Environmental Philosophy

Volume 7, Issue 2, Fall 2010

Ecotourism and Environmental Justice

Ecotourism as Environmental Justice? Discourse and the Politics of Scale in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, India

This paper uses the case of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve to illustrate how ecotourism can be a vehicle for environmental justice. I use discourse analysis and the politics of scale to argue that an expanded notion of environmental justice does account for the myriad movements for resource rights occurring all over the world. In this case, framing the struggle through ecotourism with a focus on social justice provided local people a way to engage the mainstream environmental movement and address the injustices of its exclusionary and biocentric practices while providing for themselves a viable livelihood option.