Tropical vacations of the future may take on a new meaning for tourists.
MSU Professor of Anthropology Laurie Medina plans to study a new trend in travel - but she’s not headed to the popular Cancun or Jamaica mainstays.
She recently received a $74,940 grant, which she’ll use on an 8-month excursion to Belize where she’ll study “eco-tourism.”
The concept defines a type of adventure travel emphasizing tourists’ social responsibility when visiting parts of the developing world.
“It’s a fairly new idea over the last decade,” Medina said. “The idea is that the money (tourists) spend stimulates the local economy and enables people to make a living for themselves and their families that doesn’t require cutting down forests for example.”
Using eco-tourism, indigenous people who live near rain forests or other exotic locales can earn revenues in ways that don’t harm the environment such as selling goods to tourists or offering guided tours.
Medina said she chose Belize, a small country on the Caribbean coast of Central America, because it has been attempting to institute an eco-tourism system. She will begin her studies there in January of 2002.
“(Belize) had an agricultural strategy so they were cutting down forests to plant crops like oranges and grapefruit that they were producing for export,” Medina said. “Now they are beginning to believe that they may be able to make money by preserving the rain forests and encouraging tourism.”
Medina plans to explore the interactions among the various groups involved with implementing eco-tourism in three Mayan villages. She also aims to research whether the adoption of eco-tourism has helped or impaired the village economies.
Medina’s grant is one of 31 awarded this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Global Security and Sustainability. Medina’s proposal was chosen from a pool of 460 applicants from across the nation and nine other countries.
The MacArthur Foundation is a private, international grant-making institution which fund programs that improve the human condition.
John Slocum, a program officer for the foundation’s Global Security and Sustainability program, said although the foundation doesn’t have a particular focus on eco-tourism, Medina’s project fits well with the foundation’s goals.
“As part of the Program on Global Security and Sustainability, we do have a programmatic interest in issues of conservative and sustainable development,” he said.
“The proposal showed promise for an innovative, excellent project, and like a lot of innovations these days, it shows the impact of global forces on specific local communities.”
