The spectacle of saving: conservation voluntourism and the new neoliberal economy on Utila, Honduras

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research on Utila, Honduras, this paper suggests that conservation volunteerism suffers from “fictitious conservation”, surrounded by “spectacle”. The “spectacle of saving” associated with the promotion of conservation voluntourism advances the creation of new neoliberal citizens while further concealing the micropolitics of commodified nature. Volunteer conservation tourism creates value in the trade of experiences in or with “nature” while detracting from the labour and value produced through grounded local interactions with natural resources. While voluntourists are busy “saving” endangered species, they are also collecting the entrepreneurial skills and competencies to be successful as the new neoliberal economy. Thus, as a site of fictitious conservation under neoliberalism, conservation voluntourism advances the creation of new neoliberal citizens while justifying its own existence by furthering ecological devastation, obscuring uneven development processes and devaluing local labour and relationships to natural resources. The paper closes with a proposal to reconfigure volunteer arrangements to move nature-based voluntourism towards a rights-based conservation approach through three strategies: (1) collaborative programme design by embracing “friction”, (2) expanded understanding of local impacts, and (3) redesigning volunteer activities to embed a social justice pedagogy using the steps of transformative learning.

储存的奇观：公益保护和新自由主义经济，乌提拉岛，洪都拉斯

借助于对乌提拉岛的人类学研究，这篇论文表明环保志愿服务是``虚幻保护"的一种选择。 （布舍尔Büscher，2013），并被``奇观"环绕（艾戈Igoe, 2013）。储蓄的``奇观"与促进保护公益旅游的发展创造新的新自由主义公民而进一步隐藏了微观政治商品化性质。志愿者保护旅游业本能的或自然地创造贸易经验的价值，但使劳动力和通过接地产生的本地与自然资源相互作用的价值有所逊色。虽然志愿旅游者忙于拯救濒危物种, 他们也收集创业技能和能力使自己在新经济自由主义下能够成功。因此, 作为一个虚构保护下的新自由主义, 保护公益旅游提出了创建新的新自由主义公民的同时也证明了自身的存在，通过进一步生态破坏, 模糊不平衡的发展过程和使当地劳动力和自然资源的关系贬值。本文结论为：提议重新配置志愿者安排从而将自然公益转向维权保护方法，这将通过三个策略: (1)通过接受``摩擦"协作程序设计(青2005)；(2)扩大理解本地影响；(3)重新设计志愿者活动，并利用变革的步骤学习，嵌入一个社会正义教育学。

Keywords:

• voluntourism
• fictitious conservation
• development
• Bay Islands
• Honduras

关键词:

• 志愿旅游
• 虚构保护
• 发展
• 港湾岛
• 洪都拉斯

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff and volunteers at the Iguana Research and Breeding Station and people of Utila for their time and thoughtful engagement with this research project. I am particularly indebted to Steve Clayson, Michelle Fernández, Pamela Ortega, and Andrea Martínez for sharing their knowledge and passion for Utilian culture and natural resources, and for their continued dialogue regarding conservation and tourism development on the island. I hope I have done justice to the work of my colleagues in Utilian conservation and take full responsibility for any errors or misrepresentations in the stories I present here. Kyle Simpson provided invaluable assistance in identifying literature relevant to this study and in formatting references. Finally, I am grateful for the careful review and feedback that Katherine Lambert-Pennington and Daniel Vacanti provided on an earlier version of this manuscript, and for the guidance of external reviewers whose comments helped me to strengthen the final paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Mangrove ecosystems are important for several reasons. Mangroves serve as a buffer zone between land and sea, they protect coral reefs and sea grass beds against siltation, absorb pollutants from water and air, and are home to many threatened or endangered species. Mangrove forests also store carbon in their root systems, and thus play a role in reducing the impacts of climate change, and in combating the effects of rising sea levels, coastal erosion and flooding. Utila's mangroves are mostly red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle) and black mangroves (Avicennia germinans). White mangroves (Lagunculoaria racemosa) and the buttonwood mangrove (Conocarpus erectus) can also be found (Canty, 2007).

2. The 1991 Acuerdo Ministerial Numero Dos provided minimum standards for development and Decreto 83-93 of 1993 created a Bay Islands Commission to promote development (Stonich, 2000). While under Article 107 of the Honduran constitution, foreign born individuals cannot own land within 40 km of the coastline or borders, in 1990, exceptions to this rule were put in place through the passage of Decree Law 90/90. This law stated that urban land could be owned if the property was deemed to have social, economic, or public development interest by the Secretary of Tourism. In 1992, the Callejas administration passed legislation that declared all land suitable for tourism development to be classified “urban land,” hence opening all of the Bay Islands to foreign purchase (Hamilton et al., 2012).

3. Trustworthiness refers to scientific inquiry that is able to “demonstrate truth value, provide the basis for applying it, and allow for external judgements to be made about the consistency of its procedures and the neutrality of its findings or decisions” (Erlandson et al., 1993, p. 29, quoted in Decrop, 2004, p. 157).

4. A minimum stay is required because training volunteers is time-consuming. It takes at least a week to get comfortable enough in knowing the basic activities needed to keep the station operating, and much longer if you wish to become involved in the ecological research being performed.

5. These reforms are covered in endnote 2.

6. On June 28 2009, the Honduran military orchestrated a coup d'état to depose President Manuel Zelaya. Before the 2009 coup, Honduras already had a bad track record for human rights abuses. Since then, they have only escalated. According to the UN, Honduras is ‘the most dangerous (peace time) country’ on the planet. It is the violence and murder capital of the world, with homicide numbers continuing to rise. Much of the violence is concentrated on the mainland.

Additional information

Funding

Travel for this project was made possible with support from the Department of Anthropology and the College of Arts and Sciences' Early Career Research Award at the University of Memphis.

Notes on contributors

Keri Vacanti Brondo

Keri Brondo is an associate professor of anthropology and director of international studies at the University of Memphis, USA. Her research interests are in conservation and development, tourism, land rights, and applied and engaged anthropology. She is the author of Land Grab: Green Neoliberalism, Gender and Garifuna Resistance (University of Arizona Press, 2013), Intersections of Faith and Development in Local and Global Contexts (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, co-edited with Tara Hefferan), and dozens of journal articles, book chapters, and commentaries.