The Dark Side Of Tourism And What We Can Do About It
Tourism is not great after all, but we don’t have to stop traveling altogether
Recently, I spent some time on a beautiful, more secluded beach here in Brazil.
My morning routine during that time was even better than the one I try to maintain on the daily basis. I woke up, made my bed, drank a big glass of water, and went straight to the beach.
There I would walk some 6 kilometers barefoot, do some calisthenics, and swim a little. It was just perfect.
Until one day, my six-year-old nephew, Bernardo, wanted to catch coconuts on the beach. We couldn’t find a single one.
Out of the blue, inspired by a few people that I’ve seen doing this, maybe to pretend that I am not just another egoistic person, I invited him to collect the trash left on the beach. He loved the idea and wanted to do this all the time.
Trash And Consumerism
In this circumstance, I noticed firsthand how harmful tourism is. We were on a very small, quiet beach. Yet, we were collecting a lot of trash. I mean, an unbelievable amount.
I simply couldn’t believe what I was witnessing: people still throw lots of plastic, fish nets, beer cans, and so on, on the sand of beaches.
This is just crazy, but I have to confess that only in that circumstance I became truly conscious that such a thing does happen.
The sad part is that knowing that beach for a long time, I’ve noticed that without tourists, this would be a far more limited problem, maybe limited to fish nets.
Of course, environmentalists know that this is a deeper problem whose roots are in money itself, which eases the process of buying stuff and tends to make us unaware of the consequences of our shopping habits.
They also emphasize the consumerist side of this and our choice of oil as a mainstream energy source, which turns plastic such a ubiquitous thing.
In short, it seems correct to state that the problem doesn’t lie in tourism itself but in money and its most notorious current consequence, which is consumerism.
By the way, in this specific regard, capitalist culture is taking a very “smart” move, calling tourism an “experience”, instead of what it is, just another way of reinforcing such a culture and its detrimental effects.
Among those effects is the destruction of the environment and damage to our mental health through our tendency to crave things that we don’t truly need.
This makes us want more money than it’s truly necessary and consequently sell our time (one of the few resources that we cannot get back) to do things that we don’t actually want to, plus sometimes catching our finances in a bad spot, which makes us suffer a lot.
Anyway, here we have a more tangible piece of this problem: tourism as a way of traveling.
Damage To The Local Communities
Besides the environmental impact and the damage caused to our finances and mental health, it’s well-known how harmful tourism also can be to the locals. I also learned it firsthand on this same trip.
One day I decided to walk a lot to explore a region close to that beach that I didn’t know yet. The landscapes were gorgeous. I’m sorry for not having taken any photos of them because I was without my cell phone.
When I was ending my journey, I met a very interesting guy called Julio Cesar, who lives by himself in a tiny cabin surrounded only by trees, ducks, bugs, snakes, and so on. The guy was the real deal to the point of not even using the water provided by the state.
Instead, he collected his water from a fountain at the onset of a beautiful hill where he lived, which he obviously and wisely refused to call “his” for he doesn’t believe we possess anything in this world.
In short, this man has been living for years with the ideal championed by authors like Henry David Thoreau.
All this long and maybe unnecessary deviation to say that he told me how important it is for the people who live in that region to be self-sufficient as much as possible once the prices skyrocket during the tourist season, besides all the pollution, including the noise, the tourists bring with them.
This reminds me of a passage that I recently read in a book whose author explains the process by which people who own houses in the countryside but don’t actually live there end up disrupting the whole local economy.
This is because, for example, those people start to hire the locals to take care of their empty houses and to do other kinds of chores, and, as a consequence, they, the locals, have less or no time to take care of their own gardens and to produce their food as they usually did before.
The result is that the locals end up losing their capacity to grow the food they need, becoming more dependent on the system and the goodwill of these sporadic visitors.
Here I am only scratching the surface once there are several other dark sides to tourism and the industries it comprises, like volunteering abroad and, in some specific instances, its relation with orphanage traffic. This can definitely be a heavy topic if we decide to not overlook it.
A matter of intention
It’s worth remembering that we can travel for other reasons, like professional ones, having a spiritual journey, or to move to our destination.
In fact, as the philosopher Alain de Botton points out, we can travel in our own cities or even in our bedrooms.
He says that travel should be something prescribed as therapy, as a treatment, as something that we are intentional about what we want from it and how we can grow as a person through a specific trip.
The point, it’s worth stressing, is not to stop traveling or criticize people who do it but to search for a clear understanding of our intentions to do so:
“In the future, we would ideally be more conscious travellers — aware that we were on a search for places that could deliver psychological virtues like ‘calm’ or ‘perspective,’ ‘sensuality’ or ‘rigour’” (Alain de Botton).
Some questions that may be useful when thinking of traveling would be:
- How do I intend to grow or heal through this specific trip?
- What on the chosen destination has the potential to deliver such a result?
- Can I get the same result through other means, less detrimental to the environment, local communities, and my finances and peace of mind?
- Is there a risk that I am traveling only by the influence of others or to please them, mainly regarding the destination?
- Am I traveling to showcase aspects of my trip on social media? If so, why?
- Do I have the financial means to do this travel responsibly without suffering later on because of this choice?
- How can I reduce my trace when traveling?
The truth is that I traveled several times as a tourist instead of someone that wants to live in the destination, even if it’s just for a few weeks.
I am also struggling to answer those questions and trying not to ignore the fact that I will probably not find inner peace while I keep focusing only on myself, on living a self-centered life, and its hedonist demands.
