Tourism Development, Territorial Dispute and Resource Appropriation In The Mayan Riviera, Mexico: The Case of Tulum National Park (original) (raw)
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Tourist Studies, 2010
Tourism mobilities, conservation, and development planning are central social processes in the restructuring of places. This paper will argue that this is especially manifest in Biosphere Reserves where global agendas are spatially articulated through the creation of 'contentious hotspots' or 'heated spots', that is, sites within the local in which global mobilities are condensed and constantly at play through the performance of disruptive practices. The paper draws evidence from the ethnographical account of two disputes at the Biosphere Reserve Ria Celestun (Yucatan, Mexico) where tourism mobilities and conservation planning have established the ria and the beach as those contentious hotspots where mobilities are concentrated, space and resources are appropriated, and locals and institutions fight to stay still.
Planning and management challenges of tourism in natural protected areas in baja california, mexico
International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, 2017
The continued exploitation of natural resources has enforced governments to establish regulations through different legal instruments to encourage its land use suitably for development and conservation by means of efficient planning and management. However, there is always the dilemma between economic interests and environmental and social ones when developing tourism in natural protected areas (NPAs). The purpose is to analyse the constraints that tourism faces in natural areas from three perspectives of interest groups. Firstly, from a federal economic development project "Nautical Stations" promoted by the government and tourism investors; secondly, from environmental institutions devoted to the protection of natural areas; and thirdly, from local residents in order to satisfy their social, economic and environmental needs. The methodology has been based on literature review to support the legal and regulatory framework on urban land use planning: NPAs and federal and state tourism development policies in Mexico and Baja California as well as technical reports and surveys developed by academic institutions assessing the welfare conditions of local residents before and after the application of environmental and tourism policies in the region. Lastly, results show that the nautical stations project had poor economic benefits with respect to expectations of regional economic growth. Thus, the nautical tourist model had not been successful due to environmental regulations imposed over the region.
Public Policies Under Tension: Tourism and Environmental Protection - A Case Study in Patagonia
Athens Journal of Tourism
Negro gave us the opportunity to conduct a research of an urbanized area next to the Nahuel Huapi National Park in Patagonia. It is protected by the local government as a Natural Urban Reserve. The study inquires about the impact on the development, especially in relation with the real estate market. It is based on human statistics, the census, the land uses, the physical area, the tourist and recreational attractions, the environment and the urban legislation for control and conservation. The information was mapped and analyzed with the inhabitants. It concludes with recommendations for a better relation between the environment conservation and the touristic development, strategies to improve town planning and to increase and deepen the studies of the history of our regional architecture.
Managing Natural Heritage Resources and Tourism in Campeche, Mexico
Environmental Impacts of Tourism in Developing Nations, 2019
Natural heritage sites and natural protected areas (NPAs) attract tourism. However, positive/negative connotations correlate visitors with such places. While they may represent benefits and opportunities for the conservation and wellbeing of local communities, they also can produce direct and indirect adverse impacts that alter and destroy ecosystems and natural resources. This collateral damage affects all parties and natural and biocultural contexts involved. Through case studies in Campeche and Mexico's southern states region, the authors argue that drafting precise management schemes for these natural heritage sites and NPAs are key factors to promoting sustainability, particularly by adding community input and true ecotourism activities into their planning strategies.
Managing Natural Heritage Resources and Tourism in Campeche Mexico 2
Natural heritage sites and natural protected areas (NPAs) attract tourism. However, positive/negative connotations correlate visitors with such places. While they may represent benefits and opportunities for the conservation and wellbeing of local communities, they also can produce direct and indirect adverse impacts that alter and destroy ecosystems and natural resources. This collateral damage affects all parties and natural and biocultural contexts involved. Through case studies in Campeche and Mexico's southern states region, the authors argue that drafting precise management schemes for these natural heritage sites and NPAs are key factors to promoting sustainability, particularly by adding community input and true ecotourism activities into their planning strategies.
Actor-Management of Protected Areas and Ecotourism in Mexico
Journal of Latin American Geography, 2006
This paper adopts a political-ecological approach to investigate the problems that recently-industrialized countries confront in the area of managing Protected Areas (PA) characterized by high indices of tourism. In the case of Mexico's "Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve", structured and semi-structured interviews were carried out with visitors, entrepreneurs and key informants from numerous government and non-governmental organizations, in order to identify the interests, strategies and specific actions of a variety of actors involved in PA management and the tourism business. Special emphasis was placed on the spatial level(s) on which their actions take place and conflicts among different stakeholders. The study revealed that the existence of a large number of actors with conflicting interests and opposing strategies was not just an obstacle to a more integrated and participative form of PA management, but also to sustainable regional tourist development. It was further noted that tourism promoting activities launched by numerous government and non-governmental organizations are badly planned and poorly coordinated. Despite large amounts of investment, it has not been possible to develop high-quality, diversified and competitive ecotourism products or to enhance local participation. In order to solve these complex problems, a formalized "Round- with crucial decision-making power should be installed, in which legitimate representatives from all involved and concerned stakeholder groups could express and negotiate their interests. In this way, an ecotourism "master plan" could be worked out jointly and implemented successfully.
