COLUMN ONE : Tourism--Nature’s New Ally? : ‘Eco-tours’ are providing a financial boost to Third World nations while preserving the environment. But there are unscrupulous schemes and risks to local cultures.

On the Fijian island of Tavenui, two villages were confronted with a common problem: How to raise money to pay school fees for their children and build better houses for their people.

In each case, villagers turned to their verdant rain forests for a solution.

In the first, villagers sold large tracts to loggers for a quick but short-lived windfall. In the second, the natives chose tourism. They turned their forest with its shimmering waterfalls and lake into a profitable tourist attraction.

In the first nine months of operation, the second village has earned $8,000 for the 150 residents of the Naituku clan. Compared to the quick cash from loggers, the tourist income can hardly be called a windfall. One large tree is worth $60. But the tourist park offers the promise of a lifetime annuity for the residents--and the preservation of an irreplaceable natural heritage.

“They had a chance to log and get money,” Marguerite Young, eco-tourism policy adviser of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Australia, said by telephone from Sydney. “But . . . they understand by keeping their trees and their watershed, they have the best of both worlds.”

Increasingly, as the destruction and degradation of the world’s biological heritage continues--from rain forests and wetlands to coral reefs and endangered species--tourism is emerging as a way to save both the environment and earn money.

In Costa Rica, privately owned rain forest preserves are attracting tourists from throughout the world while providing owners with a steady income. The famed Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve earned more than $1 million in profits in 1988, according to a study by the World Wildlife Fund.

In Belize, a group of Mayan Indians is developing small native-style accommodations for tourists that do not put undue stress on local resources, such as firewood and water.

Kenya’s recent decision to crack down on ivory poaching can be traced to its need to maintain tourist revenues, according to World Bank environmental specialist Claudia L. Alderman.

At the same time, demand for nature travel is growing in North America, Europe and Japan--and touring companies and environmental groups are responding. In the United States, environmental tourists are offered everything from the privilege of paying to pick up trash in the Peruvian Andes to restoring sea turtle habitats in Mexico.

But while some see eco-tourism as a boon for Third World countries and a balm for an environment under stress, others question its long-term impact on both ecosystems and local cultures. Environmentalists believe that some less-scrupulous ecological tours represent little more than old marketing schemes repackaged with a patina of green. Others fret that local populations are being lured from their traditional vocations such as fishing to earn top dollar at foreign-owned resorts.

“If someone is in it just for the money and the Earth doesn’t come first, then you can quickly ruin a culture, ruin an environment, ruin a landscape,” said Todd Steiner of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute. Steiner is the project director of the group’s sea turtle restoration project in Mexico.

Eco-tourism has been difficult to define. But the underlying principle is that tourists must be respectful of the environment and cultures they visit--and tourist facilities should be managed so that environmental considerations are paramount.

Even in the best of circumstances, eco-tourism is far from a cure-all for the wholesale destruction of vital and unique ecosystems. The amount of rain forest saved by setting land aside for private nature preserves, for example, is a mere fraction of the 40 million to 50 million acres that are ravaged each year by logging, ranching and agriculture.

Many of the most ecologically valuable areas are remote and inaccessible to tourists. Other ecosystems under threat may be of high scientific value but of marginal interest to tourists.

Nevertheless, eco-tourism or nature tourism is on the upswing. Eco-tourism accounts for 10% to 20% of all tourism and is growing at a rate of 25% to 30% a year. In 1990, tourism overall generated $2.7 trillion and employed 100 million people worldwide, according to the Travel Industry World Yearbook.

“There’s been a huge explosion of interest in the environment,” said Elizabeth Boo, a specialist on Latin America and author of a two-volume study on eco-tourism published by the World Wildlife Fund.

Karen Ziffer of Conservation International attributes the burgeoning attention to “a sense of a last opportunity to go down and see what the rain forest is all about.”

In 1987, for instance, more than 32,000 tourists visited Galapagos Islands, whose rich and unique variety of wildlife offered Charles Darwin insights that led to his theory of evolution. In 1975, 7,500 tourists came to the islands.

A 1990 survey by Boo found that 76% of international visitors to Ecuador cited natural history as a reason for their visit. In Belize, the percentage was 51% and in Costa Rica, 30%.

To capitalize on the interest, developing countries are dispatching delegates to a growing number of international eco-tourism conferences, expanding tourist ministries and extolling the joys of the wild. Some, like Costa Rica, have retained U.S.-based public relations firms to tout their attractions.

But the growing numbers of visitors are not without risks. Increasing demand by tourists to visit pristine ecosystems threatens to overwhelm natural areas.

“I think people need to get out into the wild,” said Steiner. “The problem is without control too many people can ruin a beautiful place.”

A case in point is Nepal’s spectacular Annapurna area in the Himalayas. Each year 40,000 tourists are drawn to the region. To meet their needs, a proliferation of small tea shops and trekking lodges run by Sherpas has sprung up.

