Linking Culture and the Environment

A. Trau and R. Bushell 261
ment agencies and indigenous communities is increasingly common, as are
community-conserved areas/indigenous protected areas. Throughout the
world there are excellent examples where tourism provides a key strategy
through which conservation work can also provide support for local and
indigenous community development. These cases demonstrate how these
conservation alliances can assist with poverty alleviation in both developing
and developed nations – Africa, Australia, Canada, Central and South-east
Asia, India and South America.
The picture however is far from rosy. Tourism is also frequently discussed
at such meetings in relation to the threat of increasing pressure due to
escalating interest in nature-based and cultural tourism. As demand for tourism,
both international and domestic, continues to grow, particularly from the
rapidly rising middle class of the Asian region, so too is commercial interest in
the development of the most ecologically fragile, biodiverse, aesthetically,
culturally and spiritually rich locations. These natural and cultural heritage
conservation hot spots are the drawcards for much tourism development
(Bushell, 2005). And indeed the fora themselves, meant to discuss ways to
make tourism more sustainable have been heavily criticized by indigenous
peoples representative groups, NGOs and activists, who have witnessed
UN-led processes that have provided only token participation and representation
and not allowed a voice for indigenous peoples to express concerns
about the role tourism plays in the continuation of the dispossession process
through increased globalization and privatization (Honey and Thullen,
2003).
Conservation International (CI) reports that biodiversity-rich places once
covered more than 12% of the Earth’s land surface. Nearly 90% of the original
vegetation of these places has been lost with a mere 1.4% of these unique
terrestrial environments remaining. Yet they are habitat for more than 44% of
all plants and 35% of endemic species of mammals, birds, reptiles and
amphibians found nowhere else. These same areas are home to more than
1 billion people, many of whom live in extreme poverty. These places are
crossroads where biodiversity conservation, survival of many indigenous
groups and tourism meets (Mittermeier, 2003). In Tourism and Biodiversity:
Mapping Tourism’s Global Footprint, Christ et al. (2003) show how tourism
development in such areas has had profound consequences on the future of
biodiversity conservation and on the health and well-being of indigenous
peoples – biodiversity and human welfare being inextricably linked (Borrini-
Feyerabend et al., 2004; Brown et al., 2005).
UNESCO estimates that there are currently around 300–350 million
indigenous peoples worldwide, or around 5% of the total world population,
representing over 5000 languages and cultures in more than 70 countries on
six continents (UNESCO, 2006). The rights of indigenous peoples to access
land, protected areas, heritage resources and the values they contain are
complex, and frequently controversial. Issues of traditional use of biological
resources, land rights and ownership, particularly for colonized people who
have been dislocated, dominate much of the policy discourse in this arena
(Scherl et al., 2004; Fisher et al., 2005). Well-planned and executed tourism can