated, however, conditioning the creativity of companies to the background, strategies for the sector at the state and municipal levels, thus demonstrating the strong dependence of the sector on the action of the federal public power and, consequently, an obstacle to entrepreneurship and the very development of tourism at the local level. It can be inferred that despite the great potential that the Amazon region has, the tourism sector still faces numerous obstacles to its development in its entirety, among them we can highlight: low interest in the topic due to municipal economic fragility; by social disorganization; the lack of adequate infrastructure for leisure practices; by the lack of public investments that encourage the development of the tourism market; by the lack of information from society's actors regarding public policies; by the lack of strategic vision of the public power; due to the lack of a master plan in the municipality that establishes rules and that these are clear with regard to the development of tourist activity in the Amazon region.