Tourism
is vitally important to the entire Belize economy, contributing 26%
of Belize's gross
domestic product. In the Placencia area, tourism has completely
replaced fishing as the primary source of income for all but a very
few residents.
Until 2006, Belize's southern Belize tourism product focused on
small, mostly locally owned hotels and guesthouses, nature tours and
recreational diving, fishing, kayaking, sailing, snorkeling and
inland tours to Mayan ruins, jungle rivers, caves and wildlife
sites.
The approval of Ara Macao with its 18-hole golf course, casino, 400
boat marina, 296 villas, 250 room hotel and 458 condos came in 2006
and signaled the beginning of a new type of tourism product in
southern Belize, endorsed by the Belize government - mass tourism,
all-inclusive resorts, residential tourism and newly proposed cruise
ship tourism.
With these new types of tourism have come many issues of concern to
local residents including:
- Quality and quantity of resources such as
potable water, fish and power. For example, very little
geological information is available for southern Belize, meaning
that no one knows how much water is available for local
communities and for tourists, who use approximately 3 times as
much water as local residents. Further, fish stocks are
declining and tourism can further increase that decline through
destruction of critical habitat such as mangroves, coral reefs
and sea grass beds, and greatly increased consumption of fish. Electricity supplies can already be
unreliable and locals have concerns about the ability of the
national electric company (Belize Electricity Limited) to supply
enough power to local communities as well as tourism
developments. (For example, Ara Macao alone would use
15.35 megawatts of electricity - Seine Bight and Placencia
Villages use 1-2 megawatts.)
- Environmental degradation through increased
garbage, sewage, use of natural resources, air pollution and
run-off of contaminated water from hard surfaces such as roads,
roofs and golf courses into water bodies such as the Caribbean Sea and the
Placencia Lagoon.
- Cultural and social degradation through
interactions with foreign tourists and tourism workers who may
have very different mores and values. Also, exploitation
of local cultural traditions used as tourist entertainment, and
lack of respect for cultural and national heritage surroundings
in the design of foreign owned resorts and other tourist
facilities.
- Marginalization of local labor into
low-paying menial jobs, with management positions going to
foreigners recruited from outside Belize.
- Increased strain on local schools, health
care systems, police and fire protection, garbage collection and
infrastructure. This issue is particularly important for
Belize villages such as Seine Bight and Placencia which have
absolutely no taxing or other revenue generating authority to
raise local funds to pay for increased services. Increased
demand on local communities becomes particularly unfair to local
communities when services must be provided for all-inclusive
resorts that import most of their food and other supplies, and
whose guests do not patronize local businesses.
- Potential for commercial and sexual
exploitation of local residents, particularly of children and
adolescents.
- Leakage of tourism profits, especially with
all-inclusives where tourists pay most of the cost of their
vacation in advance, and outside Belize, and then remain at
their foreign-owned resort, without supporting local businesses.
Belize is currently working to adopt a Responsible
Tourism Policy, currently in the
draft stage.
This policy emphasizes that tourists visit a destination, a
destination does not exist merely to service tourists. The
policy also emphasizes protecting Belize's natural resources,
cultural heritage and biodiversity, an equitable distribution of
economic benefits from tourism and the responsibility of tourists
themselves to respect our natural resources, cultural heritage and
biodiversity.
This Responsible Tourism Policy was presented to
the Belize tourism industry on 24 February 2010, and will be
presented to the Ministry of Tourism for adoption in March 2010.
