big island, green forests and backpackers

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CDR Working Paper 00.4 Centre for Development Research • Copenhagen Big Island, Green Forests and Backpackers Land-use and development options on Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil Sven Wunder CDR Working Paper 00.4 March 2000 Sven Wunder is project senior researcher at CDR and visiting researcher at IPEA.

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Big Island, Green Forests and Backpackers. Land-use and development options on Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil

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Page 1: Big Island, Green Forests and Backpackers

CDR Working Paper 00.4 Centre for Development Research • Copenhagen

BigIsland, Green Forests and Backpackers

Land-use and developmentoptions on Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil

Sven Wunder

CDR Working Paper 00.4 March 2000

Sven Wunder is project senior researcher at CDRand visiting researcher at IPEA.

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CDR Working Paper 00.4 Centre for Development Research • Copenhagen

© The author and Centre for Development Research, 2000Published and distributed by Centre for Development ResearchPrinted in Denmark by Centre for Development Research

ISSN 0904-4701

Keywords:

Economic growthForest conservationForest resourcesTourismTourist areas

BrazilIlha Grande

CDR Working Papers, green series, contain discussion and seminar papers, reports and working paperswith important documentation which is not necessarily published elsewhere. The series disseminatesresults and reflections from on-going research work and a primary objective is to rapidly make availablesuch materials even if the presentation may be less than fully polished.CDR Working Papers are available on an exchange basis and individual titles are supplied free uponrequest.

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CDR Working Paper 00.4 Centre for Development Research • Copenhagen

Contents

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Ilha Grande – the regional setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 The spatial context: historical land-use changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The state of forests on Ilha Grande . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Strategic choices on tourism development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Aventureiro case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5 The caiçara community of Aventureiro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 Current forest uses in Aventureiro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Tourism income in Aventureiro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 Distribution and impact of tourism income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Conclusion and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

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Abstract

Ilha Grande, an island in the south of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, has faced a long series ofhistorical boom-and-bust cycles. Yet, during the last century, the island has recuperated most ofits original forest cover, compared to rapid and continuous deforestation of the continentalAtlantic forest. This paper investigates the historical determinants of forest cover changes, andrelates them to the contemporary tourism boom from the two mega-cities, Rio de Janeiro andSão Paulo. A case study of rising backpacker tourism in a traditional fishermen's village ispresented, and findings are related to other parts of the island. The common hypothesis that'backpackers' generate no income on the island is rejected: they spend little per PAX, but inplaces where visitor numbers are large, tourism income is amazingly high, compared to anytraditional productive activity, producing a considerable local poverty-alleviation impact. Thestudy also confirms the high economic potential of forest-based services - in this case, recreationand landscape-contemplation benefits - in forests close to urban areas of middle-incomedeveloping countries. The large local tourism cash inflows have been used for residentialconstruction, to buy consumer durables, and to buy additional leisure time. Although local labourrequirements for tourism are generally low, rising income has implied momentous changes in thestructure of local production. In addition, it is argued that negative environmental impacts fromtourism are under-researched, and probably have been over-stated in previous assessments. Therecommendation in these studies of implementing 'carrying-capacity' based tourist-accessrestrictions does not seem justified. A well-designed entrance-fee scheme to finance necessaryinvestments in the tourism sector may be a much more feasible alternative, in order to embarkon a development path of the sector which is beneficial for both tourists and residents, whileconserving the integrity of the forested landscape.

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1 Economist Intelligence Unit/ Jenner and Smith (1992), cited in Wells (1997: 2).

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1 Introduction

The present paper is an intermediate output of the two-year research project 'The economics of non-wood forest benefits in Brazil', financed by the Danish Development Cooperation (Danida). The aimof the research is to contribute to a better understanding of the conservation and development potentialsof forest products and services different from timber, which traditionally have been denominated 'minor'.

