“I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status,
and your education to travel in Latin America.
Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.”
-To Hell With Good Intentions, Bishop Ivan Illich
For those who can afford the experience, traveling the
world, whether to see wildlife in its natural habitat, to see beautiful
landscapes, or to interact with people from different cultures, can be an incredible
experience. I consider myself very
fortunate to have had a few such opportunities, and if I had the time and (most
importantly) the money, I would probably go abroad two or three or four times a
year. Of course, being able to travel
for leisure usually is indicative of coming from a position of considerable privilege. It’s not surprising, then, that many people
who want to go abroad may look for opportunities to volunteer while they are
there.
Not that long ago, I was reading the article linked above,
which describe the author’s disillusionment with her “volunteer” experience
helping in a Southeast Asian orphanage.
Well, I guess I shouldn’t put “volunteer” in quotation marks – she wasn’t
getting paid, and she really was going over to try and make a difference. I suppose I should have said “helping.” During her time there, she began to suspect
that the charity that she was helping was simply a money-making operation,
designed to let westerners feel good about themselves while using poor children
from the developing world as props.
The article was aimed at college students who go abroad for
spring breaks, or religious groups who go on missions. It reminded me of the stories you’d hear of
parents blinding or crippling their children to make them more pitiful beggars,
helping them get more charity. It also made me think of the animal
equivalent.
Depending on where you go in the world, there are lots of
ecotourism opportunities, some ethical, some… less so. Among the later, there are places that have
discovered that if they call themselves “sanctuaries” and offer to let western
tourists “help out,” they can bring in money and defend themselves against
accusations of exploitation. For
example, a center in Africa might find itself in possession of lots of lion
cubs, which it needs help from paying guests to bottle feed. Visitors will come, pay for the pleasure of
feeding cubs and playing with them, snuggling with them for selfies, and then go
home feeling that “they made a difference” and that the experience “changed
their lives.” In reality, they were
simply the paying guests of a glorified puppy mill.
Such a scheme only works as a business model if there is a
constant supply of cubs – which means breeding, which means clearing out older
animals to make room for the young. And
where do the older ones go? The answer
may not be pleasant – a canned hunt, perhaps?
Some other unsavory aspect of the wildlife trade? Dumped out into the wild with no real survival skills?
As with Bishop Illich, who I quoted at the top of this post,
I don’t want to discourage people from traveling and experiencing wildlife and
wild places. I strongly encourage
it. Supporting ecotourism can help build
communities, lift local people out of poverty, and give them an incentive to
protect native species that they might be forced to otherwise monetize in order
to support themselves and their families.
It’s possible to find experiences that help experience the natural world
and help communities without exploiting animals or perpetuating illegal or
unethical practices. When deciding on
whether or not to visit a zoo that I’ve never heard of, especially in a country
without an accrediting body, I try to research it firsthand to make sure that
it’s in line with my personal ethics.
I
would do no less for a tourism opportunity abroad.
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