Land Grab: Green Neoliberalism, Gender, and Garifuna Resistance in Honduras

8. Research Voluntourism as Rights-Based Conservation: Could It Work?

153 eight Research Voluntourism as Rights-Based Conservation Could It Work? In 2010, when Natalie Bown and I were working on our article “Neoliberal Conservation, Garifuna Territorial Rights and Resource Management in the Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area” (Brondo and Bown 2011), we reported that the social activism of Garifuna as indigenous peoples played a role in restructuring the CCMPA management plan to be more socioeconomically driven. A new five-year plan was rolled out in 2008, a year earlier than expected because of the local discontent with the 2005–9 plan. The no-take fishing zone in the 2008–13 plan was reduced, and there were fewer temporally closed areas. Because we had found that the distribution of benefits was skewed toward individuals who had established contacts with the HCRF during the first phase of management within the CCMPA (2005–8), Bown and I ended that article with skepticism over the degree to which the revised management plan would indeed change the conditions under which the local population interacted with resources. When I returned in 2011 and encountered don Buelto in OFRANEH’s office, our article was just coming out. The letter don Buelto drafted that day suggested that Büscher’s (2008:230) statement that while “productive conservation-development outcomes can and do occur . . . they are rare and never straightforward” may be right. The challenge I take up in this chapter is to question whether there are possible configurations and partnerships that could create the basis for cultural sustainability, conservation, and control over economic development within a neoliberal development 154 • Land Grab context. Could research voluntourism partnerships create a mechanism of support for rights-based conservation? Can the right to self-determination ever be protected under neoliberal conservation? Doing Good for Whom? The above questions are so critical because all signs indicate that the sector of humanitarian travel and volunteer tourism will only continue to grow. A Google search for “volunteer tourism” generated 113,000 hits in 2012, and “volunteer tourism organizations” generated 7,450 links. Most of these holidays are marketed to potential volunteers as opportunities to “make a difference” in the world (Ingram 2011:211), something that many individuals are eager to do in today’s globalized world. In general, voluntourists are seeking an “alternative” tourism experience and are more likely to be interested in the three T’s (trekking, trucking, and traveling [Mowforth and Munt 1998:125–155]) than the three S’s (sea, sun, and sand) that consume mass tourists. Voluntourists are typically on a journey of discovery, learning more about themselves and others. Volunteer tourism has the potential to increase social, political, and environmental consciousness and participation in social activism among participants in these travel experiences (McGehee 2002; McGehee and Norman 2002; McGehee and Santos 2005). The results are a heightened consciousness and activism in a largely privileged set of individuals, those with the resources to undertake voluntourism to begin with. With respect to conservation-related voluntourism, I propose that the growth of this subset of volunteer tourism is a symptom of the individualization of responsibility (Maniates 2002) that emerges under neoliberal conservation and development models. By individualization I refer to the tendency to ascribe responsibility for environmental protection and consumption-related problems to freestanding individuals. By depoliticizing resource depletion, and removing how power shapes and structures consumption choices and conservation measures, solutions become individualized , not structural. Consumer guilt arises—people feel personally responsible for global concerns, including natural resource depletion, poverty, climate change, and the like. People individualize responsibility for causing problems, and they create individual solutions to solve them. Michael Maniates (2002:45) cites the Lorax as the epitome of this phenomenon . We respond by planting a tree, by recycling, by taking reusable shopping bags; we “do our part.” None of these are systemic changes, but Research Voluntourism and Conservation • 155 individuals are thirsty for opportunities to feel like they are contributing to a solution. In a series of interviews with voluntourists in 2011, whenever I asked someone to talk about their relationship to and views on the environment , he or she responded with individual acts (“I recycle at home” or “I try to remember to switch off the light when I leave a room”). This desire to feel that one is “making a difference” through contributing to conservation efforts while on holiday drives the growth of conservation research tourism organizations like Opwall. While individuals are embracing volunteer tourism...