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 "People called me crazy," says João Fernandes Filho, remembering the launch of his small inn for tourists a decade ago. "Then we opened the restaurant. ‘Who will be your customers?' people asked." French, Germans, Swiss, Americans, Brazilians - that's who. People from all over the world beat a path to the Pousada e Restaurante Sol e Mar, as it turns out.
But unlike many neighboring fishing villages along the coast of the Brazilian Northeast, João's community, Prainha do Canto Verde, has not been overrun by carpetbaggers, sprawl, pollution, drugs, and crime. "We can still sleep with our doors unlocked," says Aila Maria da Silva Fernandes, João's wife and business partner. "Troublemakers who just want to party don't come here." In Prainha do Canto Verde, community tourism serves not only its own ends, generating extra income for people like João and Aila, but it acts as a weapon in the battle against real estate speculation and the social and environmental problems that inevitably accompany mass tourism. In Prainha do Canto Verde, locals have managed to throw a novel twist into the plot that usually unfolds as communities are "discovered" as tourism destinations. Here's how the script typically develops. Armed with privileged information about infrastructure investment or tourism development, outsiders begin to buy up land from locals at prices that, while sometimes inflated by traditional standards, always turn out to be low by market rates. Previously unknown "owners" turn up with questionable deeds to large, valuable tracts of real estate. They demand that residents vacate their land. Locals who resist may be physically threatened by hired bands of vigilantes who sometimes destroy property. "The communities feel it when the tractors arrive," says Jefferson Souza da Silva, coordinator of the coastal management program for the Terramar Institute, a non-governmental organization that works with communities along the coast of Ceará state. "Conflicts break out. You were living on land that didn't have an owner, and all of a sudden the owner shows up." Worn down, locals sell out or abandon the fight. Summer homes, luxury hotels and resorts, and time-share condominiums replace the old fishing village. Fishermen and their families abandon traditional activities for low-wage jobs in hotels and restaurants. From Speculation to Cooperative Tourism In Prainha do Canto Verde, residents founded a tourism cooperative to promote local ownership and to market their special brand of tourism to the outside world. They've forged partnerships with outside groups like universities to train themselves and their children as guides and cooks. The effort has won recognition at home and abroad, winning awards from the Brazilian magazine Superinteressante and British Airways. Meanwhile the community continues its struggles to combat illegal fishing and real estate speculation. "The implementation of this type of tourism is a form of resistance," says Edilene Américo Silva, executive secretary of the Forum in Defense of the Ceará Coastal Zone, a coalition of non-governmental organizations that works with the community. The Brazilian government sees tourism as a key element of its job creation strategy. By the end of President Lula's four-year term in December 2006, the Ministry of Tourism plans to welcome nine million foreigners to Brazil annually to spend US$ 8 billion worth of foreign currency. Domestic air travel is supposed to nearly double during Lula's term - to 65 million passengers a year. In the process, the ministry hopes to generate 1.2 million new jobs. Even before Lula hit the scene, tourism had been tabbed to save the sun-drenched but otherwise impoverished Northeast. As early as 1989, the federal government began planning a major offensive in tourism development. In December 1994, officials inked a multi-million dollar loan deal with the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB). The program, dubbed Prodetur, was divided into two phases. The first consisted mostly of public works - airport expansions, road building, and sewage projects. "To develop tourism in the Northeast meant to improve infrastructure," says Renato Cunha, executive director of the Bahia Environmental Group (Gamba) in Salvador. "The idea was to get people to the beaches or to regions that were attractive ecologically." "Greenwashing" Ignores Local Interests Groups like Gamba and the Terramar Institute began to help communities react to the Prodetur steamroller. They achieved some partial victories: in both Bahia and Ceará communities successfully demanded that highways be rerouted to address environmental or local concerns. But their efforts were usually too little, too late. In Bahia, officials resorted to "greenwashing" tactics, mounting environmentally-friendly facades for otherwise questionable projects. "Environmentally-Protected Areas (APAs) were designated with uses restricted to tourism and conservation," recalls Cunha. "Everything along the coast became an APA. But they were just to facilitate the construction of resorts." In 1998, a coalition of NGOs, including Terramar, basically threw in the towel on Prodetur. "We were just getting beat up," says Souza da Silva. The first phase of Prodetur ended two years ago. In the regulations for part two, set to begin implementation this year, the IDB included a requirement for community participation. Gamba counts among the organizations invited to take part, but small environmental groups lack the resources to carefully review all the technical material thrown at them, Cunha admits. The project itself should include funding to help community and environmental organizations fulfill their oversight roles, he argues. At least one World Bank project in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba included such a provision, he says. Meanwhile, in Ceará, a handful of other communities are developing local tourism projects along the Prainha do Canto Verde model. "We don't want to separate the role of criticism and opposition from the pro-active efforts," says Souza da Silva. "The struggle now is to make community tourism viable." "Tourism is going to come whether you want it or not," says René Scharer, a retired Swiss Air executive and founding member of the Terramar Institute who has made Prainha do Canto Verde his home. "You have to define the kind of tourism you want." For More Information: Forum in Defense of the Coastal Region of Ceará
www.soszonacosteira.hpg.ig.com.br GAMBA: Bahia Environmental Group
www.gamba.org.br Prainha do Canto Verde
www.prainhadocantoverde.org Redturs: Latin American Community Tourism Network
www.redturs.org Terramar Institute
www.terramar.org.br GAMBA and the Forum in Defense of the Coast Region of Ceará receive support from the Greengrants Alliance of Funds (GAF) - www.greengrants.org, a Colorado-based foundation, through its Brazilian representative, the Center for Social and Environmental Support (CASA). GAF and CASA bridge the gap between those who can offer financial support and grassroots groups that can make effective use of that support by identifying worthy organizations and moving funds at minimal cost. A former correspondent in Brazil for The Financial Times and Business Week, Bill Hinchberger is the founder and editor of BrazilMax: www.brazilmax.com and contributor to the IRC Americas Program www.americaspolicy.org. The Center for Social and Environmental Support (CASA) and the Greengrants Alliance of Funds (GAF) (www.greengrants.org) provided support for this article.
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We need more informative, objective, and well-written material like this well-researched article.
Boris