Both the project's macro-oriented component (analysis of official census data on plant extraction) andits Amazon case study (forest uses in Rio Capim, southern Pará state) focus on non-wood forestproducts - the economics of extractivism. On the other hand, the choice of location for this second casestudy, Ilha Grande in Rio de Janeiro state, was governed primarily by the wish to deal with theincreasing importance of forest services. Services are especially important for tropical forests locatedclose to large cities in the developing world: with São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, two of the world's 10most populous cities lie in the neighbourhood of the study site.

Among the array of potential forest services, tourism is at present probably the most important for bothlocal and national income generation. Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in the worldeconomy, and its sub-branch of nature-oriented tourism has been particularly expansionary: for 1995-2000, a doubling of global expenditure on nature-oriented tourism was projected.1 This provides anincome potential for those regions in the tropics that have been largely by-gone by processes ofeconomic development, but in turn still hold attractive, well-preserved and relatively accessible naturalsites. Compared to other sectors (industry, agriculture), tourism may be an economic activity thatrequires less initial investment. In principle, non-consumptive tourist uses of the forest may also be morecompatible with nature conservation than commodity-producing activities.

Although some prime international nature-tourism sites are ecosystems that are not dominated by forests(e.g. the African savannahs or the Ecuadorian Galápagos islands), natural forests actually provide ahighly attractive environment for tourism. The fauna of a tropical forest tends to be more difficult toobserve than in open ecosystems. However, many sites are able to combine abundant vegetation, ethnicdwellers' traditional forest uses and an impression of nature's abundance into a cocktail that is attractiveto the urban dweller harassed by the merciless pace of modern civilisation. The most successful exampleof forest-based tourism in Latin America is Costa Rica, which in spite of an accelerated historicaldeforestation process has been able to 'merchandise' its tropical forest remnants, mainly to the NorthAmerican tourism market. In the quest for a sustainable type of nature tourism, the label of 'ecotourism' has been developed byconservation agencies and tourism practitioners. The idea was to develop a set of criteria for tourismto have a positive impact on both the natural and socio-cultural environment of the tourism destination

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2 About 350 tourist questionnaires were carried out on all of Ilha Grande, inter alia to reveal tourists'willingness to pay for visiting the sites in their present state of conservation, compared to a hypotheticalsituation where some deforestation and fragmentation is allowed for (see below).

3 I am especially indebted to Rogério Ribeiro de Oliveira (FEEMA & PUC-RIO), who enabled my visits toAventureiro and provided much useful material, and Roberto Mourão (Ecobrasil), who initially drew myattention to Ilha Grande and gave me both basic material and a series of crucial contacts. In addition, manythanks to the large number of people that provided comments, information and assistance to the presentresearch, including Eduardo Lardosa (IEF), Peter H. May (CPDA), Carlos Athaide (FEEMA, Aventureiro),Daniel Toffoli (UFRJ), Luis Fernando Medina (AssociaHão dos Meios de Hospedagem da Ilha Grande),Josimar Ribeiro de Oliveira, Tim Moulton and Myriam Santos (all UERJ), Jean Dubois (REBRAF), GeraldoFaraci (Bananal), Stig Jensen (CDR), Jorge Coutinho (Abraão), Étore Dalboni da Silva and Graciela dos Santos(both Municipality of Angra dos Reis), and six field assistants applying the tourist questionnaire, the libraryof IEF, and the participants of two presentation on this subject, held at IPEA, Rio de Janeiro, in August 1999and at the CDR, Copenhagen in January 2000.

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(Ziffer 1989; Laarman and Dust 1991; Boo 1992): minimise socio-environmental impacts, create localincome and provide an element of environmental education to the tourist. However, the following willnot provide a test of the specific adherence to ecotourism criteria: the bulk of tourism operations on IlhaGrande does not even claim to conform to the rules of ecotourism. The paper will focus on naturetourism's potential for local income generation, a topic which generally has been under-studied, butwhere the predominant view has been that 'relatively few local communities have realized significantbenefits from nature tourism on their own lands or in nearby protected areas' (Wells 1997: iv).

