No Such Thing As Eco-Tourism?

Anneli Rufus may have gained a couple followers tagging along and hi-fiving her long-winded rant which compares colonialism to eco-tourism, but she sure ruffled more than a few feathers. While I don’t necessarily agree with all her commentary myself, the writing is biting, cut-throat, makes you think and has generated what actually looks like 109 well-thought out responses. (Mind-blowing, but not surprising.) Anneli who claims to have been a adventurer in the past, writer of travel books (and actually was) and so-on, no longer wanders into Third World territories, but now deeply contemplates whether First World travelers are doing nothing more than boasting, bragging and dismantling the landscape in their gnarly little eco-tourist excursions. What do you say?

If you’ve got some free time (and I do mean free time) then swing over to AlterNet for a read. Actually, even if you’re very busy at work trying to get through the middle of the work week I suggest you go over and see what side of the picket-white fence you’re on. Are you a status conscious colonialist using eco-tourism for a mask while trampling, intruding and wrecking foreign locales in the name of a snapshot or do you believe differently? Is Anneli totally off the mark?

What does eco-tourism mean to you? How do you define adventure travel