Text: Maria das Mercês Torres Parente and Thaíse Guzzatti, with the contribution of René Shärer, Esther Neuhaus and Francisco Alemberg, participants of the Encontros da Rede Turisol (2003 until 2005)

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The expansion of the tourism industry in Brazil, and in the world, is a fact internationally disseminated by the governmental agencies, civil society and the third sector. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) data show that the industry grows to a very high level, generates more than 10% of the world global product and will create one out of every ten jobs until 2010 (UNWTO, 1999). Combined to the high unemployment rate in developing countries and the necessity of generating currencies to be able to pay their own debt, such an expansion provokes a rise of interest for tourism from those countries governments.

 

 

Besides, despite being considered as a development tool, tourism engenders negative impacts on societies and environments where it is implemented, provoking a bigger social exclusion with traditional values inversion, provoking power centralization; it can cause the economic dependency to a non-traditional and, most of the time, seasonal activity; and it can cause damages to the nature that originally was its resource. On an economical level, considering globalization, market liberalization and privatization, the activity also brings negative impacts: the generated incomes stay between the hands of the dominant corporations of the sector, the created jobs absorb few local workers, public investments are focused in this activity and don’t give priority to more traditional sectors of the local economy. The current benefits getting to the population of the destination are very poor compared to the profits made by transnational tourism corporations. Besides, it is the local communities that actually suffer the social, cultural and environmental cost of the tourism development. In Brazil, public politics working for this industry development are boosting its expansion.

 

 

On the other side of this scenario, there is a rising debate about a kind of desirable tourism and about the need to create new forms of tourism. A form that is built on a fairer and more equitable model, considering the environmental sustainability and putting the local population at the center of the planning, the implementation and the monitoring process of touristic activities, allowing jobs and incomes generation for the locals. This debate of a new proposal for tourism occurs in the critic of the centralized and excluding model, suggesting a model that favors inclusion through the equality of opportunities.

 

Based on the solidarity-based economy principles, the community-based tourism (or solidarity-based tourism) appears like an alternative to conventional tourism projects. Community-based tourism questions the myth of a tourism generator of employments and incomes, and denounces the politics focused on attracting investments without considering the participation and development of local communities.

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The experiences of solidarity and community-based tourism projects in Brasil revealed that in practice the population of the touristic destinations can benefit more of the activity. Those experiences must be identified and actively promoted in order to share positive experiences and contribute to strategies development for an equitable, sustainable, ecological tourism, focused on people and that respects children and women’s rights.