Planeta Forum

[planeta]

William Friar -- http://twitter.com/PanamaGuide -- is the guidebook author of Moon Panama guidebook and has kindly agreed to participate in an online Q&A

Starting this conversation ...

Bill, in the world of ecotourism and responsible travel, what issues are you paying attention this year? What gets your goat? What's gives you hope?

[panamaguide]

My main concern is the sheer speed at which Panama is growing. Panama was already a relatively developed country, the wealthiest in Central America, before the boom of the past few years. Since then, the influx of foreign tourists and retirees and an explosion in real-estate speculation has been transforming Panama at an incredible rate.

Last year 200 high-rises were under construction just in Panama City. For the last five years, Panama has had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. So far it’s dodged the worst effects of the worldwide meltdown, so even though its economy will slow a lot this year, analysts are still saying it may grow by up to 6 percent this year.

What all this means for the environment is pretty obvious. To give just one small example, the construction boom is so huge there’s a shortage of sand to make concrete. So builders have been extracting sand illegally from beaches.

For instance, one of the best beaches in Bocas del Toro, Playa Bluff, is disappearing because pickup trucks are hauling sand away day and night. Again, this is illegal, but far from doing anything about it, the local government has been implicated in the extraction.

A newspaper in Bocas just ran a story that included a photo of what appears to be a genuine official notice from the Bocas municipal-engineering department that was posted on the wall of the city courthouse. The notice listed the hours when commercial sand extractors could make their runs and reminded them that same-day permits were available (apparently the rate’s $6 per truckload, payable at the courthouse).

So even when good environmental laws are on the books, the political will to enforce them may not exist, to put it mildly. But even more worrying is what’s going on legally.

Dozens of hydroelectric dams are in the works, for example. Besides destroying wild rivers, some of these could destroy communities and even entire indigenous nations: the Naso people, who are down to a population of 3,800, are fighting an effort right now to dam rivers in western Panama that run through their ancestral homeland. If the dams are built, they’re finished.

Another alarming development are the copper and gold mines being built or planned in Caribbean forests that up to now have resisted deforestation. The forests are a key link in the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, so these mines could have an absolutely devastating effect on migratory species, something that should worry people throughout the Americas.

The list of environmental threats can be overwhelming, but there are also things happening in Panama that give me hope. Some of the most egregious plans for environmentally destructive developments have been stopped before they went into effect, thanks to a growing environmental movement in Panama and help from the more sensible of the businesspeople and politicians. These days I see more enlightened self-interest among Panamanians, including those in power, as well as among some of the expats that have moved to Panama and are trying to preserve the paradise that attracted them in the first place.

[planeta]

Bill, could you bring us up to speed on Panama's indigenous peoples?

Who are the major groups? Do we see indigenous-run tourism enterprises? Do we see tourism operations that work well with the indigenous peoples?

[panamaguide]

About 8-10 percent of Panama’s people are considered “indigenous.”

The largest groups are the Ngöbe and Buglé of western Panama. They are closely related but speak different languages. There are nearly 200,000 Ngöbe-Buglé, most of whom live in the mountains of western Panama.

The second-largest group is the Kuna, who mostly live in a Caribbean archipelago and a strip of coastal mountains in eastern Panama. There are about 62,000 of them.

The Darien jungle is home to the Emberá and Wounaan, who, again, are closely related but speak different languages.
The other commonly recognized peoples are the Naso, Bri Bri and the Bokota; there are fewer than 1,000 Bokota left in Panama.

Most of Panama’s indigenous people live on comarcas, semi-autonomous “reservations.” This gives them a certain amount of self-determination, but they are hardly free from exploitation. In fact, they’re the poorest people in Panama: 95 percent of them live in poverty. Most live in extreme poverty, which means they get by on less than a dollar a day.

Even though they, too, are quite poor, the Kuna have been the most successful in keeping their culture intact and controlling their own destiny. They’ve been keeping foreigners off their turf for hundreds of years.