The study is not exclusively concerned with tourism inside the forest: not all tourists actually go for hikeson forest trails. However, it is a working hypothesis of this study that the spatial continuity of forestcover is essential for the tourist's visual perception of landscape integrity, which comprises a vital'comparative advantage' of Ilha Grande over competing tourism sites. In other words, had the islandbeen widely deforested, or had its natural vegetation already been highly fragmented, it is expected thatit would receive much less tourists and much lower tourism income. This hypothesis relating forest coverand quality to recreation benefits will be discussed in the light of the case study below, but it will bemore fully explored in a later research stage.2

Study methods used in the present research included various approaches. A review of the literature onIlha Grande provided different insights into the historical land-use dynamics of the island. Five visits toIlha Grande during 1999, two of which to the case-study site Aventureiro, were used for interviews ofisland residents, tourism operators, park authorities, boat and restaurant owners, etc. As part of a largerstudy on the contingent valuation and transport cost valuation of environmental assets on the island, atourist questionnaire was carried out in the field, which also delivered primary data on the Aventureirotourists' profile, local spending, forest use and 'willingness to pay' for environmental quality. This wassupplemented with extensive information from a large number of institutions, consultants and researchersin the municipal capital of Angra dos Reis and the state capital of Rio de Janeiro.3

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4 I am very grateful to Eduardo Lardosa from IEF for his generous help in making available geographical dataand the Ilha Grande map.

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The paper falls in two major parts, the first of which describes the situation on the island in general. Inthis part, section 2 provides a historical perspective on shifting economic activities and land-use changeson Ilha Grande. Section 3 analyses what this has implied in terms of changes in forest cover and qualityover time. Section 4 deals with the rise of tourism, and the strategic choices regarding future tourismdevelopment. The second part of the paper is a case study of tourism, forest uses and income flows inAventureiro, one of the most isolated and traditional villages on Ilha Grande, which lately has receiveda significant flow of backpacker tourists. Section 5 gives a historical and socioeconomic overview ofthe shifting role of different productive activities in Aventureiro. Like in the first part, the followingsection (Section 6) analyses what this has implied in terms of forest uses, cover and quality. Section 7provides a spreadsheet model to quantify the cash flows generated by tourism. In section 8, it isdiscussed how this income is distributed internally in the village, what it has been used for, and how ithas changed the livelihoods and natural resource use of local people. The concluding section 9 picksup the main lessons from the regional and the village study, and relates the results to the hypotheses anda priori expectations on local tourism impacts.

Ilha Grande – the regional setting

2 The spatial context: historical land-use changes

Ilha Grande is located in the south of Rio de Janeiro state (Brazil), about 150 km from the state capitaland 400 km from São Paulo. The island is on average 25 km long and 12 km wide (Magnanini 1986).The area it occupies, in a corresponding flat state, is 180 km2, but due to its rugged topography, itssuperficial land area is about 30% larger, 236 km2 (IEF data).4 Its northern coast is 15-20 km awayfrom the mainland port of Angra dos Reis, which at the same time is the municipal capital and theisland's principal commercial link to the continent. One of the two main villages of Ilha Grande, Abraão,situated on the eastern coast, is connected to Angra dos Reis by ferryboat (1½ hours ride), which alsomakes one corresponding daily return trip to the mainland town of Mangaratiba. The other main villageis the less accessible fishermen village of Provetá, in the western part of the island (see Map). In 1997,4,697 persons resided on Ilha Grande (PMAR 1998: 15), of which half is distributed equally betweenAbraão and Provetá.

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5 For instance, guapurubu (Schizolobium parahyba (Vell.) Blake) or inga (Inga affinis).

6 See Capaz (1988) for a general description of the indigenous groups that lived near the Bay of Ilha Grande.

7 This means exactly 'Ilha Grande'. The original spelling in Staden's book was 'Ippaum Wasu'.

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Ilha Grande has a colourful history, with shifting boom-and-bust cycles that continuously altered land-use patterns, and thus the impact on the island's natural vegetation. In the following, the discontinuity ofdevelopment processes, the rise and fall of productive activities, and the shifts in the number andlocation of the island's settlement will provide elements that elucidate the determinants of forest coverand quality.

