Yes, overtourism is a thing. But you shouldn't feel guilty about travelling, and here's why

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This was published 1 year ago

Yes, overtourism is a thing. But you shouldn't feel guilty about travelling, and here's why

By Ben Groundwater
Updated
For those of us who love it, and for those of us who benefit from it: tourism is everything.

For those of us who love it, and for those of us who benefit from it: tourism is everything.Credit: iStock

The guy on stage is yelling at the crowd with an evangelist's zeal. "Tourism is everything!" he exhorts, as people around him nod encouragement and everyone else listens in. "Tourism. Is. Everything."

The stage is a wooden platform that has been knocked together for this event. It sits in the shade of a metal awning attached to a huge corrugated iron shed in central Bougainville. The shed is an aid project, built by the Australian government a few years ago as a storage facility for cacao, a place for locals to keep their new cash crop before it can be exported.

Only, there's no cacao in it. Farming hasn't taken off in this isolated, rural community in the way some people hoped. There are a few cacao trees here and there, in among the coconut palms and banana trees and thick bushland, but mostly, here in Siwai, they don't have much. Conditions are basic. Living is close to subsistence.

That's why there's a local representative on stage now, encouraging a bright future. It's a long speech in a mix of English and Tok Pisin, an outlining of possibility, that if tourists can be persuaded to follow the rough dirt track from the north of Bougainville all the way down here to the village of Siwai, things will start looking up. Money will come in. Jobs will be created. Tourism is everything, he says.

The fact I'm even here means the local community is on its way. The speech is part of an opening ceremony for a new cultural festival, similar to famous events held on the PNG mainland in Mt Hagen and Goroka, where local groups – people who live only a few kilometres apart and yet speak different languages and practice different customs – dress in traditional garb and perform in front of each other.

This is only the second time the Siwai event has ever been run, and I'm part of the first group of tourists to see it; you can feel the collective will to make this thing work.

Bougainville is an autonomous island that has been granted permission to secede from PNG after decades of bloody conflict. Its most obvious source of income, the huge open-cut copper mine in the middle of the island at Panguna, has been closed for more than 30 years due to horrific environmental damage and various internal conflicts. Siwai is one of Bougainville's most isolated rural outposts, deep in the island's south.

This has to work. There's no other way. Tourism is everything.

It's good timing for me to hear this. Over the last two or three years, much of the tourism industry has been using its down time to do a little soul searching, as I'm sure many travellers have, too.

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Is travel and tourism actually a force for good? Or one of destruction? Before the COVID-19 pandemic there was barely time to pause and think about it, we just went, to the next destination, to the next experience.

And so, cities like Amsterdam and Venice and Kyoto filled up, far more than they were capable of handling. Iconic locations were damaged by the people who came to see them. Heritage was trampled. Local people were pushed out of their homes. Tourism grew and grew and no one thought to put the brakes on.

But then we had to. You probably saw the memes during our two years of COVID-enforced isolation: "nature is healing". It was kind of a joke but it had some truth to it. Nature really did heal without tourists.

Overcrowded cities were given space to breathe. Natural attractions were revitalised. Skies were clearer. Animals returned to their habitats.

It was pretty easy for those of us who love to travel, who have made it a lifelong passion and pursuit, to look around and think: damn. What we're doing isn't good. We're killing the thing we love.

But then I came to Bougainville and remembered that the world needs tourism. People need tourism. Tourism is money. Tourism is jobs. Tourism is livelihoods. Tourism is survival. Tourism is everything.

Yes, there are issues that have to be addressed. We have to do this thing more sustainably, more intelligently. But we shouldn't stop, because so much of the world relies on this thing to live.

Tourism is the ideal exchange of money from those who have it to those who do not. It's trade, not aid. It's a long-term solution. It's a genuine livelihood that benefits everyone involved, from those who come for an experience to those who provide it. It just has to be done right.

And part of that is spreading the load, taking pressure off places like Dubrovnik and Venice and encouraging people to go elsewhere. Obviously, you're not going to go to Siwai, a tiny rural village in the Pacific that doesn't even have electricity, instead of Venice. But this can be part of a wider push to travel further, to see more, to do better.

Don't feel bad about travelling, if you do it right. Take yourself and your money and move around the world. Support communities who need it. Give people good jobs and good lives. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy what you're doing.

Because for those of us who love it, and for those of us who benefit from it: tourism is everything.

The writer visited Bougainville as a guest of Crooked Compass tours

Email: b.groundwater@traveller.com.au

Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater

Twitter: twitter.com/bengroundwater

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