EDITORIAL: Tourism and the Land
by Alan Wilson
from Jan/Feb 1992 issue of Wave~Length

Many of us are concerned about the degradation of 
our planetary environment and are taking steps to 
lessen the impact of our actions. The experience of 
an unspoiled environment is becoming a value in 
itself, one enjoyed particularly by paddlers. 
Paddlers know that a wilderness trip helps reverse 
in us the pell mell rush of a growth-fixated 
culture. It teaches us that 'slow is beautiful'.

In times of recession, however, industry leaders and 
some workers argue that such environmental concern 
is overdone, our standards are too high, that to 
meet our "green goals" we would have to collapse our 
economy and sacrifice our well-being, beginning with 
their jobs. "Jobs or the environment" is the 
rallying cry.

The 1991 State of the World report of the Worldwatch 
Institute says, "Shifts in employment are inevitable 
whether remaining forests are liquidated or 
protected: jobs and profits based on a rapidly 
diminishing resource simply will not last.

"Continued cutting of the last ancient forests will 
do little to sustain timber industry jobs. Moreover, 
it will foreclose the option of diversifying from 
narrow wood-based economies to broader forest-based 
economies that capitalize on such nontimber values 
as tourism."

"Tourism? C'mon, we don't all want to be bellhops!"

Proponents of tourism have often been derided for 
promoting what their detractors call a 'Third World 
economy'  low paying service jobs. But the tourist 
industry is a broad-based, grass-roots, industry of 
small business people, men and women in the fields 
of kayaking, whale watching, river rafting, etc.,
who through a love of the outdoors, have created 
satisfying and sustaining careers. Simultaneously 
they have created a uniquely diverse industry 
providing incomes in many small communities.  

Wilderness tourism is small scale, decentralized, 
and low-impact. This is a model quite different from 
the heavy, extractive industries, often foreign-
owned corporations, which ship out products, leaving 
a residue of pollution or deforestation. 

Tourism is reshaping the coastal economy. In the 
province of British Columbia, for instance, tourism 
has now become the #1 employer, growing at 5% per 
year, while traditional industries show increasing 
job loss. Tourism is now a $5 billion a year 
industry spread throughout the province (only $2 
billion in Vancouver and Victoria). And although the 
forest industry is still the #1 generator of wealth 
in the province, that centerpoint of BC industry is 
likely to eventually be replaced in top spot by the 
upstart Tourism. 

Tourism offers the hope of resolving the "jobs or 
the environment" dichotomy, proving that jobs and 
the environment are compatible, undermining the 
rationale for continued resource extraction which 
has been promoted by large, corporate employers.

It is important to remember that logging was not 
always number one. The west coast native economy 
persisted over millennia, based on a sustainable 
relationship with the land. Since contact we have 
experienced a rapid succession of economies based on 
consumptive 'boom & bust' industries: the fur trade, 
the gold rush, fishing and forestry. Now in Tourism 
we are at last turning back towards a less 
consumptive relationship with the land. 

This economic transition will only succeed if all of 
us entering the wilderness, whether for business or 
pleasure, exercise a high standard of 
environmental responsibility.