selling forests and parks to loggers
and tourist companies
a tragedy of the commons?
Talk about a
corporate win-win-win-win-winwin situation!
Shell or Exxon could “invest” in a precious
protected area, sell the timber from the
forest as Forestry Stewardship
Councilcertified, plant eucalyptus on the
grasslands and receive carbon credits for
it, sell the genetic resources to
bioprospecting institutions, sell fresh
water and fuelwood to nearby local
communities, and, on top of it all, give
itself a permit for “sustainable oil
exploration” in the area!
Miguel Lovera, Coordinator Global Forest
Coalition, in Forest Cover 11, February
2004.
Is there a tragedy of the commons?
According to the proponents of
privatizing forests and other precious
ecosystems, there is. They see the fact
that the earth’s biological wealth is, de
facto, a common heritage of mankind, as the
main cause of environmental degradation. In
their vision, people will only be willing
to manage an asset carefully if it is their
personal property. Thus, governments all
over the world have started to sell
watersheds and biologically rich areas like
protected areas and primary forests to
companies and private organizations.
However, the fact that a company receives a
de facto property right over a piece of
land or water source does not imply that it
will automatically manage that land or
water source in a sustainable manner. As
the experiences with water privatization in
countries as varied as Bolivia, Nigeria and
Uruguay demonstrate, from a solely
economic, profit-oriented perspective, it
only makes sense to manage water as cheaply
as possible even when it means the
depletion of water resources and to sell
low quality water only to those who can
afford it. In most cases customers do not
have another place to go anyway, as the
water company has been granted a de facto
monopoly.
The same goes for forests and other
biologically diverse ecosystems.
Regretfully, as calculated by the Centre
for International Forestry Research1 and
other institutions, from a purely economic
point of view sustainable forest management
does not make sense. In the current market
it is much more profitable to simply
plunder all the timber, and/or, even more
efficiently, replace the forest with a
large-scale monoculture tree plantation of
rapid-growing -often exotic- species. This
sad economic reality has already led to the
disappearance of millions of hectares of
tropical forests in countries like
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil. In fact, it
can be seen as one of the main underlying
causes of forest loss2.
Economists and other policy-makers have
recognized for many years that unregulated
economies deplete natural resources as
their nonmonetary values are ignored,
euphemistically calling this a “market
failure”. So they developed another
strategy to squeeze the earth’s precious
resources into economic realities. First of
all, they proposed to ensure that all
aspects of forests, water resources and
other natural resources are valued in
monetary terms. Fascinating economic models
have been developed to translate the
economic value of freshwater, the value of
the genetic information found in a tropical
forest, the value of the carbon
sequestration function of a peat bog, or
simply the aesthetic value of a landscape
like the Masai Mara in Kenya, into monetary
terms.
Subsequently, the so-called “Washington
consensus” proposed creating markets for
these values. This informal network of
neo-liberal economists at the World Bank,
the US government and their governmental
and non-governmental allies suddenly saw a
chance to fit this abstract thing called
nature into their day-to-day logics of “let
the market do it and it will be done”.
Creating markets for protected areas,
carbon sequestration, genetic resources,
freshwater resources and the aesthetic
values of landscapes became the new thrill
in conservationist circles. “You cannot
save it if you cannot sell it”, was the
slogan that lead to initiatives like
“Biotrade”, an initiative established in
1996 by the UN Conference on Trade and
Development to promote the creation of
markets for biodiversity and its many
values3.
It did not take an institution like the
World Bank long to embrace this approach,
which fitted so well within its neo-liberal
ideology. As many developing country
governments were dependent upon the Bank
for loans to finance their water
purification systems and drinking water
infrastructure, the Bank was in a unique
position to “suggest” privatization in
countries as varied as Uruguay and
Indonesia. Other sectors struggling with
bad governance were prescribed the same
remedy. As described in the above article,
the World Bank demanded privatization of
Georgia’s forest resources as a central
element of a renewed loan for Georgia’s
forest sector, regardless the fact that it
will be much harder to deal with
overexploitation and other forms of forest
destruction once all the forests are in
private hands.
The World Bank, USAID and other
believers in the great benefits of the free
markets also enthusiastically promoted the
combination of the privatization of
protected areas and tourism, by painting
nice dreams about small groups of
nature-loving eco-tourists who would give
thousands of dollars to respectfully take a
peek at the area. Alas, in the wild
unregulated world of “market failures” and
other economic forces, so-called
eco-tourism projects tend to form a rapidly
increasing threat to some of the most
beautiful areas in the world.
Recently, in September 2003, the World
Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa,
took another step towards global corporate
control over protected areas, allegedly a
‘mere’ 12% of the global terrestrial
surface, through its emphasis on
“public-private partnerships”. The
Biodiversity Convention put its stamp of
approval on this big sale at its seventh
Conference of the Parties in February
2004.
