Issue of 11 September 1996
I can understand the messenger's expectations. It had, after all, been a long and hard climb for the firm in a field that had earlier been staked out, and successfully so, by businessmen replete with money, bank and local government contacts, and guts. This new contract would, in a sense, be a breakthrough for the firm.
But the messenger could not understand my reaction: dismay (another golf course? another resort subdivision?) and distaste (all that natural, beautiful creation bulldozed into an artificial game plot--and nothing can be more artificial than a designer golf course!).
When will Filipinos ever learn that even the best of things can reach a point of utter saturation and that a surfeit of overexploitation and overcommercialization, especially of land, can only lead to decline and decay?
In the '70s and '80s, we sold our beaches, our sun, sand, and sea. In the late '80s and '90s, what are we selling? Golf courses?
******
In the tourism industry, nobody has learned the hardest lessons--and lived to tell the tale--than the Africans.
They pioneered the sun-and-safari brand of tourism, and what stares many of them in the face today is a catastrophe. Hordes of tourists still go to the more recently developed game reserves in Africa, but their numbers dwindle from year to year.
The lesson is that tourists will beg off from too much of a good thing, especially if that thing has stopped being good. Who wants to go driving through miles of bushland for one lonely lion lying in the heat, uncaring and contemptuous of what man has wrought in his natural habitat?
This is why Benjamin Mkapa, president of Tanzania, has given very precise instructions and very strict orders about any more tourist resorts that will go up in his country. That Tanzania has escaped the fate of neighbors like Kenya is an accident of history and politics. But Mkapa is wise enough to realize that his country can profit from the accident and come out richer and more fortunate than his African neighbors ever will be.
The need, though, is for utmost discipline in developing Tanzania. Mkapa's reply: "environmentally friendly" resorts.
Ecotourism has become both a global battlecry and a potential dollar-earner for many governments in Latin America and Africa. In 1995, according to the records of the Tanzania Tourist Board, 293,834 foreigners visited and spent $258 million during their stay in the African country. This year, the board expects tourist arrivals to reach 326,000 and bring in revenues of $372 million.
But the government has also put a cap on tourists: no more than 500,000 visitors a year, the board decrees.
On resort developers, the government is even stricter, as a major investor in East Africa's tourism industry and one of the world's richest men, the Aga Khan, himself found out. One of the first resort developers in Tanzania, sinking $32.5 million in three resorts, he learned to deal with Mkapa's government and its environmentally friendly rules. The experience, as related by Hrvoje Hranjski of the Associated Press, was a complex one.
All the plans and project studies for each one of the Aga Khan's resorts in Tanzania had to go through four environmental impact assessments before they were approved.
One of the resorts is perched on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater, an extinct volcano that is home to lions, giraffes, flamingos, and Cape buffalos. The original site for this resort's lodge--a stone building covered with vines--had to be moved two meters so a fig tree would not be felled.
Bathtubs, a swimming pool, and a water slide--all in the original plans--were dropped when the indigenous Masai tribe in the area protested against the pumping of water from a nearby spring. Guests to the resort will now have to make do with showers fed by a system that collects rainwater from the rooftop. For hot water, solar panels do the work. A diesel generator, the only source of electricity in the area, is located inside a shed covered with two layers of skin, reducing output of both noise and fumes.
The hotel in the Aga Khan's second resort, located in an area heavy with animal traffic, had to be designed to look like Masai huts, which are not fenced. Guests have only two options when lions stroll by: stay inside the locked huts, or pray for invisibility.
Mkapa has set three narrow paths for Tanzania's ecotourism industry: to keep impact on environment and local culture minimal, to keep to the policies of conservation and preservation, and to keep the country unspoiled.
There is business acumen in Mkapa's decision, not cause-oriented naivete. Tourists now want new and unspoiled destinations, and the country has the advantage of avoiding the costly mistakes of others.
And if the government of Tanzania keeps to all it has pledged to do, it will still be offering natural resorts when all other game preserves in Africa would have died from lack of animals and lack of tourists.
They pioneered the sun-and-safari brand of tourism, and what stares many of them in the face today is a catastrophe. Hordes of tourists still go to the more recently developed game reserves in Africa, but their numbers dwindle from year to year.
The lesson is that tourists will beg off from too much of a good thing, especially if that thing has stopped being good. Who wants to go driving through miles of bushland for one lonely lion lying in the heat, uncaring and contemptuous of what man has wrought in his natural habitat?
This is why Benjamin Mkapa, president of Tanzania, has given very precise instructions and very strict orders about any more tourist resorts that will go up in his country. That Tanzania has escaped the fate of neighbors like Kenya is an accident of history and politics. But Mkapa is wise enough to realize that his country can profit from the accident and come out richer and more fortunate than his African neighbors ever will be.
The need, though, is for utmost discipline in developing Tanzania. Mkapa's reply: "environmentally friendly" resorts.
Ecotourism has become both a global battlecry and a potential dollar-earner for many governments in Latin America and Africa. In 1995, according to the records of the Tanzania Tourist Board, 293,834 foreigners visited and spent $258 million during their stay in the African country. This year, the board expects tourist arrivals to reach 326,000 and bring in revenues of $372 million.
But the government has also put a cap on tourists: no more than 500,000 visitors a year, the board decrees.
On resort developers, the government is even stricter, as a major investor in East Africa's tourism industry and one of the world's richest men, the Aga Khan, himself found out. One of the first resort developers in Tanzania, sinking $32.5 million in three resorts, he learned to deal with Mkapa's government and its environmentally friendly rules. The experience, as related by Hrvoje Hranjski of the Associated Press, was a complex one.
All the plans and project studies for each one of the Aga Khan's resorts in Tanzania had to go through four environmental impact assessments before they were approved.
One of the resorts is perched on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater, an extinct volcano that is home to lions, giraffes, flamingos, and Cape buffalos. The original site for this resort's lodge--a stone building covered with vines--had to be moved two meters so a fig tree would not be felled.
Bathtubs, a swimming pool, and a water slide--all in the original plans--were dropped when the indigenous Masai tribe in the area protested against the pumping of water from a nearby spring. Guests to the resort will now have to make do with showers fed by a system that collects rainwater from the rooftop. For hot water, solar panels do the work. A diesel generator, the only source of electricity in the area, is located inside a shed covered with two layers of skin, reducing output of both noise and fumes.
The hotel in the Aga Khan's second resort, located in an area heavy with animal traffic, had to be designed to look like Masai huts, which are not fenced. Guests have only two options when lions stroll by: stay inside the locked huts, or pray for invisibility.
Mkapa has set three narrow paths for Tanzania's ecotourism industry: to keep impact on environment and local culture minimal, to keep to the policies of conservation and preservation, and to keep the country unspoiled.
There is business acumen in Mkapa's decision, not cause-oriented naivete. Tourists now want new and unspoiled destinations, and the country has the advantage of avoiding the costly mistakes of others.
And if the government of Tanzania keeps to all it has pledged to do, it will still be offering natural resorts when all other game preserves in Africa would have died from lack of animals and lack of tourists.
******
Compare that with the surfeit of beaches and golf courses in the Philippines--of which by the way we enjoy no monopoly--and the rainforests in Asia and Latin America that are being sold for logs, and it is easy to see who will survive and die in the chancy game of global tourism.
-- NBT
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