Eco trail to disaster? 

As though suddenly awakened from a deep slumber, every hotelier and tour operator in Sri Lanka has caught on to the newest catch phrase, eco-tourism.

This new catch phrase is being hawked around as though it is the latest and only cure for all that ails the tourist industry, a new invention. 

The tourism industry in Sri Lanka has existed for over three decades and senior hoteliers will recall, that right upto the late 1970s, it was to a great extent based on eco-touristic principles at their best. The hotels were small, the buildings used local materials only, the movement of the tourists were carefully controlled and the hotels were paid realistic prices. They all made profits.

Sri Lanka's flirtation with mass tourism in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to an increased building of hotel rooms to cater to the influx. Hotels grew to double their capacity overnight. But the quality of the product did not improve. The hotels only increased their room strength to accommodate the larger numbers of tourist arrivals. A paper presented in 1982 by this writer, to the Annual Sessions of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects and subsequently carried by the media, on the 'Landscaped Environment', recommended that all hotels on the beaches be constructed with recyclable materials like 'mud' to allow for change. Unfortunately, this suggestion did not generate serious debate.

The Tourist Board should also take some of the blame for not guiding the industry at this important threshold. The result is all around for us to see. Everything from the most humble 'bath kade' to the 'bicycle shop' on the street has gone tourist. Everything is for 'tourists' as indicated on the large and colourful boards that clutter the environment. 1983 did not help either; it broke the more even balance of infrastructure distribution between the East and the West of the island.

This imbalance should have been carefully studied and appropriate measures taken, but instead of guiding the industry into controllable integrated development, it became a free for all. Instead of the maximum extent of land dictating and influencing the development of the minimum number of rooms possible, the maximum number of rooms on a minimum extent of land became the norm. 

Hotels were built wherever land was available, without any respect for the effect on the environment. The Tourist Board, approved hotels anywhere and in a way contributed to the gradual destruction of the environment. Paradise was gradually lost.

Even though the industry sells Sri Lanka as a special environment to be enjoyed by Sri Lankans and tourists alike, the best locations that should have been preserved for the enjoyment of all, became private enclaves for the foreigner only, and Sri Lanka lost out on the deal. The Ceylon Tourist Board has still failed to declare a list of sites considered to be of national importance and/or of pristine beauty-to be protected and preserved for the enjoyment of future generations.

As a contribution to the cost to the environment, our investigations show that, the Tourist Board has not planted one tree. 

Some hotels have, but only to enhance their own properties. The concept of giving back to the environment did not go beyond the gates of most properties. Is this the responsibility shown by an industry that markets and sells the natural features of the country? Should not the tourism industry take it on itself, and make it a paramount responsibility to protect, conserve and enhance the environment it sells? It cannot leave it to someone else. In fact, the tourism industry should be in the forefront of environmental protection and the ultimate success or failure of the concept of eco-tourism will depend on the sustainability of this effort.

Eco-tourism should only leave a reversible footprint on the planet. A footprint that respects the fragile habitats it penetrates. However, this sustainability can only be achieved if the numbers of visitors are kept small. Eco-tourism has little place in the mass tourism market, unless the intention is to make it a brochured selling gimmick, like the brochured selling of the Ayurveda massage, which even in its very concept is a great insult to the noble art.

Eco-tourism is interesting in concept, but dangerous in implementation. The success of eco-tourism if at all, will depend heavily on really understanding what it is all about. Most people we spoke to had a very hazy notion. Many of their ideas had been gathered from writings emanating from the west, a western concept of eco-tourism which also carries with it a western concept of culture or how the west perceives other cultures.

Eco-tourism is the very opposite of mass tourism and it is just a tiny niche, which is based on minimal intrusions into and only observing without touching the rich bio-diversity of this planet. By its very nature, eco-tourism should be ecologically and environmentally friendly if it is to remain sustainable. But a recent study by the Centre for Tourism Research & Development in India states that, popular eco-tourism sites can lose their unique features within 15 years of first visitation. A frightening thought, especially considering that the eco-tourism industry is fuelled by the bio-diversity rich, eco-systems, these 'hot spots' can be lost forever if not properly and effectively controlled. It is also considered, that eco-tourism might not be a viable strategy in the long term.

Eco-tourism should enhance ecological and cultural sensitivity in the travel industry. But most case studies show that eco-tourism lives upto its name at least in the short term, only when local communities have significant control, when governments plan carefully and the tourism industry goes beyond their marketing ploys. 

It also shows that most insulated local communities know that tourism is too vulnerable. They do not want to abandon their traditional activities for the sake of serving tourists, as it could ultimately result in the destruction of their societies and cultures.

Outsiders often tend to assume that the poor are willing to sacrifice long term benefits for short term gains. Many wonder why the tourists who enter the protected areas to be close to nature, seem to do everything in their power to keep it at arm's length. They come in their airconditioned vehicles, and bring along their portable refrigerators, zip-up tents and insect repellents.

Eco-tourism should respect scale and carrying capacity. Mountain areas are more scale sensitive than other areas by virtue of their verticality, slope geology, biologically rich flora and fauna, etc.. The very nature of the fragile environment and its support base should be protected and conserved. This requires a carefully and systematically researched study and the formulation of strict standards that will control numbers and development, protect, respect and conserve the fragile environment it will intrude into.

The environment is too precious and too fragile a commodity to be experimented with. Sri Lanka is a bio-diversity 'hot spot', but with the highest concentration of human life per land area. Homo-sapiens have the potential to destroy everything they touch and we can lose all within a decade. Let us first work out how our precious environment can be conserved, protected and enhanced before we venture into exploiting it. 

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