April 10, 2006
Loving tourism destinations to death
A crush of tourists mob the top of the Great Wall of China.
Ten years ago, I wrote in 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet (page 2):
If you have not yet been to [exotic places,] by all means consider going. Many world treasures appear to be more impermanent than you would wish. These include the Maya pyramids, the lemurs of Madagascar, the Buddhist culture of Burma, the pyrotechnic corals of Thailand and the elephants of East Africa.
This passage was basically inspired by visiting the Maya ruins at Palenque, the only ones that still have painted combs on the tops of the pyramid platforms.
When I learned that all the pyramids once had these, and that Palenque's were expected to also crumble away, I wrote the above thoughts.
Now it seems that many world treasures are crumbling due to climate change, weathering -- and too much love by swarms of tourists. See interesting Newsweek article, Vanishing Acts: The world's treasures are under siege as never before. So get out and see as many as possible—before they disappear. Excerpt:
Conservation International reckons that "unsustainable tourism" poses the main threat to half the cultural heritage sites in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to one in five sites in Asia and the Pacific. Cambodia's once-remote Angkor temples now receive a million visitors a year; the Taj Mahal is subject to 7 million. Rising prosperity in the developing world, more and more elderly on the move, and cheap flights to anywhere will only hasten the human flood. China alone reported a staggering 1.1 billion domestic tourists in 2004.
See also the excellent photo gallery accompanying the article, and numerous sidebars, including this one by Peter Mayle, Guests Welcome: Tourists don't deserve their bum rap. Without them, Provence might become a derelict bastion of mediocre food, that defends tourists. Excerpt:
Personally, I have never found the tourist season intolerable; indeed, there is reason to be grateful for some of its effects. If it weren't for the money that tourism brings, many of the châteaux and gardens open to the public would become derelict; monuments would be left to crumble; many restaurants could never survive on local custom alone; it wouldn't be worth putting on concerts or village fetes. Rural life would be the poorer.Obviously, this is not true everywhere. Some parts of the world have been so thoroughly overexploited that they have lost whatever charm they once possessed. This is usually the result of local greed; but the tourist, not the rapacious developer, gets most of the blame. If you believe some of the gloomy reports in the press, tourism is an international blight, and the travel writers' search for somewhere unspoiled that they can discover becomes ever more desperate. So what are we to do about it?
Here is my remedy: let us all try a period of travel abstinence. I will spend my vacation at home in Provence, and you spend yours at home in London or Brussels or Boston. Almost overnight, the problem of the invasive tourist would be solved. Alas, the reaction from tourist-bashers is always the same: what a ridiculous, unrealistic idea. In any case, it's not people like us.
A second sidebar article, Damage Control: Despite their bad reputation, tourists can also be one of the world's greatest forces for preservation, points out how tourist visits have actually helped a tribe in Ecuador return to traditional ways. The tribe had moved to the highway and begun wearing Nikes, but then:
Thanks to an influx of tourists, things have recently changed for the Cayapas. With visitors coming in search of community, or ethnic, tourism—to eat, work and often even live with the indigenous people—the Cayapas are embracing the nearly forgotten culture of their ancestors. Once again, they are wearing traditional clothes, building old-style homes and using traditional agricultural techniques. "They have become a sustainable community microbusiness, with a preservationist conscience, because they have understood that their indigenous roots are what interest tourists," says Armendáriz. "[It makes them] value their ancestral culture."
There's a lot to digest in these reports, which are causing quite a buzz on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree. Looks a balanced and thorough package of articles.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:13 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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