To be completely honest, I wasn't familiar with the term "ecotourism" before this discussion question was assigned. I could figure out the general gist through context clues, but just to make sure I fully understood the idea, I checked out the always-reliable Wikipedia article. Within a few paragraphs, a glaring error become extremely apparent; ecotourism emphasizes the importance of staying at a pristine, untouched location, still in perfect environmental and ecological conditions. This may be preferable to staying in a suburban sprawl-like area, or an overbuilt tourist spot, but there will be, inherently, some environmental impact from the development of ecotourism facilities, no matter how much they claim to promote low-impact traveling. Would it not be better to never inhabit the untouched piece of nature in the first place? It seemed like a contradiction.

I have never been on an ecotourism trip, so perhaps someone with experience could convince me of its merits. However, any sort of travel appears to have environmental impact, despite one's good intentions. As mentioned in the prompt, air travel alone is a huge polluter; any good done through volunteer work or learning on the trip is surely undone in six hours on a plane. Also, as we have discussed in class, globalization, and the "flattening" of the world is partly to blame for today's environmental crisis. Is bringing Western tourists, and thus ideas, values, and cultures, to remote areas of the world really the best way to improve ecological crises? Admittedly a cynic, I'm having a hard time seeing the value in ecotourism, and how exactly ecotourism benefits local communities more than other travel ventures, which pump money into that country's economy, albeit at the expense of much local flavor. It seems inevitable, though, that ecotourism, despite its origins, will bring an amount of destruction to the destination's environment and culture.