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EDITORIAL: Tourism and the Land by Alan Wilson from Jan/Feb 1992 issue of Wave~Length Many of us are concerned about the degradation of our planetary environment and are taking steps to lessen the impact of our actions. The experience of an unspoiled environment is becoming a value in itself, one enjoyed particularly by paddlers. Paddlers know that a wilderness trip helps reverse in us the pell mell rush of a growth-fixated culture. It teaches us that 'slow is beautiful'. In times of recession, however, industry leaders and some workers argue that such environmental concern is overdone, our standards are too high, that to meet our "green goals" we would have to collapse our economy and sacrifice our well-being, beginning with their jobs. "Jobs or the environment" is the rallying cry. The 1991 State of the World report of the Worldwatch Institute says, "Shifts in employment are inevitable whether remaining forests are liquidated or protected: jobs and profits based on a rapidly diminishing resource simply will not last. "Continued cutting of the last ancient forests will do little to sustain timber industry jobs. Moreover, it will foreclose the option of diversifying from narrow wood-based economies to broader forest-based economies that capitalize on such nontimber values as tourism." "Tourism? C'mon, we don't all want to be bellhops!" Proponents of tourism have often been derided for promoting what their detractors call a 'Third World economy' low paying service jobs. But the tourist industry is a broad-based, grass-roots, industry of small business people, men and women in the fields of kayaking, whale watching, river rafting, etc., who through a love of the outdoors, have created satisfying and sustaining careers. Simultaneously they have created a uniquely diverse industry providing incomes in many small communities. Wilderness tourism is small scale, decentralized, and low-impact. This is a model quite different from the heavy, extractive industries, often foreign- owned corporations, which ship out products, leaving a residue of pollution or deforestation. Tourism is reshaping the coastal economy. In the province of British Columbia, for instance, tourism has now become the #1 employer, growing at 5% per year, while traditional industries show increasing job loss. Tourism is now a $5 billion a year industry spread throughout the province (only $2 billion in Vancouver and Victoria). And although the forest industry is still the #1 generator of wealth in the province, that centerpoint of BC industry is likely to eventually be replaced in top spot by the upstart Tourism. Tourism offers the hope of resolving the "jobs or the environment" dichotomy, proving that jobs and the environment are compatible, undermining the rationale for continued resource extraction which has been promoted by large, corporate employers. It is important to remember that logging was not always number one. The west coast native economy persisted over millennia, based on a sustainable relationship with the land. Since contact we have experienced a rapid succession of economies based on consumptive 'boom & bust' industries: the fur trade, the gold rush, fishing and forestry. Now in Tourism we are at last turning back towards a less consumptive relationship with the land. This economic transition will only succeed if all of us entering the wilderness, whether for business or pleasure, exercise a high standard of environmental responsibility.