Moreover, the basis of the benefits has been to tie
rural communities to the task of natural resource management – they effectively
receive benefits in return for co-operating and assisting in the management of
wildlife. Yet in an important sense it is their relationship to their natural environment that defines their poverty. The relationship between people and their environment is not in any sense transformed, but instead is reinforced, and
subsidised, through aid funding and the hunting bounties of wealthy tourists.
Advocates of ecotourism and community tourism see such schemes as
morally superior to Mass Tourism because of their ability to generate environmentally sensitive development. But this resides on a particular view of development and of the developing world. In reality ecotourism is no more of a solution
to less developed status than more traditional forms of tourism. Indeed, it carries
a set of assumptions that may be more limiting to the aspirations for develop