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VO: This interview is part of Visionary Realms, an audio series produced by FT Longitude in partnership with The Royal Commission for AlUla.
Meg Wright:
Latin America. A region that spans 33 countries and is home to 670 million people—that’s just over 8% of the world’s population. Tourism is a major contributor to the region’s GDP, with the industry expected to grow to around 630 billion US dollars by 2028.
Hello and welcome to Visionary Realms, a series that explores new visions for community development, tourism and cultural landscapes. Each episode, we take a close up look at a community or region that is drawing on lessons from the past to build for a sustainable future.
I'm your host, Meg Wright, and today we’re off to Latin America as we seek to understand how community-led tourism can give people the tools they need to protect the environment for generations to come.
Joining me to discuss this is Thomas Armitt, Global Manager of Projects and Partnerships at Planeterra, a nonprofit organisation that's dedicated to uplifting communities through tourism.
Welcome, Thomas, and thanks so much for joining me today.
Thomas Armitt:
Thank you for having me.
Meg Wright:
I want to start by acknowledging that tourism, when poorly managed, can actually put significant pressure on the environment, and particularly in sensitive ecosystems. But we know, also, that it doesn't have to be this way. So what does it look like when tourism actually supports and sustains the natural world, and in your experience, what conditions must be in place for that to happen?
Thomas Armitt:
The type of tourism that we work in, community tourism, is a type of tourism which really puts communities at the centre of everything that we do in the centre of tourism development. So community tourism can be defined as community-led, owned, and managed tourism.
This isn't an organisation outside of the community that owns the product and that comes in and that works with the community so that they can provide an activity. This is really a product or a service that is connected to the tourism sector, but that is completely owned, managed, and led by these communities. In that respect, those communities have the opportunity to be able to make decisions around how that tourism is developed in their communities.
A lot of these communities that we work with have nature as part of their everyday lives. They need nature for clean water, for clean air, for building materials, for food, for medicine, and because of extreme weather events brought upon by climate change, those resources that they have are being lost, and the knowledge that is needed in order to be able to sustain and maintain the resources is being lost as well as a lot of the youth are leaving these communities and these communities are ageing, and so that knowledge is being lost.
Tourism, therefore, can be seen as a way of providing the resources to not only maintain those resources in the area where income can be reinvested into activities to protect, to restore, to sustainably manage, and to celebrate nature, but it also provides an incentive for younger generations to stay within those communities, and it gives more of an importance and a value of those traditional knowledges, that ancient wisdom that exists within those communities to continue existing.
Meg Wright:
I think it's such an important point about the generational gap there and the knowledge being lost when the younger generation moves away. And it's often the case too that in underserved communities, particularly in the global south, that environmental conservation does come into conflict with economic development. So I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on that particular point. How does Planeterra view the relationship between conservation and economic development, and how do you find a healthy balance here?
Thomas Armitt:
Historically, conservation has put communities second. Unfortunately, because the communities have not been included since the inception of these conservation areas, there has always been this either human wildlife conflict or economic conflict where those communities who are historically using those protected areas for income generation activities are no longer able to access these. And so there has been this buildup in tension between the communities and these protected areas. That is not conducive to a successful conservation model, and so it's important for these living around these protected areas to realise the value of nature when it's thriving than nature when it's declining or dead, for want of a better word.
This can really be done by using a form of tourism that connects those conservation areas to these communities and shows the communities that there is value, there is economic, social, and environmental value in those protected areas for them.
When you create that environment where those communities feel more part of the conservation tourism economy, they feel that they are listened to, they feel that they are integrated within the experience that the visitors have, then you start to see a shift in mindsets towards the park or the protected area as being other than being something more together, something that they are part of rather than separate from.
And they also see the belonging that they have to that protected area, which is essentially and historically ancestral lands where these communities used to hunt, used to pick medicinal plants, used to pick resources for their livelihoods, and by showing that there is that reconnection, that strong connection between communities in protected areas through the development of a community-led, owned, and managed tourism product, they start to rekindle that relationship. They start to feel that pride and that belonging and that value of that protected area in their lives.
Meg Wright:
Absolutely, it’s really great to hear how tourism can be applied in such a positive way that gives back to the communities as well as the environment. I imagine that kind of energy is what attracts tourists as well. These are the kinds of enterprises that they want to engage with, so it's actually really a win-win for everybody.
And I would really love to focus on some of those enterprises. I was wondering if you could share some examples of successful projects that have empowered the local population while also strengthening biodiversity?
Thomas Armitt:
Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, Planeterra, within our networks, we have over 120 projects that are delivering environmental protection, celebration projects. In Latin America, which is actually one of the areas of our work where we have the most community tourism enterprises that are connected to the environment, we've got several examples. One that I want to bring up here is one in Peru, in the high Andes, just outside of Cusco. It's called Parque De La Papa, which means Potato Park. It's a bit out of the Sacred Valley. Sacred Valley is where most of the visitors that go to Machu Picchu go through, but it is such an amazing project because there are six different communities that have come together to conserve and preserve the heritage around the potato.
A lot of people don't know that potatoes originate from Peru, and it's a very important part of Peruvian culture, especially up in the high Andes where the potatoes originate from. Now, up in those higher parts of the high Andes, there are around just over 1,000 species of potatoes, some that we've never heard of before.
And this project lives and breathes potato, it really is part of the experience - you have potato alcohol, you eat potato as a meal, you get given a tour of a potato museum - but what I find so important about this project is this conservation element, this sharing of traditional ancestral knowledge from generation to generation around these species.