Human occupation of Rio de Janeiro state may have occurred 10,000 years ago. On Ilha Grande, inthe southern location of Ilhote do Leste, signs of occupation date back 3,000 years, with a populationof primitive fishermen and clam gatherers that probably practised cannibalism. Their impact on forestswas most likely confined to hunting and to the axe-felling of large trees (with a preference for certainspecies)5 for the construction of wooden canoes (Tenorio 1999). Hunting may have led to the earlyextinction of certain mammals that are found in similar mainland forests.

Only later, with the substitution of these groups by the Tupi-Guarani Amerindians, the widespread useof fire for slash-and-burn agriculture appeared. In his history of the Atlantic forest, Dean (1995)concludes that the population density of these indigenous groups at some point reached levels that nolonger allowed for full forest recuperation, resulting in minor but lasting declines in forest cover. Littleis known about the specific impact of the Tupi-Guaranis on Ilha Grande, but their agricultural land-usealtered the structure of the forest more than the pure hunters and gatherers.

Some claim that, by the time of the Portuguese conquest, Ilha Grande was inhabited by the group ofthe goianás (Maciel et al. 1982); however, it seems most likely that their neighbours, the tamoios (a sub-group of the Tupinambá), lived on the island (Vieira 1987; Nesi 1990: 53).6 Habits and livelihood ofthe Tupinambá are well-described in the two books of Hans Staden, a contemporary German sailorhired by the Portuguese who only by miracle escaped the barbecue of the anthropofagist Tupinambáthat had taken him prisoner (Staden 1999 {1548; 1555}). For about half a year, he lived in the Bayof Ilha Grande, in the indigenous village of Ubatuba (near present-day Mangaratiba), and was also thefirst to map Ilha Grande by its name in tupi, 'Ipaum GuaHu'.7 He describes the Tupinambá as skillfulhunters, fishermen and cultivators of cassava, without any traditions of trade, but in constant conflict withneighbouring Amerindians. When local natural resources periodically were exhausted, they wouldmigrate to occupy a new place.

Enemies of the Portuguese, the Tupinambá started to trade Brazil wood, pepper and cassava for axes,knifes and other manufactured goods with the French. It is obvious that this trade improved both theirability and incentive to intervene natural forests, both for the extraction of wood and forest clearing forincreased cassava production. The selective forest extraction of Brazil wood (Haematoxylum

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8 The same author reports that this fazenda alone employed '5,000 slaves or more' (Nesi 1990: 30), a numberwhich appears exaggerated compared to the population estimates for the entire island (see below).

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brasiletto), a species used for dyes in Europe but uninteresting for indigenous auto-consumption, wouldsometimes cause not only degradation but deforestation, because the indigenous tribes specialised inproviding Brazil wood often used fire to open up the forest and ease harvesting (Costa 1983). Thistrade also affected Ilha Grande, from the conquest until the 18th century (Nesi 1990: 21). In addition,ships would frequently stop at the island to stock up on water and food, but also to extract timber inorder to make necessary ship repairs. Brazil wood and other wood extraction thus also degraded thoseforested areas that were most accessible from the coast. The extraction of whale oil was anothercontemporary boom on the island (Vieira 1987: 99); it did not affect forest cover, but promoted somesettlement on the island, in areas near the ports. The Portuguese developed nearby Angra dos Reis as an important continental port, and Ilha Grandethus had a strategically momentous location. The beauty of the island's landscape led to the temporaryadoption of the name Placentia - a denomination that foreshadowed its current tourism vocation (Nesi1990: 46). Yet, it also became a preferential hideout for smugglers and for English, French, and Dutchpirates, a threat which it was difficult to control for the Portuguese. As they feared the establishment ofhostile settlements on Ilha Grande, they completely prohibited the incipient efforts of colonisation - inthe 16th century, six Portuguese families had settled on the island (Nesi 1990: 21). Until 1725, it wasthus prohibited to live on Ilha Grande, and only throughout the 18th century settlement began (Vieira1987: 5). The early colonial period thus probably changed little of the island's forest cover, although woodextraction likely led to some forest degradation. Degradation impacts were reinforced after 1800(Maciel et al. 1982). Yet, more important, the rise of the plantation economy made Ilha Grande asignificant agricultural centre throughout the 19th century. Land demand multiplied and large agriculturallandholdings (fazendas) were established in various locations, such as Abraão, Dois Rios and Panaióca.Sugar cane was by far the most important crop: in 1808, a big factory was established in Abraão toproduce sugar and alcohol (the island became famous for its arguardente); by the end of the century,the number of sugar mills had increased to six (Vieira 1987: 97-8). The large fazenda Sant’Ana in thenorth was even connected to Abraão by a road (Nesi 1990: 30),8 which later was abandoned. Coffeealso played a significant role in the plantation economy from the end-18th to end-19th century,complemented by a series of minor products (bananas, indigo, cereals, cattle, etc.).

