Travel Editor on Global Sustainable Tourism Forum

Jennifer Vernon
for National Geographic News

December 5, 2003

Last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced the
launch of a multi-year World Tourism Forum for Peace and Sustainable
Development. The initiative partners world governments, private sector
sponsors, and non-profit organizations—including the National
Geographic Society—that work to promote good tourism practices.

National Geographic News recently spoke with Jonathan Tourtellot, National Geographic Traveler magazine's geotourism editor and the Society's director of sustainable tourism, about the effort.

The forum plans to focus on five general categories or issues within tourism. How will this be organized?

The word they're using is "streams." The idea as it currently stands is that each stream will be lead by one particular country. Brazil, as the initiator, has selected for itself the cultures stream, because Brazil has a great variety of cultures which are not necessarily widely appreciated or understood in the rest of the world. The plan is for other countries to step forward and volunteer to lead one of the other streams. And as time goes on, I can see the possibility of additional streams being added.

Which streams have been chosen thus far?

Environment and biodiversity, conditions for peace, social development, cultural diversity—that's the one that Brazil will lead—and economic development.

One of the president of Brazil's comments to the forum was his belief that tourism could be a powerful anti-poverty tool and could promote peace through the use of wise practices.

I agree.

So do you think these are inter-linked issues?

They're quite inter-linked. You cannot have successful tourism, or certainly successful sustainable tourism, when you have acute poverty. And as we know, you certainly can't have tourism when you have war.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's letter from the United Nations to the forum referenced previous groups that had met to discuss tourism and development. How will the forum's approach be unique?

If it works as we all hope it will, it's going to be bigger, more inclusive, and really a permanent entity. The word "forum" can be understood in two ways. One is, you just picture a big meeting, and indeed there will be some big meetings. The plan is already to have three summits over the next three years. But like the Roman Forum, it's also a permanent entity; it can be a permanent place to exchange ideas. And that's where I hope the National Geographic can play a role.

In addition, part of the plan for this is pilot projects on the ground, real experiments in how to do things well. The plans already include 24 such projects for Brazil, and we certainly hope this idea will expand to other countries around the world.

As these projects go forward, one thing the forum will do will be to continue exchanging information about how well they're doing, what lessons they've learned, and so one. In addition, it should certainly encompass the work that has been done in the previous meetings that Kofi Annan has referred to.

What do you think inspired the Brazilian government to initiate the forum?

In point of fact, Brazil has startlingly little international tourism for its size. It has a great deal of variety and attractions that are simply not well known outside Brazil. And I think in many ways, it's exactly the right country to be taking this initiative, because it has such great variety of culture and nature and history. As a swiftly developing country, it's right in the cusp between two different stages of economy. It's an excellent leader for this.

Why the cultures stream for Brazil?

Brazil has two huge groups of cultures within it. One that Americans have probably heard of more often is of course the indigenous Indians of the Amazon Basin. The second group is immigrants to Brazil. Few Americans realize there's an enormous Japanese community in Brazil that has grown up there and speaks Portuguese. Of course, the African influence in Brazil has been enormous, and many of those cultural qualities have been preserved more in Brazil than here in the United States. And on top of that, you have all sorts of European groups who've also migrated there. It's one of the few countries I can think of, along with maybe the U.S., Canada, and Australia, where you'll see last names that come from all different parts of the world.

Are there any specific Forum projects in Brazil that stand out to you?

Two particularly interest me. One involves the historic district called Pelourinho in the city of Salvador, which is in many ways the cultural heart of Brazil, and a project there that would involve increased cultural interaction and discovery between local people and visitors. And the other one, a very different sort of location, would be in the Pantanal, which is one of the world's great wetlands.

Most people agree that good tourism practices make good sense. So why is "good tourism" so hard to witness in action?

Tourism has grown so fast and so furiously over the past five decades, to the extent that in many parts of the world, it is literally changing the face of the Earth. This is by some accounts the largest, or one of the largest, industries on Earth. But because it's so new, we don't know a whole lot, really, about how to do it well. And this is a serious issue with tourism. The travel industry is the only industry I can think of that uses "unspoiled" as a selling point

And that's because spoilage is pretty common. People are seeking places that are not spoiled, that still feel worth traveling to and seeing without being drowned in other tourists or ugly advertisements or ugly high-rise hotels and so on.

Under what circumstances, then, does tourism work well?

It works well when it helps preserve things. Ecotourism, of course, is a classic example of this. That's not to say that all ecotourism works—it's not easy—but tourists' income can help preserve wilderness areas. And by extension, the same principle applies to other aspects of places, including historic districts, cultural attributes, music, dances, types of cuisine—these can all be supported by tourism.

That's one reason I'm promoting the use of a fairly new term, "geotourism," which means tourism that sustains or enhances the geographic character of a place. And that includes not only environment, which is always included under sustainable tourism, but also heritage, culture, the aesthetics of a place, and—the essential link—the well-being of the local people, so that they are receiving a real, tangible benefit to helping to preserve these things.

This new term, geotourism—do you think it goes beyond sustainable tourism?

Yes, I do. What sustainable tourism means is, first of all, do no harm, particularly to the environment. Conduct tourism in such a way that the place will still be worth visiting by future generations. Geotourism incorporates all of that, but allows for actually building on the diversity.

And there are situations where you can do that, where you can take, say, a local cuisine and develop a better cuisine out of it, still true to the nature of that place. Or you can take historic structures and re-purpose them in a way that highlights something new about the place.

One of my favorite examples of this is the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. It's in an old cannery, which might otherwise have been torn down, on John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. This is enhancement. And as a result of the creation of that aquarium, everybody, and most importantly Californians, is more aware of the fantastic marine life that they have off that coast.

So it sounds like geotourism allows for evolution?

You cannot expect—and it's not fair to ask people—to seal everything in amber and never change anything. But what is important is that the evolution be appropriate to the place, to build on the diversity and the character of the place. Sameness is the enemy of geotourism.

As a partner in the forum, what will be the National Geographic Society's role?

I would say our role is to stick to our mission, which is the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge—in this case, about the very geographic topic of tourism. In every way we can, we want to inform people on what seems to be working, how to do it well, how to do it better, how to do good interpretation—explaining to visitors what they are seeing - and also to involve local people in that as much as possible.

There are really three major audiences involved that I think we can be speaking to, and those are the people that live in the place, the people who visit the place, and all the professionals from government and the private sector that are involved in bringing these two together.

In the end, what does the National Geographic Society hope to see accomplished through the forum?

We hope to see enlightened practices in tourism, we hope to see more preservation of the great geographic diversity that the world has to offer, and we hope to see, in the words of the full name of the forum, peace and sustainable development.