Dr. Donald Hawkins notes that while ecotourism has been associated with the natural environment, now geotourism is emerging and there is a growing sensitivity to the cultural dimension and engaging and involving communities that surround very valued, high-quality cultural and natural resources.

Because he is internationally recognized leader and researcher in tourism policy development, Dr. Hawkins is the at-large featured commentator in the National Geographic – Ashoka’s Changemakers Collaborative Competition: The Geotourism Challenge: Celebrating Places/Changing Lives.

Changemakers recently posed these questions to Dr. Hawkins:

Where did ecotourism come from?

We helped popularized the term “ecotourism” when the movement was first beginning and The International Ecotourism Society was formed by having GW offer the first training courses in ecotourism management that I am aware of. I remember when we started ecotourism . . . I was working in Egypt and one of the deputy ministers said, “Oh yeah, I have heard about that ‘echotourism’.” She thought it was “echo tourism”—yodeling in the Swiss mountains (laughs).

Ecotourism came out of the national parks and protected areas movement. It wasn’t so much for the direct benefit of communities surrounding the parks and protected areas as a way to find new ways to generate revenue for the parks through admission fees, user fees, etc. Ecotourism has helped increase the revenues for protected areas, parks, and world heritage sites by collecting entrance fees, various user fees, and other ways of generating revenue such as souvenir shops, guided tours, and interpretive programs.

Is ecotourism expanding beyond generating financial support for parks?

While ecotourism is still associated with the natural environment, there is now a sensitivity to the cultural dimension as well, and strong emphasis on engaging and involving the communities that surround very valued, high-quality cultural and natural resources. This is one of the challenges we have in the years ahead: we have more work to do in finding ways of tapping into tourism—which is really the largest ever transfer of wealth from rich to the poorer countries. We are going to be approaching more than 1 billion international travel visits annually over the next three to four years.

We need to be more actively going beyond producing revenues for protected area systems so that we ensure that the surrounding communities get the benefits. For example, is there potential for creating more business-related activities—such as tours, interpretation, facilities, or ecolodges—where consumers pay for services rendered and the money then sticks within the local communities in gateways near the protected areas?

I think one of the ways we could approach this is with an enlightened policy of concessions where concessionaires come in and make some of the investments that the public government sources in many countries cannot make. The private sector can be driven by profit in some cases, but we also need a resource grant from revenues that goes back into the management of the parks. In some cases, nonprofit organizations also are active in parks and protected areas, whether natural, cultural or a combination of the two.

How can tourism do more to change the world?

We need to tie ecotourism into a number of major world movements. One is the whole pro-poor movement, the millennium development goals and poverty reduction. There is much emphasis on poverty in rural areas, which brings you to rural development and policies that support decentralization—trying to stem the movement of people from rural areas into urban areas to find work. So we can accomplish a number of good objectives by creating more economic activity through ecotourism around protected areas that are largely in more remote rural areas.

Another focus is gender equity. We are finding that more women have opportunities in this field. For example, when we started our program at my university about 37 years ago, it was about 75 percent male and 25 percent female. Now it is quite the opposite. This is happening all over the world. I just came back from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where I was a visiting scholar for a month, and they are experiencing the same thing. So women are finding opportunities, not just at the collegiate or graduate level, but also in small-scale business activities, entrepreneurial activities, and microbusinesses.

Is “geotourism” the next step for “ecotourism”?

If geotourism is the term that will help National Geographic mobilize its worldwide media empire to promote sustainability and responsibility, in terms of the traveler activity and the choices they make, it can be a real boon. Because until consumers demand sustainability in whatever they do—whether it’s better managed parks and protected areas, or better managed facilities and services that are provided for tourists—the private sector won’t have the motivation to respond.

I think it comes down to the consumer, and I see indications that consumers are gradually becoming more interested in purchasing services or using facilities that meet certain sustainability criteria. That is one of the reasons why I have been very supportive of National Geographic, and working closely with their Center for Sustainable Destinations. I like the concept of sustainable destinations—in fact we call our concentration in the masters of tourism administration “sustainable destination management,” and I like that kind of approach.

How does geotourism build on ecotourism?

The driving set of principles and values are quite similar to ecotourism, it’s just that we are able to apply them on a much broader playing field, including urban areas. Geotourism is a broader concept and embraces many niches, including ecotourism where the conservation and protection agenda is of considerable interest, but also things like cultural heritage tourism. For example, there is growing interest in agrotourism, gastronomy, and various forms of health tourism that often is related to the natural healing properties of muds, radioactive sands, water, and so on.

How can geotourism become a more powerful force in the world?

We need people who are innovators—who have earned a lot of money in a traditional field and are excited about, let’s say community development—to apply their knowledge, and in some cases even their resources, with more of a social responsibility approach. I don’t have a lot confidence that government will be able to figure it all out.

But we are seeing entrepreneurial activity in business, and now we are seeing just as much emphasis on entrepreneurial innovative thinking in civil society. There is tremendous breakthrough-type thinking coming out of these kinds of organizations.