Trekking has raised local living standards enormously. But it also has had “a substantial negative impact on the natural environment,” according to a joint study by the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Large areas of forest have been cut to provide cooking, heating and lodging for visitors.

“We want to get close to nature, but after 5 p.m. we want a nice cold drink with lots of ice,” said Luis Manuel Chacon, Costa Rica’s minister of tourism.

The story is similar in the Galapagos National Park. When the preserve opened 21 years ago, the original management plan limited tourists to 12,000 a year, said Alderman of the World Bank. But when demand increased, the Ecuadorean government simply tripled the quota.

In Rwanda, where gorillas are the big tourist attraction at Volcanoes National Park, more than 10,000 visitors pump $1 million into the park each year. Some of the money is earmarked for conservation. The rest goes to the treasury. Now, the Rwandan government, which otherwise gets good marks for its stewardship, has applied “significant pressure” on the park’s management to allow in even more tourists.

“You can go in and if you’re exploiting the environment and not producing something sustainable for the environment, it’s not eco-tourism, just tourism for profit,” said Steiner.

To be successful, environmentalists say, eco-tourism programs must be closely watched. Today, they say, there is far too little monitoring. Third World countries rarely collect even basic data such as numbers of visitors in order to make informed decisions about whether there is too much stress on the local environment.

Often, revenues earned by national parks and nature preserves are diverted to the central government, leaving little money for operation, maintenance and tourist services such as interpretive lectures.

Official corruption also is a problem, said Virginia Hadsell, director of the Center for Responsible Tourism in San Anselmo in the Bay Area. “We know in the Third World things happen,” she said. “People make promises, but if palms are crossed with enough silver, you look the other way. It’s one of the serious problems we are having.”

In Trinidad and Tobago, for example, resort hotels on the coast are required to build their own sewage treatment plants. But, according to Allan Clovis, former chairman of the nation’s tourist board and now vice president of the Hotel and Tourist Assn. of Trinidad and Tobago, government inspectors often look the other way when the plants break down.

“One of the problems we have is with the water and sewage authority . . . (not) policing the condition of these sewage plants,” Clovis said. “Therein, lies a kind of loophole.”

Clovis said there are various shades of corruption. “Silver may not be crossing the palms. There are other means of influencing--just by associations, by the kind of company you keep,” Clovis said.

But in many cases, it may be cultural perceptions and experience--not corruption--that contribute to spiraling environmental degradation.

“I think people in this part of the world have not experienced a shortage of bountiful natural assets,” said Clovis. “They don’t take (environmental problems) as seriously as those who have experienced the squandering of those assets in other parts of the world.”

Involving local populations in nature tourism is critical to its success. Like the villagers in Fiji who benefited by preserving the forest, indigenous populations must be offered more than Western abstractions about “saving the environment.”

“What we see as a limited, precious resource, they see as an undeveloped asset,” said Ziffer. “They see their forest as a resource or asset and they want a return just the same as anybody.”

The returns can be good.

At Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve--widely viewed as showcase for responsible eco-tourism--a women’s cooperative grosses more than $50,000 a year by peddling handmade crafts to tourists.

“We have been trying very, very hard to . . . develop what we call a democratic dollar--a dollar that will spread around,” said tourism minister Chacon. “Otherwise poachers return to the parks for flowers, animal skins or try to catch some birds.”

But a study by the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Wildlife Fund has found that tourism--even eco-tourism--provides little benefit to most native populations.

“The results thus far have been disappointing, to say the least,” the three groups report.

An estimated 55% of gross tourism revenues in Third World countries “leaks” back to developed countries in the form of profits on tourist investments and purchases of expensive goods to meet tourist needs.

“In general, all spending by visitors--on transportation, food, lodging, or even park entry fees--goes directly to the central treasury or to private corporate interests that have been granted concessions,” the group found.

There may be other losses that are less tangible. Many worry that native cultures will be forever changed as tourists seek out remote and exotic places.

With the growth of mass tourism, package tours and transnational businesses catering to tourists, Western norms and values are increasingly intruding on primitive cultures. Customs and traditions that natives once considered immutable are changing.

“When you introduce tourism to a community that’s hardly seen white people, let alone Americans, is there any way you can do it without having impacts?” asked Carla Garrison, outreach director of the Ecotourism Society in Fairfax, Va.

One answer, she said, is to assist local populations in developing a sound tourist program that respects not only the environment but local customs.

When the Tavenui villagers first talked of developing a forest park, women in the villages were concerned that tourism would erode cultural and social values. “Most are Catholic and very modest,” said Young.

The solution was to build the visitors center a respectable distance from the village. “They wanted to maintain their day-to-day existence,” Young said.

For conservationists, such a balance is fundamental if rain forests and other natural wonders are to be preserved.

“I think what worries me most is ill-conceived and ill-planned schemes that are seen as cure-alls,” said Ziffer of Conservation International. “It’s almost the last opportunity. I think it can be done right. If it’s done wrong, people will shy away from (eco-tourism) as a potentially powerful tool for conservation and economic development--and that would be bad.”