Conservation and Society 12(2): 147-161, 2014
The territorialisation of a botanical garden and the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve (TCBR) in southern Mexico is examined from the perspective of local residents of one rural town and the biologists whose professional careers involved extensive research in the region. While there were brief periods of confl ict between residents and outsiders over the use of local lands for conservation, the cumulative effects demonstrate a general acceptance of the conservation paradigm. Local residents re-appropriated an older discourse linking their land rights to indigenous ancestors in order to mobilise collective support to ensure local control of the botanical garden. The discourse was subsequently incorporated into a local ecotourism project providing cultural substance complementary to the biological and visual aspects of the landscape. Contradictions between conservation and livelihoods were minimal due to neoliberal policies that encouraged migration to the United States of America and wage work in regional maquiladoras. Consequently, the territorialisation of conservation spaces was not disruptive to the increasingly proletarianised, non-agricultural livelihoods of local residents.
The present work and the themes expressed here are the result of experience plus studies done in different research projects and extra-curricular university activities, in which have been addressed the tourism development and its socio-cultural and economic impact on mapuche communities of the Patagonian region in the provinces of Neuquén and Río Negro. With the support of qualitative methods, such as the ethnographic records, the axes that have guided the field work over the last decade and a half were: characterize and explain the historical and social processes that shaped mapuche communities, their vindictive and concrete actions, plus representations and stigmatization of the rest of society in tourism contexts. As a result of the so-called “Campaña del Desierto”, these background move across time-space categories, setting up a complex social space that allows us to study and analyze, critically, the different forms that exchange strategies can take - submission - survival, and the building of inter-ethnic relations crossed by the reality of tourism. From a tourism field perspective, the town of San Martin de los Andes has been taken as a case study, which is the most important tourist center of the Province of Neuquén and one of the most recognized of the Patagonia at both, national and international levels, particularly for its winter season and the activities developed in its Cerro Chapelco Ski Center.
Tourism and Conservation-based Development in the Periphery. Lessons from Patagonia for a Rapidly Changing World, 2023
Even regions of the planet widely considered to be "remote" or "pristine" like Patagonia are actually dynamic social-ecological systems with interrelated local-international connections of discourses, practices, and institutions. Yet, their study and management often do not consider this complexity. In Argentine Patagonia's iconic landscapes, protected areas (PAs) represent a major humannature relationship, and PA creation has been motivated by objectives ranging from geopolitical interests to biodiversity conservation. In this chapter, we employed the social imaginary framework to conduct an historical analysis of local, national, and international influences regarding the way nature and tourism are conceived and managed in national PAs. We evaluated the discourses (ideals, values, beliefs) and institutions (norms, rules, structures, stakeholders) involved in creating these PAs in Argentine Patagonia. The national PA system was legally formed in the 1930s, but initial efforts reach back as far as the early 1900s. We found that while the globalization of Patagonian conservation-based development has consolidated since the 1980s, local-international relationships extended over more than a century to coproduce these social-ecological systems.
Tourism in natural protected areas in Mexico
The Sustainable City VIII, 2013
The notable emergence of tourism, especially sustainable tourism, as a source of employment and economic resources, allows the opportunity of an alternative to economic and social activities. The Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) are fundamental instruments of environmental policies to preserve biodiversity and the ecological goods and services of a nation, and an engine of sustainable development. There are many institutions and international instruments that promote sustainable tourism as a strategy to preserve NPAs and their cultural resources, at the same time allowing the development of local economies. Mexico, which is one of the highest biodiversity countries of the world, has promoted NPAs as legal mechanisms to encourage the conservation of many regions all over the nation that have a unique biological processes and a high degree of conservation and/or preservation. The Mexican government has assumed the responsibility by establishing different instruments of environmental policies, particularly NPAs that include environmental programs based on regional analyses, different hydrological, economic, and social characteristics. The National Commission of Natural Protected Areas estimates that around 5.5 million tourists annually visit the 176NPAs of Mexico from across the country. The future management of NPAs in Mexico-13% of the country-is difficult, but shows good prospects especially in the state of Baja California Sur, which has the biggest coastline extension and highest NPA percentage in the country.NPA tourism is considered as a highly regarded opportunity for the development of Mexico's economy because it provides a significant value to the natural elements of the area, also increasing the quality of life in local communities and the health of the ecosystems.