They even fought – and won – a revolt against Panama in 1925, which led to them gaining their official comarca status. Today, some non-indigenous Panamanians complain that Kunas have rights and privileges not afforded to others. Non-Kunas, for instance, are not allowed to own property on Kuna land, but Kunas have all the rights of other Panamanian citizens. In fact, in 1999 a Kuna, Enrique Gallardo, was voted head of Panma’s legislative assembly.

The Kuna also have by far the longest history in dealing with tourists. Long before the world discovered the archipelago of Bocas del Toro, adventurous travelers were visiting the beautiful islands of Kuna Yala (which translates to “Land of the Kuna,” also known as the San Blas islands) and staying at rustic Kuna “hotels” – typically thatched-roof huts with sand floors. Kunas have also been selling their beautiful molas (brightly colored cloth panels with cut-and-stitch designs) to tourists for generations. Every once in a while non-Kunas will try to establish a hotel or tourist operation on the islands with a Kuna front, but eventually the Kunas take over the operation and boot out the foreigners.

In recent years, Emberá and Wounaan communities that live along rivers close to Panama City and the Panama Canal have been inviting tourists into their villages to see their “traditional” way of living – I put “traditional” in quotes because the Emberá and Wounaan do not traditionally live in villages at all. There are similar operations in the Darien jungle, where most of the Emberá and Wounaan still live. The adventurous can spend the night in some of these villages.

In some of these places I’ve arrived ahead of tour groups and seen the men taking off their jeans and the women taking off their tops to look suitably “savage” for the tourists. It can be a bit uncomfortable and off-putting. You have to go pretty far upriver into the jungle to get a glimpse of older Emberá-Wounaan ways of life. But it’s a way for them to make a bit of money, both through the tours and selling their art. The Wounaan especially are world famous for their artistic skill (in particular for making baskets, ivory-nut carvings and wooden statues). The tours are generally arranged through non-indigenous operators, however, so who knows how much of the profits actually make their way back to the villagers and artists.

The poorest of the poor are the Ngöbe and Buglé, who are also the most populous indigenous group. They’ve had modest success at best with tourism operations. Partly that’s because most of them live in remote and inaccessible communities in the mountains of western Panama. Also, their cultural traditions have faded considerably, which means a village visit is unlikely to offer much that would seem distinctive to most tourists. The crafts they’re most noted for are their vibrantly colored dresses, bags woven from palm fibers, and bead necklaces, which are attractive but have limited appeal.

The Ngöbe-Buglé are the main pickers for Panama’s highly prized highland coffee. It’s hard work for little pay, and drops in coffee prices can hit them hard. The highlands had terrible storms this season, for instance, and nearly half this year’s crop has been lost. That’s going to be brutal for the Ngöbe-Buglé.

I’m also concerned about the Naso. There are only about 3,800 of them left, and though they’ve been fighting for one, they don’t yet have a comarca of their own. Both things combined make them terribly vulnerable. As I write this, they are in the middle of a fight to keep outside interests from building hydroelectric dams in the heart of their homeland. The Naso live by the rivers in western Bocas del Toro these dams would flood, so these projects might very well mean the extinction of an entire culture. The controversy over the dams has also divided the Naso, who deposed their own king when he came out in favour of the dam. He was accused of being bought off.

Again, this crisis is happening right now. Cultural Survival has just released a bulletin saying that Panamanian police disrupted a peaceful Naso protest and bulldozed a whole community on March 30. More information and suggestions on how to help the Naso can be found here:

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/news/article/crisis-panama

If for no other reason than self-interest, tourists should care about this potential tragedy. A visit to the Naso is a uniquely memorable experience. There are two Naso-run projects that allow travelers to spend the night in a Naso village or forest camp, learn about their culture, hike in their stunning rainforests and boat on their rivers: ODESEN ( http://www.bocas.com/odesen.htm ) and Soposo Rainforest Adventures ( http://www.soposo.com ). I highly recommend a visit to the Naso, especially since this way of life may soon disappear.

Gaining comarca status is no guarantee of cultural or environmental salvation, though. The Ngöbe-Buglé comarca, created in 1997, is huge, consisting of large chunks of three Panamanian provinces. But some argue that part of the motivation for creating the reservation was to remove this land from Panamanian legal protections, however weak they might be, so that private enterprises could exploit it more easily.