Fazendas were concentrated near the coast, in river valleys and at the feet of the mountains; thuscultivation never reached the higher and steeply sloped areas (PMAR 1998: 6). However, farming scalewas now much larger, and planting was in monocultures and of longer duration than the traditional slash-and-burn agriculture practised by the caiHaras, a post-conquest ethnic mix of Indians, Portuguese andBlacks. In combination, these factors meant that plantations caused larger and more permanentdeforestation, compared to any previous exploitation on the island. Sometimes this caused a lasting

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9 In 1932, the hospital was closed and used temporarily as a reformatory for political prisoners, until themodernised Dois Rios prison again was able to take over this function in 1940 (PMAR 1998: 7-8).

10 This information is based on field interviews with contemporary inhabitants of the island's southern part.It should be consolidated by more research on the history of the island.

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degradation of the cultivated land, but these impacts were restricted to coast-near sites which were nottoo sloped for plantations (Ribeiro and Coelho Netto 1996; Ribeiro 1999: ch.I).

As a side effect of the plantation boom, some of the fazendas on Ilha Grande were developed asreception and adaptation centres for slaves brought in from Africa, who would recuperate from theirtranscontinental journey, learn Portuguese, and adapt to the new food and climate. Slaves from thosespecialised fazendas on Ilha Grande commanded an excellent market price (Nesi 1990: 28). This tradecontinued illegally after the abolition of slavery, as slave trafficking was more difficult to control on theisland than on the continent.

By the turn to the 20th century, plantations had declined, and forests were recuperating, a trend thatwas reinforced throughout the 20th century. Several factors are explanatory in this regard. The oldfazenda of Dois Rios was converted to a prison in the period from 1893 to 1903 (M.Santos,pers.comm., Dec. 1999). The fazenda in nearby Abraão had since 1886 been used as a quarantinehospital for newly arrived migrants from Europe which were suspected to be infected by contagiousdiseases,9 thus holding a function similar to the aforementioned slave reception centres. Obviously, thepresence of both institutions did not exactly promote the expansion of productive activities on the island.

The Brazilian Atlantic forest biome faced dramatic deforestation throughout the last century. From itsoriginal extension of about 1,000,000 km2 (12% of the Brazilian territory), only about 70,000 km2 (7%of the original area) are left today. This process was fuelled by agricultural expansion and pastureclearing, by settlement concentration along the Brazilian coastline, and by wood energy consumption.As a paradox, during the same period, the opposite trend applied to the Atlantic forest of Ilha Grande.Tree cover recuperated and increased considerably, as a result of the declining plantation economy,starting around the turn of the century.

In explaining this peculiarity of the island, much weight has been attached to the impact of the Dois Riosprison. According to some oral testimonies, the southern coastal village of Panaióca, which in the 1950swith about 1,500 inhabitants had grown to one of the largest settlements on the island, was abandonedbecause of reiterated conflicts with fugitives of the nearby Dois Rios prison. Even in the beginning of the1990s, one report states that a family abandoned its home, because the head of the household had beenmurdered by escaped convicts.10

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11 For instance, Ramuz (1998: 114) states rather deterministically that the installation of the Dois Rios prisonin 1903 '...would mean almost an entire century of isolation for Ilha Grande'.