Countries have finally divorced
themselves from any real responsibility to
protect natural areas and the people
dependent on them. In Ecuador and Russia,
the governments took the advice of the IMF
to ‘close your unproductive institutions
down’, i.e. environment ministries and
national parks systems. The idea is that in
exchange for the sovereign corporate right
to manage, exploit, speculate and prospect
within natural areas, the private concerns
will also take care of them. What they
forget is that Indigenous Peoples and other
local communities have been taking care of
these areas in a sustainable manner since
thousands of years. These same people now
have to pay for access to fuel-wood,
freshwater and medicinal plants, or are
even blocked off entirely from any access
to these basic needs.
cutting corners: privatizing the
protection of biodiversity
The conservation of biodiversity is a
new and burgeoning commercial sector. As
governments consider the financial merits
of hiving off costly park protection
responsibilities, WTO negotiators are
moving in to force the issue by
liberalising ‘protection of biodiversity
and landscape’markets.
Governments are acting in the belief
that they can preserve nature for next to
nothing. They argue that the private sector
will provide a new source of financing and
specialist expertise. It is convenient for
them to be able to delegate immediate
responsibility for costly conservation
management measures, especially since
benefits tend to be intangible and
difficult to ascertain in the
short-term.
Privatizing the management of
biodiversity in this way risks subjecting
critical biodiversity resources and
ecological functions to the vagaries of
market pressures and corporate control. It
almost inevitably reduces local indigenous
communities’ control over the biological
and natural resources upon which they
depend and discourages locally-developed
sustainable resource management practices.
It also facilitates biopiracy. Indeed,
recent experience indicates that this type
of privatization is introducing new sources
of corruption and denying community
rights.
The consequences of privatizing the
management of biodiversity could prevent
governments from meeting their commitments
under the UN’s Convention on Biological
Diversity, which effectively requires them
to ‘regulate or manage biological resources
important for the conservation of
biological diversity’. In particular, the
Convention specifies that this must be done
in a way that will ‘respect, preserve and
maintain knowledge, innovations and
practices of indigenous and local
communities’. Yet such an approach is
likely to be seriously compromised by the
current drive to privatize biodiversity
management.
tourists only: the commodification and
privatization of nature for tourism
Tourism, when defined broadly, to
include travel services and passenger
transportation, is regarded as the world’s
largest and fastest growing industry, as
well as being the world’s largest service
sector. In 1999 it accounted for over 10%
of world GNP, totalling US$440 billion.
Public beaches, forests and mountain
areas have repeatedly been lost to the
voracious appetites of developers bent on
constructing hotels, resorts, golf courses
and all the varied trappings of modern,
industrialized tourism. The diversion of
‘privatized’ water from public reservoirs -
to water golf course greens and fill hotel
swimming pools and bathtubs - has also
become a common yet devastating practice in
recent decades.
However, it seems that worse is on the
way. With the new, liberalizing spotlight
fixed firmly on tourism, corporations are
seeking to maximise their revenues by
acquiring ownership of and then selling
almost anything that might be of interest
to a tourist – even an eco-friendly one.
This new wave of privatization and
management agreements encourages
governments to relinquish their
responsibilities and many turn a blind eye
to increasing levels of exploitation and
even illicit activities.
A clear example is the degradation of
biological resources and ecosystems in
national parks. Worldwide - from the United
States and South Africa through to China
and Thailand – governments are turning to
the private sector to finance nature
conservation and visitor facilities, with
parks being privatized, built over and
developed as a result. The consequences for
local people and the environment can be
devastating. Indeed, the 2003 World Parks
Congress confirmed that protected areas are
threatened as never before, with damage to
ecosystems - due to excessive developments,
social inequality, and commercialization -
high on its list of concerns.
Civil society organizations and
representatives from Indigenous Peoples who
inhabit the world’s most biodiversity-rich
areas have constantly pointed out that
tourism has often degraded biological
resources and entire ecosystems as well as
adversely affected local communities. They
argue that tourism should not be considered
as a suitable industry to help protect
biodiversity.
There is also grave concern about the
privatization and trading of biological
resources and Indigenous Peoples’
traditional knowledge. From Vietnam and
India through to the Amazon region, there
are alarming reports of “tourists”
illegally collecting and trading species
and traditional medicine recipes that may
be of value for the biotechnology
industry.
Conspicuously, a growing number of
UNESCO’s World Heritage sites are also
being privatized in order to boost visitor
numbers and maintain revenues. The famous
Banaue rice terraces on Indigenous Peoples’
land in the Philippines are already
beginning to crumble as a result of
overexploitation by the tourist industry.