[planeta]

I am a big fan of your Twitter -- http://twitter.com/PanamaGuide -- and read with interest your post announcing that the new edition of your Panama guidebook sold as many copies in its 1st 2 months as the last edition did in a year. How do you see tourism in Panama faring in 2009?

[panamaguide]

I’ve given up trying to guess what’s going to happen with Panama tourism. Panama should have been discovered by tourists years before Costa Rica became fashionable. And the tourism boom everyone predicted would hit around 2000 is only now starting, really.

This year in particular is a crap shoot. There’s suddenly a big buzz about Panama. For instance, bunch of travel publications have anointed Panama a “must see” destination. But the worldwide recession is hurting tourism everywhere, and now the fear of swine flu is doing even more damage. People are thinking twice about travelling anywhere.

People have had such an unfairly bad and weirdly misinformed image of Panama for so long that anything can spook potential visitors. On Twitter, I’ve seen a bunch of tweets from people in the U.S. nervously asking about swine flu in Panama. As I write this (on May 7th) there has yet to be a single confirmed case of swine flu in the country – unlike, say, the U.S. Tourists are probably safer there than they are back home.

In the longer term, Panama is counting on continued growth in tourism. Tourism officials have been promoting Panama around the world and encouraging investors to come on down and build hotels and tourism operations. Certainly Panama City has a shortage of hotel rooms, as many travelers who’ve tried to find a room at the last minute have discovered in recent years. Demand has been great enough that the prices for mid-range and above hotels doubled in the four years between the last two editions of my Moon guidebook.

There aren’t really reliable figures for the number of tourists that visit Panama, partly because it depends on how you count the hundreds of thousands of cruise passengers who transit the Panama Canal each year, not to mention the countless crew members on ships of all kinds. Different government agencies come up with different numbers, but everyone seems to agree that roughly 1.5 million tourists visited the country last year. The number seems to be steadily growing each year, but estimates of the growth rate vary wildly.

It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of destination Panama ends up being in tourists’ minds. It has the potential to be at least as popular as Costa Rica. The two countries have similar natural attractions, but Panama has the canal, a cosmopolitan capital, a rich and ancient history as a crossroads of the world, vibrant indigenous cultures, hundreds of tropical islands, etc. Costa Rica, for all its charms, lacks these things.

But many Panamanians have mixed feelings about this. Some, like me, worry about the place becoming too built up and overrun with tourists. There’s also some snobbishness in Panama about mochileros (backpackers) and mass tourism. This camp has visions of Panama as some kind of Latin American Monte Carlo, attracting only the super-wealthy, preferably European. I don’t really see that happening. Panama is just a bit too untamed for that, which is part of its charm as well as what can make it frustrating. And Panama still has a long way to go to provide the kind of efficient and gracious service and reliably luxurious surroundings that would require.

[planeta]

Hello, Bill

In October I am speaking at an event in Belize focusing on responsible tourism.
http://planeta.wikispaces.com/responsibletourism

If you were to address a conference, what points would you make about making tourism more responsible?

[panamaguide]

I could really speak only about the situation in Panama. I think responsible tourism is especially vital there because the country has an ecological importance completely out of proportion to its small size. It’s a key link in the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which, for readers who don’t know, is the system of at least nominally protected areas that runs all the way through Central America. Sustaining this endangered land bridge between North and South America is, among other things, essential to the survival of many migratory species.

The isthmus of Panama is the skinniest part of Central America—that’s why the canal was built there, after all—which means the corridor is particularly fragile there. Much of the Pacific slope of Panama has been deforested, but most of the Caribbean slope is still intact. However, deforestation on the Caribbean side is accelerating. That means the ribbon of life that is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is fraying in Panama, and it won’t take much for it to snap.

Consider just one park, Parque Internacional La Amistad, which Panama shares with Costa Rica. It’s the convergence spot for 75 percent of the migratory birds in the Western Hemisphere. What happens to them if its forests disappear?

