Ökotourismus zwischen Sein und Schein - Lateinamerika-Studien ...

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FRAGE 10: “Do you work together with organisations like AVETUR, Colinas Verdes,
…?
I´m a member of AVETUR, but I´m not too much actively involved in social work around,
because AVETUR is itself not too active yet in Vilcabamba, but it may well be in the future.
I´m thinking that as “Rumi Wilco” consolidates that we are going to be perhaps extending our
care and environmental concerns to the surrounding environment and the culture to a certain
degree.
FRAGE 11: “What do you think about community based ecotourism in this area?
Because for the Amazon area community based ecotourism is very important and you
also did work as a guide for one year in the Amazon, so what do you think about that?
Like in the Amazon it is important also to support indigenous groups that they also
have advantages of ecotourism?”
I would even go further than that. And even be willing to find new formulas than the ones that
have been proposed of through the method of eco-lodges passing ownership from
organizers in the beginning to the local communities later on. Quite often methods like that
may be, it they are not well-intentioned, they are abusive in terms of exploiting nature the
first few years since then the company will go away and the local may take over, but so will
might as well squeeze the juice out of it sooner, there could be a tendency to minimize
investments, because they will be offered for free of(?) for an exchange of the rights of being
the local duellers in the community. I think that again comes to evaluate the human
component of an environmental sensitive area, as part and parcel of that area if those
people willingly desire to continue live in their own way, they ought to be protected and
shielded from the globalizing effects.
Quite often to lure them into societies by instealing a feeling of value, appreciation for
money, for richness.
Where in their own native communities money and personal richness – within their own
values – are not necessarily important or significant, is also a form of transculturalization.
In other words: You do not help the environment or the culture by giving them money as a
result of a good business, but treating them holistically in terms of respecting the entirety of
their values, not just including them into the business-community. In that sense I would be
critically, I think that we need to go further into an acceptance of ecosystem-people as such
rather than converting them into business-interpreters in an ecosystem equally sensitive
area, where they used to be naturally wise.
FRAGE 12: “Which goals and dreams do you have for the future of Vilcabamba?”
One of them is that we will conserve our waters, our streams, conserve them with water and
even better with clear water, that we will transform the mentality of the people into being
proud of their natural environment rather than perceiving it as an obstacle they have to
surmount - in order to cultivate more of the same that has cost so much impoverishment of
the land and the peoples.
You know, there is a process of desertification advancing in Loja all the time and this is due
to unwise(?) every culture practices.
That not necessarily responds to long drawn traditional values.