Paper long abstract:

Tourism is increasingly promoted by powerful organisations including the World Bank, national governments and donors as a key economic activity for Africa. The extensive claims attached to tourism as a force for ‘global good’ means that its supporters range from (amongst others) grassroots community groups, conservation scientists, national governments, private companies, the World Bank and international donors. These may seem like strange bedfellows, but it indicates the importance attached to tourism in debates about development, conservation and community empowerment. This paper examines whether ecotourism presents a challenge to neoliberalism or if it is compatible with the dominant global system. The growth of global tourism has drawn more and more places in the South into a neoliberal global economy, but in very specific ways; and this paper examines whether ecotourism is a means by which nature is ‘neoliberalised’. Neoliberalisation of nature can be briefly defined as a process whereby non-human phenomena are increasingly subject to market based systems of management and development (Castree 2003; 2007). However this paper will challenge singular and monolithic understandings of neoliberalism as a single ‘thing’ (see McCarthy and Prudham, 2005).

One of the core justifications for ecotourism is that nature can be conserved/saved precisely because of its ‘market value’ to ecotourists willing to pay to see and experience specific landscapes. While supporters of ecotourism development argue that natural resources, landscapes and wildlife have intrinsic, cultural and ecological values, they also point to their economic value which can be harnessed through the introduction of market based mechanisms (see McAfee, 1999). In effect, wildlife and landscapes can be sold in multiple ways: as images, products and destinations. This paper will examine how ecotourism relies on the neoliberalisation of nature through the transformation of natural resources into privately owned and globally ‘marketable goods’. In order to explore these debates, this paper will use the case of ecotourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa and will examine the power dynamics produced by the complex global networks involved in promoting and implementing ecotourism; it will pay particular attention to the increasingly close relationship between international environmental NGOs and the World Bank, and what implications they hold for meanings and practices of participation in community based natural resource management and ecotourism.