Depending on how it develops, Panama tourism can either help protect unbelievably important ecosystems like these or contribute to their destruction. Panama is only now sorting out its approach to tourism, so there’s still time to do things right. Tourism has not traditionally been important there since it’s had so many other sources of revenue. But Panama is a very business-oriented country, and now that it’s become apparent how much money there is in local tourism, lots of people are interested.

So if truly responsible tourism is going to take off in Panama, there’s going to have to be money in it for developers and entrepreneurs, and it’s also going to have to be affordable to tourists. How to go about this is something I’d like to see seriously discussed at a conference.

I’ve been encouraged to see the appearance of appealing low-impact lodges, tour operators and eco-adventures in Panama in the last decade or so. But I’m worried about how expensive many of them are becoming.

There’s a place for high-end ecotourism, but I doubt it’s going to do much for Panama in the long run unless it’s joined by larger-scale and more affordable responsible-tourism efforts. Having a six-room lodge in a forest reserve is great, but if a single night there costs as much as a week of food, lodging and booze at a cushy all-inclusive beach resort, the latter’s going to be more popular and there’s going to be a lot more of them.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but one thing that might help is for government to rethink some of its development policies. Panama currently extends incredible tax breaks to those who build skyscrapers. How about tax breaks for tourist operations that preserve sensitive environments instead? (There are government schemes to encourage “reforestation,” but this has led mainly to a boom in teak plantations; teak is not native to Panama and local species have no use for it.)

[planeta]

I was listening to an outstanding conversation about the future of the book -- http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2669556.htm -- which prompts this question. Will your publisher make your books available in digital format, something I can take to Panama on my iPod?

Also consider submitting any title that's being published this year for our Book of the Year Award
http://planeta.wikispaces.com/bookaward

Nominations -- http://tinyurl.com/bookaward2009 -- are open until October 5

[panamaguide]

Moon is moving toward digital distribution and sales, though it’s doing so rather slowly and cautiously.

The publisher’s plan includes converting more and more book content and maps to web-friendly form and putting it on its website, www.moon.com , where it can be accessed and downloaded for free.

Moon is also beginning to carve up the books into bite-sized chunks that can then be sold on-demand. That way, travelers can buy a smaller, cheaper and nearly custom-designed book that covers only the parts of a destination they plan to visit .

The first on-demand mini-book for my Panama guide is “Panama City and the Panama Canal” ( http://tinyurl.com/moonpty-pc ), which also includes sections on central Panama. It has just been released and is on sale through the usual online outlets, including Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/ptyamazon .

Travel guides are a natural for digital distribution, of course, since in theory it can make up-to-the-minute travel information extraordinarily accessible. Publishers are only beginning to take advantage of platforms like mobile-phone apps, and the potential for clever mash-ups that integrates GPS information, maps, images, links, etc., seems huge.

I foresee at least one problem, though: Who is going to do all the updating? Guidebooks writers have a tough time seeing any profit from the absurd amount of time and work that goes into simply updating a print guide every two or three years. If we had to make updates daily, weekly or monthly, I think most of would just quit in despair.

Publishers aren’t helping matters by their attempts to extend their often draconian contracts to digital sales.

For those who don’t know how these things work, authors are now considered to be doing well if they get royalties equal to 15 percent of the whole-sale price of each print book sold. Just a few years ago, that would have been considered low. Publishers justify keeping nearly all the profits to themselves by pointing to the high costs of printing and distributing books. Authors have been forced to accept many raw deals or not get published at all.

But too many publishers are insisting on extending that unbalanced split to digital sales. Given that the cost of distribution is minimal and the cost of printing is zero, this strikes me as outrageous and, I hope, unsustainable.

I worked for years as a rock-music critic, and I’m sorry to see publishers repeating the same greedy and short-sighted moves that are dooming the traditional music industry. Like major record labels, major publishers are in danger of becoming dinosaurs, obsolete middlemen standing between, and often in the way of, “content producers” (musicians, authors) and consumers. I hope they come to appreciate and reward those producers, without whom they couldn’t exist, before it’s too late.