The myth of tourism and tourism in PNA, pro-poor

The myth of tourism and tourism in PNA, pro-poor

In Quintana Roo, the pretext for the imposition of all neoliberal environmental regulatory instruments has been ONE economic activity: tourism. The basis for establishing Protected Natural Areas, Territorial Ordinances and PROTUR itself, all are based on the hypothesis that it is necessary and justifiable, even urgent, to impose this or the other type of instruments, for the good of the environment and the natural beauties of the State, in favor of the tourism industry that is the main economic activity of the entity and that is key to contribute to the well-being of the population. Tourism is presented as the solution to reduce poverty, creator of sources of employment and detonator of those areas provided with natural and historical resources, and presenting on the other hand as "poor and underdeveloped" the ejidatarios, communities and other local actors who have not "known how to properly manage their territories" so an adequate instrument must be imposed on them; But does tourism really contribute to reducing poverty?

In his research, Calderón Maya (2014) delineates how the urban model of Cancun, which emerged from the tourism development model of INFRATUR in 1973, has become a sample of how tourism development, far from promoting orderly and beneficial growth for local populations, has made it an increasingly socially polarized city in terms of access to housing and services, of the quality of life of its inhabitants. It establishes that although on the one hand, there are the large hotel, real estate, commercial and corporate developments; on the other, there are the "Regions" characterized mostly by areas without basic services, infrastructure, precarious housing and without health services… More than 60 thousand people live in more than 30 irregular settlements in which, due to their condition as areas not regularized by the federal, state and local governments, they suffer from the lack of streets, drinking water, electricity, drainage, health and educational services among others.... It is a reality that many of these families who on average have three or four children, suffer from hunger, lack of employment and lack access to health services and housing due to lack of opportunities.

Many researchers agree with this "finding." In their research Alam, & Paramati (2016) when conducting an assessment of the impact of tourism on income

inequality in a panel of 49 developing economies around the world between 1991 and 2012, they found a positive relationship between the tourism industry and income inequality due to the oligopolistic nature of the tourism market. Something very much to the Quintanarroense model, where the offer of tourist services such as accommodation, travel and other services are managed only by a few multinational companies, leaving small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) at the local level, unable to compete with these large conglomerates, and without being able to pay the environmental price imposed by the triad in the neoliberal environmentalism model, they end up giving in to the pressures of pseudo-environmentalists and governmentmental agencies, unable to strengthen their ability to compete, eventually abandoning their businesses. Which eventually leads to an unequal distribution of income; where the benefits of tourism development are limited only to a select class of people in society, such as the owners of large tourism service providers, entrepreneurs, investors and managers of tourism enterprises, big capital, which serves and is served by the triad.

It is also argued that tourism is a source of employment for the population, but the truth is that as in the tourism model in the State of Quintana Roo, tourism-related companies create low-wage jobs in local communities and exploit services and resources, which in the long run increases income inequality in any society. At the international level, some researchers, when evaluating studies of 13 economies of intensive tourism between 1995 and 2012, with different methodologies, found only one where tourism contributed in some cases to reduce income inequalities and reduce poverty. Most of the studies examined found that tourism is "not pro-poor" In some cases it even increased income inequality at the local or regional level significantly, tourism was rarely found to significantly benefit the poor.

But the tourism sector insists that they are the panacea to guarantee the quality of life of the population. In its 2018 publication called Our Tourism, the Federal Secretary of Tourism exposed a situation that generated expectations and an ideal panorama:

“…In this period (2012 to 2018), the tourism GDP registered a higher growth in relation to the national GDP, so the participation of this activity went from 8.2% in 2012 to around 8.8% in 2017. To put in context the share of tourism

in GDP, it is important to mention that the construction industry participates with 7.5% and mining including oil with 3.7%.

Similarly, employment growth in the tourism sector was higher than in the economy as a whole during this period. From December 2012 to December 2017, tourism employment grew 3% on average each year, more than double the job growth in the rest of the economy. Currently, around 10 million workers depend directly and indirectly on Tourism in Mexico.

Likewise, new historical highs were registered in the arrival of international visitors and foreign exchange capture, which placed us as the sixth most visited country in the world in 2017 for the first time in our history and the fifteenth with the highest reception of foreign currency…” CONANP also asserts something similar to tourism. The document called the Strategic Framework for Sustainable Tourism in Natural Protected Areas of Mexico (CONANP, 2018) states:

“…The arrival of visitors, both national and international, has an effect on the conservation objects and the communities that inhabit the NAPAs. ... provide socioeconomic benefits, including: the economic spillover that favors local inhabitants and communities, the generation of jobs, decrease in local migration and the opportunity for tourism ventures in the seasons of high visitation…” And in this sense, were the Natural Protected Areas (PNA) established to guarantee the sustainability of tourism development in the state of Quintana Roo contributing to reducing poverty in the municipalities and communities where they were established / imposed? Because as we saw before, they are not contributing to minimize or avoid environmental impacts, at least they are complying in terms of social and economic indicators?

