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ABSTRACT
Many volunteer tourism programmes in the Global South involve volunteers in the collection of biological data for the purpose of environmental conservation and monitoring. By participating as lay people in the collection of scientific data, volunteer tourists are similar to citizen scientists in the Global North. Both activities are part of a neoliberal science and conservation regime. Building on insights from citizen science and analyses of global citizenship in tourism, this paper argues that global citizenship and scientific knowledge are co-produced through volunteer tourism. Drawing on the results of a case study of a volunteer tourism and marine conservation programme in Belize, including 48 interviews and 4 focus groups with a range of actors (foreign volunteers, staff of government agencies and non-governmental organisations, and local residents), this paper illustrates both the opportunities and limitations for producing critical global citizenship and democratised science through such programmes.
Acknowledgements
We thank Louis Pena for his invaluable support as a research assistant, the staff of Blue Ventures, especially Jennifer Chapman and Marc Fruitema, and all research participants for sharing their time and perspectives. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Noella J. Gray is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph. She is a political ecologist who studies environmental conservation and governance, focusing on the science-policy interface and scalar politics. She has studied marine protected areas and volunteer tourism initiatives in Costa Rica, Belize, and Kiribati, as well as global conservation institutions.
Alexandra Meeker completed her MA in the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph. Her thesis examined volunteer tourism as a form of neoliberal conservation in Belize.
Sarah Ravensbergen completed her MA in the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph. Her thesis explored community perceptions of and responses to volunteer tourism in Belize.
Amy Kipp is a Masters student in the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph. Her thesis analyses volunteer tourism in relation to gender and geographies of care and global citizenship.
Jocelyn Faulkner is a Masters student in the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph. She is interested in alternative models of volunteer tourism as expressions of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism.
Notes
1. After the research for this paper was completed, Blue Ventures hired a Belizean Research Assistant. He holds a BS in Marine Biology and part of his job entails analysing data collected in BCMRNP.