Can ecotourism save the Amazon?
No. While ecotourism can make a positive contribution by providing income in a nondestructive way and by helping to educate the customers and the staff, the amount of forest that can be “saved” in this way is tiny compared to the scale of the forest. Most ecotourists are satisfied by visiting only a minuscule area of forest. Countries like Costa Rica can provide sufficient ecotourism services to satisfy most of the global demand despite having only a very small area of tropical forest. Brazil’s state of Rondônia alone is five times larger than the entire country of Costa Rica.
