Virtual Ecotourism

The Problem

As of April 26 , 2020, over 2.6 million people worldwide have contracted the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. The spread of this virus is a health crisis but it is not just a health crisis. This pandemic threatens to create devastating social, economic, and political crises that might be hard to cope in the years to come - reversing development gains achieved over the past years. Developing countries could lose at least US$200 billion in income, which translates into lost jobs and stretched governments in some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. This can have strong consequences for areas where ecotourism is the main source to fund community-based conservation programs. Community-based conservation programs related to ecotourism can help generate incentives for conservation and the sustainable management of ecosystems. Wildlife based tourism operations and associated enterprises can provide direct benefits that can offset pressures from other less sustainable activities that are environmentally and/or socially destructive. However, this kind of conservation program are likely to fail without income from ecotourism, leading to loss of advanced terrain in the field of conservation. We want to prevent this scenario to happen by giving the opportunity to local communities that depends on ecotourism to become more resilient to these kind of worldwide events.

Our Proposal

We will develop a web platform and/or app that uses virtual ecotourism as the main tool. This will provide the opportunity for tourists (user/donor) to support local communities that carry out conservation programs in which threatened and endangered species are protected. Our idea is to establish the connection between users and local communities. Through this tool, conservation programs will be identified by region, and in this way users will be able to decide which program they want to make a financial contribution to. This contribution will allow community-based conservation programs to continue on their course without being affected by the cancellation of trips due to COVID-19 or future eventualities. In compensation for this donation/contribution, local communities will honor the contributor by giving the name to an animal protected or released within the monitoring and conservation programs. This process will be accompanied by a videographic record that will be delivered to the contributing user. In this way, we would be providing a novel solution to a current problem, additionally we would be creating resilience of the communities that depend on ecotourism to support their conservation programs.

We Assume that...

The inhabitants of the local communities could return to bad practices in the use of natural resources due to the lack of income from tourism.

If people outside the community-based conservation processes become aware of the economic situation of these groups, they will be able to contribute financially.

The irregularities that the inhabitants from local communities could commit could be: hunting animals for consumption or for sale the illegal trafficking of wildlife.

Community-based projects will not earn the necessary income to carry out their conservation programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Constraints to Overcome

The main problem is establishing the connection between community-based conservation programs that depend on ecotourism and the users that would be economic donors. Additionally, these community-based groups do not usually handle with great skill the use of social networks or online platforms that allow them to publicize their work. This is mainly because some live in remote regions with low internet access. Besides, tourism is frequent at various times of the year and have never faced an event of this magnitude that reduces ecotourism in its entirety.

Current Work

Identify community-based conservation programs that depend on ecotourism to carry out their conservation activities. The pilot project area is the Pacific of Colombia.

Current Needs

Funds to spread the project to a wider audience and code programing skills