We also need to look to the scientific and academic community to promote innovation because we are in an age where knowledge is the key asset for competitiveness in the world. It’s going to be creative thinking and knowledge management systems that help us find the new solutions, and stimulate the economy in the process.

We need ways to bring the scholarly community, educators, and researchers, to understand more about what this new movement is all about—how they might consider some of the principles and possibly infuse them into their curriculum and engage in research.

That is one of the good things I have seen with the Changemakers.net Geotourism Challenge—it is a real opportunity to get universities and students involved in the nomination process. They might even help a nominee put together all the information that is needed for their entry in some cases, because there is a lot of work to be done if you really take the entry seriously. I think what Changemakers is doing with National Geographic is great. It will make a real contribution—it is just another example of innovation begetting innovation.

Do you have other examples of how tourism can make a difference?

Together with National Geographic, I have been engaged with the Scientific Academic Volunteer and Educational (SAVE) Travel Alliance. We are trying to connect with universities, research groups, and academic departments to get people who have know-how, time, and resources to apply them, and to identify good geotourism projects.

There’s another movement called voluntourism where people, as part of their travel experience, do volunteer work. In some cases it’s 100 percent of their activity—it could be a discipline like Doctors Without Borders—and in other cases it could be a tour where they provide a half-day or a day of volunteer activity.

Can tourism be used to address the causes of conflict and war?

What we really need is the freedom to travel anywhere we want in the world, and to be safe and secure. Freedom to travel, and safety and security, are probably the main concerns that people who live in these places are concerned about too.

Then there’s the whole education side of travel. It is such an intensive opportunity to learn and gain practical exposure to the world. We certainly need more of that people-to-people contact in this day and age where there is so much conflict.

Now we are bringing together Lou D’Amore’s International Institute For Peace Through Tourism and the Institute for Corporate Responsibility (ICR), a new institute that has been created at the GW School of Business, to collaborating. They will be offering a symposium in May titled “Peace Through Commerce, Tapping the Potential of the Global Travel Industry.”

The thesis of Tim Fort, head of the ICR, is that governments have tried to create a peaceful world through collaboration—bilateral, multilateral, UN—and they have made some progress, but we don’t exactly have peace in the world today. Religions and non-profit organizations have made many, many efforts in this area, and still we have failures. So his thesis is that we will make more progress if we can mobilize the private sector into this peace-seeking activity.

Of course travel and tourism, if it is among the world’s largest industries, could go a long way by using that commercial activity to stimulate peace, particularly as we get more responsible travelers who connect with local people and respect their culture, who don’t destroy their environment, and who engage in a dialogue. In some cases, they will share experiences when one is the guest and the other is the host.

Can increasing tourism and facilities for tourists harm the environment?

They don’t have to if they are planned and developed properly—good development can enhance the environment so it can be an enhancing process rather than a depleting process. We need to both conserve and develop.

Developing related infrastructure can come with a broadened approach to ecotourism, like energy, waste water treatment systems, and sanitation. You need access to develop a park or protected area and that means roads. In addition to helping visitors get to the parks and protected areas, roads also serve other related economic needs like agrobusiness—you get your produce to the markets.

Although some protected areas are extremely stressed and overwhelmed by visitation, visitation often occurs during peak periods. Better management of parks and protected area systems can include some rationing and limiting of use, or raising entrance fees for international visitors—although local people still need to be given access to their land and water resources with reduced fees through two-tiered systems.

Having said that, many protected areas are under visited, and one of our challenges is to try to link the more popular parks with the less visited parks. The threat occurs in some cases because the promise of visitors never happened. If you don’t have visitation, then you probably don’t have the resources to have a protected area management system with proper control and policing, and things revert to laissez faire; local people return to traditional uses of their lands and waters and you get over-fishing in the marine parks or problems in the forests such as timber cutting and fairly low-yield types of agriculture.

Ecotourism also puts strong emphasis on reducing your carbon footprint with an emphasis on the use of renewable energy—solar, sun, wind, and thermal—and a lot of carbon trading systems are being created. Travel tourism produces some of the problems, but at the same time it’s a major victim of climate change.

What is driving geotourism that gives you hope?

A lot of people would say “youth,” and—with 11 grandchildren—I would certainly agree. But I would also say the older people. I have a lot of hope that younger people will help us find new solutions and sources of innovation. But I also think there is a huge potential with the older population because you don’t think you’re old anymore once you start getting old, and there are a lot of intellectually active, fit, and fairly physically active people who may be retired, but they are capable of making enormous contributions.

I think that’s where a lot of the social responsibility is going to come from, because once you get out of college and start building your family, career, and so on, I am not sure there is a lot of time for breakthrough innovation. So I have a lot of hope on both ends of the spectrum—with the youngest ones who really aren’t in the system, and the relatively young retirees who have a lot of time on their hands—they have resources, money, or they have experience. These are two very powerful forces in the world, and I think it will be organized through some combination of entrepreneurial and civil society activity.