To answer this question we analyze a little the data provided by the Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), which investigates and analyzes what refers to poverty in Mexico; This body establishes that the poverty rate increased between 2008 and 2018, around the same period when CONANP and SECTUR affirmed that tourism and tourism in PNA were generators of economic benefits and opportunities for local communities.

Number and percentage of the population living in poverty in Mexico.

Year Population (millons) Population percentage

Population in poverty (millions) Percentage 2008 111.6 100 49.5504 44.4 2018 125.1 100 52.4169 41.9 2.8665

Author’s construction. Data source: National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy. Multidimensional Poverty Report 2008-2018. A decade of multidimensional poverty measurement in Mexico. Mexico City: CONEVAL, 2020.

At first glance it would seem that the percentage of poor fell from 44.4 to 41.9%, but if you take into account, as CONEVAL itself suggests, that the population grew in that period, we find 49.55 million poor in 2008 and 52.41 million poor in 2018. 2.9 million more poor or half poor, additional. "Half poor", because CONEVAL clarifies, in this period 3 million people went from being extremely poor to moderately poor. If we make a cross-reference of the discourse of CONANP and SECTUR, on the benefit that tourism and THE PNA bring to the local populations we find the contrast of the analysis of poverty indicators of CONEVAL by municipality, in Quintana Roo. It is alarming to realize that, specifically for Quintana Roo, and speaking of tourism, between 2008 and 2018, there was a food poverty of between 55.0 and 65.8% of the populations of the municipalities of Felipe Carrillo Puerto (where the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve is located), José María Morelos (where the Yum Ka'ax Reserve is located in part) and the municipality of Lázaro Cárdenas (where the Yum Balam Reserve is located). and Holbox –Whale Shark).What does this mean? Food poverty is the indicator that establishes the low capacity of the population to access adequate nutrition. In short, how often a person stops eating due to lack of money, or what nutritional quality the individual gets in what he eats (due to lack of purchasing power). According to CONEVAL, more than half of the population of the municipalities where the PNA are prominent and publicized generators of tourism and wealth, do not reach the income to eat.

CONEVAL also shows a poverty rate of capacities of 61.0 to 72.3% in those same municipalities (Felipe Carrillo Puerto, José María Morelos and Lázaro Cárdenas) and up to 27.2 to 38.5% in Solidaridad (where Playa del Carmen is located) and Othón P. Blanco (in the process of dividing with Bacalar). That is, in these municipalities two thirds of the population are in a situation of insufficient disposable income to acquire the value of the food basket and

make the necessary expenses in health and education, even dedicating the total income of households only for these purposes, as conescended in its study. More alarming is that there was, in the period of success reports of Tourism and CONANP, 74.2 to 84.7% of wealth poverty in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Morelos and Lázaro Cárdenas, again; and 53.2 to 63.7% for Othón P. Blanco (later included Bacalar) and Solidaridad (later included Tulum). What do these figures mean? ). It means that practically 8 out of 10 inhabitants of these municipalities suffered from insufficient disposable income to acquire the food basket, as well as to make the necessary expenses in health, clothing, housing, transport and education, although the entire household income was used exclusively for the acquisition of these goods and services, CONEVAL said.

Where is all the wealth that tourism is supposedly bringing to the local populations that ceded – or lost treacherously – their territories in the name of the Protected Natural Areas and that are now treasures for tourism?

When the indicators of tourism, tourist load capacity and Limit of Change acceptable to PNA focused on tourism revolve around visitor satisfaction, and the initiatives of productive projects at hand of the NGOs, financed by international agencies, are limited to training guides, artisans or to be folkloric attractions of the local populations (for the enjoyment of the tourist), when an environmental conservation show is made and neither environmental protection is met, nor with the economic and social justice benefits that supposedly motivate the imposition of a reserve in a natural area of tourist potential, it turns out that the whole discourse of tourism and tourism in PNA driven by the triad, it's just that, a speech. Explained by Palafox-Muñoz & Vilchis-Onofre (2019)

“…The role of the State is to establish the conditions for the commodification of nature, for which it is based on two strategies: tourism for the economic valuation of the landscape; and Natural Protected Areas to guarantee ownership of the territory; both elements always under the discourse of sustainability...” In the end, the discourse of sustainability and opportunities for local populations, owners of the territories, who lose their biocultural heritage to the triad, for the benefit of big capital, in this model of neoliberal environmentalism, turns out to be only an advertising, marketing ruse, a

promise unfulfilled by a simulated dispossession without benefits for local communities. The NAPAs truncate the right to access the areas of greatest value, monetize them and reserve them protected for the capitals, which are most of them, on the beaches.