And what they've done is that they've created a seed bank within their own community where they preserve those 1,000 species of potatoes, but they also have contributed to the global seed bank in Svalbard in Norway, and they've contributed 700 different seeds to that seed bank. And tourism is providing them with an opportunity for income so that they can keep doing these projects and that they can not only share their knowledge and feel pride around the work that they're doing, but also, they can get revenue which can help them to continue the work. So that's just one example.
Another example is in Columbia with the Wiwa community. You may be aware of a trekking route, a new trekking route called the trekking route of The Lost City, La Ciudad Perdida, and a lot of visitors were going along this route, but no income was going to the indigenous communities living in the area, indigenous communities really that haven't been connected to society for many generations.
And the younger generation are realising that there are opportunities for income from tourism in that area because there is a visitor footfall, and because these communities are indigenous, they have this very strong connection to their natural heritage. They have a very strong connection to the forest, to the rivers, to the animals that live in the area, and they see tourism as a way of generating income that can support them in those traditional ancestral conservation techniques that they've been doing for generations.
And it's very important for them to have that income because it enables them to be able to not only show value within their community of the heritage that they have in their natural area, but also, it enables them to not rely on the outside to be able to do the work that they're doing. Oftentimes, there is a big reliance on outside donors or outside organisations to support the work that indigenous peoples feel is important for their own livelihoods and for the nature around them, but tourism here gives them an opportunity to be able to do the work themselves on their own volition, in their own way without having the pressures of outside to tell them what to do. And this is hugely empowering for those communities, especially for the youth who really see this importance in the work that their ancestors have been doing and gives them an opportunity to be able to do it themselves and gives them a purpose at the same time.
Meg Wright:
You mentioned there that in Latin America you have a higher concentration of community tourism enterprises that are working with the environment. So I’m curious to know, how Latin America’s geopolitical context plays into this. What impact is this having on how communities in Latin America are approaching sustainable tourism?
Thomas Armitt:
I would say that the political situation in those countries in Latin America is conducive for community tourism, especially recently. There's been a big push for indigenous and rural communities to have more decision making powers around how the lands that they live in are managed. I mean, these are huge swathes of lands across rainforests, impenetrable areas that only certain people have been able to access. Usually, those people are indigenous communities who've been living there for generations, for millennia. So they have the knowledge to be able to manage those lands effectively and efficiently compared to outside organisations.
There's a lot of pressure coming from the globalised world of exploiting and extracting resources from these very rich areas, and I think governments are waking up and realising that if they are to preserve the heritage and the culture in those areas, which are starting to become more important than being able to extract without consequence. It's a slow burn, but it is happening. You can see that with how politics are developing in Latin America. And this gives impetus, this gives empowerment to those communities to seek ways of being able to generate income that is low impact for their natural environment, and one of those is community tourism.
Meg Wright:
Yes, and it's obviously very topical because the COP30 Climate Summit will be hosted in Brazil next year, and it’s going to turn the world's focus to the Amazon rainforest, as we know, an incredibly sensitive and biodiverse ecosystem. So what legacy do you hope that that international summit will leave for tourism in the region?
Thomas Armitt:
Well, I mean, I'd like to say first and foremost is that the Amazon has been at the forefront of the global mind for, I'd say, at least two to three decades. We know the Amazon rainforest as the lungs of the earth, and then we've been seeing in the news a lot of reportages on how the Amazon has been burning. And the government in Brazil, the recently elected government in Brazil has really been putting the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous communities who live in there at the forefront of their campaigns.
So it is at the forefront of everyone's mind already, and I think COP30 will provide that stage to concretize that, to make it even more at the forefront and really make sure that the world stage is present with the Amazon rainforest as much as possible.
I think the world is starting to wake up to the importance of those rich, biodiverse areas, such as the rainforests of Latin America, the rainforests in Central Africa to the survival of our species, and that's really getting people standing up and actually listening to those people, the decision makers, the thought leaders that are saying, "Okay, the time is now to really consider nature as something important that we should be protecting, sustainably managing, restoring, and also and most importantly, celebrating”.
Meg Wright:
And finally Thomas, a question we ask all our guests on this series. What is one lesson you would share with others that are seeking to follow Planeterra’s approach to responsible tourism?
Thomas Armitt:
I think first and foremost, it's action. Action speaks louder than words. We've been talking a lot for many years now about what can be done, what's wrong, what should be done, but I think the most important here is to do something, even if it's the smallest thing. The best community tourism enterprises started with a small idea, they tested it out, it grew organically, and because it grew organically, it grew strong, and it grew strong for a long period of time, and because of the way that they've looked at the product development phase, which is all about market connectivity and creating these products so that the markets are satisfied rather than a build it and they will come approach, then they've been able to sustain their business, they've been able to attract the right customers to get the feedback, to make mistakes, but not fail as a business, and to keep going and build upon that knowledge. And to share that knowledge within the community and make community members realise the importance of responsible tourism and community tourism to their livelihoods.
There is something to be said about an individual creating something, but when a community gets behind a project, when a community really feels that the community tourism enterprise is theirs and they have ownership over it, that's where the magic happens because as a visitor, when you enter a village, for example, and you feel the energy that people want you to be there, people want to share with you, people are proud of what they're doing and they're proud of their village, they're proud of their culture, they're proud of their nature, that's priceless.
Meg Wright:
That’s a perfect note to end on, and you've shared so many great messages here and really gives me hope for the future of tourism, and it's wonderful to know that the foundations are already in place. Thank you Thomas for sharing with our listeners and all the best for your ongoing work with Planeterra.
Thomas Armitt:
Thank you.