Similarly, the ecologically fragile
Sunderbans mangrove forests in West Bengal,
India, and Bangladesh, and the Aldabra
coral atoll in the Seychelles are
threatened by plans for massive and
inappropriate “ecotourism” developments
that could destroy them.
In the same way, cultural heritage sites
- such as the Angkor temples in Cambodia,
Luang Prabang in Laos and Lijiang in
China’s Yunnan Province – are increasingly
controlled by commercial tourism, causing
havoc to local culture and the environment.
In the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu in
Peru, one transnational corporation, Orient
Express, has managed to monopolize the
entire travel and tourism business, which
has created anger and protests among local
residents.
In fact, the indiscriminate development
of tourism has become one of the most
destructive forces in exactly those sites
that UNESCO has identified as requiring
protection and restoration. Nevertheless,
the UN agency has itself become a
significant promoter of tourism, forging
relationships with corporate sponsors and
arguing that tourism “brings much-needed
funds, which can be used to help preserve
natural and cultural World Heritage sites
and empower local communities living and
working near those sites”. UNESCO has even
begun to collaborate with industry partners
in marketing heritage sites as tourist
destinations. In March 2004, UNESCO hosted
its first ever stand at the International
Tourism Exchange (ITB), the world’s largest
tourism fair.
Common sense tells us that the world’s
last pristine habitats, important cultural
and religious sites and Indigenous Peoples’
ancestral domains should be protected from
commercial tourism and properly maintained
for the public good, now and in the future.
However, under new liberalization schemes -
such as the World Trade Organization’s
(WTO) General Agreement of Trade in
Services (GATS) - there are good reasons to
worry that such protection – as well as
support for local tourism operators - is
about to be outlawed. GATS could prevent
the adoption of a huge range of measures
designed to protect the environment from
tourism, including, for example,
restrictions on the development of tourist
resorts or constraints on the numbers of
tourists visiting fragile coral reefs.
While both national legislation and
international instruments (such as the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD))
are firmly in favour of decentralized
tourism planning, the GATS works in the
opposite direction, centralizing
decision-making and, according to the
Indiabased NGO Equations, creating “a
predictable harmonized deregulatory climate
for service providers [that] places no
value on local democracy”. Yet the United
Nations seems to be blind to these
developments and has so far singularly
failed to deal with the potential impacts
that the commodification and privatization
of nature for tourism might have on
biodiversity. The deliberations of the
Commission on Sustainable Development
(CSD), the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), and the events in relation
to the International Year of Ecotourism
(IYE) 2002 can all be considered failures
in this respect.
This might be due to the fervour with
which the development of tourism is being
pursued in other fora. According to Raymond
Chavez4”… cash-starved Third World
countries view tourism as a shortcut to
rapid development. Its potential to earn
billions of dollars easily has resulted in
it being viewed as a panacea for
debt-ridden countries. But more than this,
tourism has become part and parcel of
multilateral financial institutions’
package for financial bail-outs for
countries in distress...”Thus the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), anxious
to ensure that developing country debts are
repaid, included tourism as part of its
Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). In
essence, this means that any country
requiring financial assistance was and
continues to be pressurized to ensure that
tourism is integrated into its economy,
through liberalization and deregulation. As
a result, public and private investments
worldwide have now reached $800 billion
annually, accounting for 12% of total
investments across the globe.
And then, handing over parks to tourist
companies is not even the most devastating
form of nature privatization. There is also
an increasing tendency to hand over
protected areas to oil and mining
companies. With governments declaring
themselves broke, selling of the family
jewels to anyone who is willing to pay for
them is the most pragmatic manner to fix
budget deficits. So who objects if an oil
or mining company is willing to “manage” a
park?
1. See for example “The Flawed Wisdom of
Sustainable Forest Management”,
www.cifor.cgiar.org/docs/_ref/publications/newsonline/32/wisdom.htm
2. See report on the Global Initiative to
Address the Underlying Causes of
Deforestation and Forest Degradation:
www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/uc-rpt_eng.pdf
3. See
www.biotrade.org
4. Chavez, Raymond, ‘Globalization and
tourism: Deadly mix for indigenous
peoples’, Tebtebba Foundation, Philippines,
Third World Resurgence No. 103, March
1999
more information
Tourists only: the commodification and
privatization of nature for tourism is
based on the paper “OUR WORLD IS NOT FOR
SALE ! The disturbing implications of
privatization in the tourism trade” by
Anita Pleumarom, Tourism Investigation
& Monitoring Team (tim-team). Paper
presented at the International Seminar on
Tourism: Unfair Practices - Equitable
Options, 8th - 9th December 2003, Hannover,
Germany, hosted by DANTE/ The Network for
Sustainable Tourism Development.
www.twnside.org.sg/tour.htm
