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Controversy over Condé Nast Traveler's World Savers Awards
The popular magazine Condé Nast Traveler hosts the annual World Savers Awards to recognize the efforts of hotels, airlines, tour and cruise companies that give something back through their environmental or social programs. But one recipient of the 2010 award is attracting controversy over its actions.Wilderness Safaris won this year's award in the Health Initiatives category for its HIV/AIDS program, which includes the construction of clinics in South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi. Now Survival International, which supports the rights of indigenous peoples, says Wilderness Safaris falls short of its image as positive force in the community.
It points to its new luxury lodge, the Kalahari Plains Camp, set on the traditional lands of the Bushmen in Botswana. The lodge boasts a bar and swimming pool while the Bushmen have to walk for miles to get water. The local people used to have a well, but the government capped it when it kicked the Bushmen off the land in 2002. Survival International and the Bushmen went to court and won the right for the Bushmen to return to their lands, but the government still won't allow them to reopen the well.
Wilderness Safaris says providing water isn't their responsibility, but Survival International points out that they constructed a well near one of their resorts in Zimbabwe in order to attract more wildlife.
How much responsibility does a resort have to the local community? Tell us what you think in the comments section.
[Photo courtesy Ian Beatty]
Filed under: Activism, Africa, Botswana, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ecotourism, News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Billye Graham Sep 20th 2010 3:08AM
I think the government of Botswana should allow it's people to reopen the well. Tourism has caused a lot of problems for quote unquote "third world countries" from The Gambia to Nassau Bahamas. The Bahamaians were smart enough to confine tourism to Paradise Island and allow the social milieu in Nassau to develop naturally as well as benefit from the revenues generated from tourism. I think the company that developed the resort should lead the way be spearheading the reopening of the well. This is the 21st century and we need to leave colonialistic attitudes in the past.
John Sep 20th 2010 1:53PM
A resort has a responsibility to provide clean drinking water,electric power and assure that sanitary conditions are being met in the community,if the resort is located near tribal lands. Who are these resorts employing? Is it not in their interest
to make sure these people are healthy and happy? If they can dig watering holes then they can dig a well! We as consumers of these safaris need to demand these basic services for tribal members.
Randy Jan 8th 2011 11:44AM
Wilderness Safaris' business model should include the welfare of the land and people that it is supposedly helping to promote. Whether they think it is their responsibility to provide them water or not is irrelevant. What is the right thing to do? What is Right Living?
Wilderness Safaris needs to recognize and respond to the understanding that they are guests on the lands of people and wildlife that had peacefully and sustainability coexisted for generations before colonialism, and that for them to claim rights to the land, water, wildlife and use of the area in any way is just another form of colonialism and has no place in responsible tourism. Is this company for real or just another scam working to make a buck no matter how?