Paper short abstract:

The population in the Parc National du Banc d'Arguin, Mauritania - hosts by way of ecotourism – has managed strategically their identity, closing the gap with commonplaces of tourist brochures. A discourse on tradition, linked to the construction of an ecological identity, has been put in place by local populations and tourism operators.

Paper long abstract:

The birth of the ecotourism takes place in 1998 when the PNBA attempts to limit the amount of fishing, regarding the inhabitants of the Park, the Imraguen fisherman's who live in the territory before the PNBA creation in 1976. The introduction of tourism is conceived by the Park as a way to financially compensate the population for the diminished revenue from fishing.

The formalization of tourism and the creation of "traditional" camp sites to host tourists in each village of the Park, has come to disrupt not only the physical landscape of the territory, but also the dynamics between villages and tribes that compose the Imraguen population, with occasional conflicts and disputes. Simultaneously, the creation of cooperatives and the imposition of rules for their management by NGOs (privileged inclusion of women, etc) has accentuated an intra-tribal hierarchy, where the role of women is far from that idealized by NGOs.

Along with the introduction of ecotourism, the recognition of PNBA as world heritage by UNESCO in 1989, took the Imraguen communities to deal with ecological concepts that would be in line with the label of guardians of a planetary ecological heritage place. Therefore, an idea of "pristine" populations isolated in time is a recurrent discourse, characteristic of tourist promotion (the Park being the first of various agents on the ground to do so).

Nevertheless, this notion is contradicted by a recent reality, and this paper goal is, by the use of ethnographic data, discuss identity reconfigurations and the use of ecological discourses among the Imraguen populations.