12 The survey is referred to in Garcia (1993: 28).

13 Walter Nesi claims that Ilha Grande has a large agricultural potential, and that 'up to 400,000 people' (sic!)could be fed on the island (Nesi 1990: 31). This statement is not consolidated in agronomic terms - Nesi wasthe dentist of the Dois Rios prison, but with a considerable interest in the island's history.

14 Nesi (1990: 29) mentions that the railway increasingly drew away labour from Ilha Grande, and thusconstituted a major setback for the settlement on the island.

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As a direct means of forest protection, the 'Alcatraz of Rio de Janeiro' did play an important, thoughsometimes exaggerated role.11 For instance, Panaióca was to a large extent a fisherman's village, andits abandonment was heavily influenced by declining fish stocks, rather than by the danger from escapedconvicts. Also, the northern part of the island was little affected by the reformatory - except perhapsby the fact that it constituted a weighty argument for not establishing a road infrastructure on the island,which might have boosted agricultural activity and cattle ranching. In the early 1990s, a survey madeon the island showed that 70% of the consulted inhabitants did not feel annoyed or victimised by thepresence of the penitentiary.12 One reason was that the prison's employees received their salaries fromthe state, which provided an income for many of the families living in Dois Rios or Abraão. In otherwords, the prison reinforced the presence of a strong service sector, and a flow of correspondingtertiary sector income to the island, and disfavoured the alternative of developing primary, land-usingsectors - a structure that obviously favoured forest conservation.

However, an important additional reason for the preservation and recuperation of forest cover lies inthe economic sphere. The opening up of new and fertile agricultural areas on the continent, in particularin São Paulo state, connected to urban markets by new roads and railways, laid a downward pressureon crop prices. Ilha Grande, with its sloped topography and expensive boat transport, had no long-runcomparative advantage in maintaining production of agricultural goods with a low value per unit ofweight, such as cereals, bananas, sugar, etc. From being strategically located in the colonial period, theisland gradually became marginalised from the centres of economic development. Agriculturalproduction for urban markets thus experienced an irreversible decline.13A first benchmark in thisprocess was the construction of the coastal railway (opened in 1864);14 the last one was theconstruction and paving of the Rio - Santos road, in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively.

Not only push, but also pull factors were at work in consolidating the decline of agriculture. Fishingexperienced a significant boom on Ilha Grande in the 20th century, especially sardine fishing. It rapidlyreplaced agriculture as the prime productive activity on the island, attracted workers from the continent,but also shifted the focus from the clearing of the island's forested land to the harvesting of the seasurrounding it. At the height of the bonanza, in the 1950s, 25 sardine factories were working on theisland (Vieira 1987: 99-100). With a reduction in sardine stocks in the late 1970s, factories weregradually closed down, the last one in 1992 (Ramuz 1998).

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The booms and busts of Ilha Grande are also reflected in its shifting population size, as shown by theestimates in Table 1. While the IBGE census figures are generally quite reliable, the early estimatesobviously are more subjective. Nevertheless, the historical references reproduced in Vieira (1987: 20-1) and other sources allow for a picture of likely trends in the island's demography. Once abandonedthe prohibition of settlement in 1725, population seems to have increased rapidly with the rise of theplantation economy (including slave labour) until the beginning of the 20th century, when the number ofinhabitants may have reached 10,000. With the pronounced agricultural decline, population wasreduced to about 6,000, but then it rose again due to the fishing boom, to around 8,000 people.

TABLE 1: Historical population estimates for post-conquest Ilha Grande

SOURCE ESTIMATE PERIOD/ YEAR REFERENCE in

Walter Nesi 6 families 16th century Nesi 1990C.E. Vieira zero 17th century to 1725 Vieira 1987: 5Mons. Pizarro about 4,000 18th century Vieira 1987:20-1Ayres Casal about 3,000 1811 Vieira 1987:20-1Honório Lima about 7,800 end 19th century Vieira 1987:20-1Dr. J. Sardinha 8,000 - 10,000 1911 Vieira 1987:20-1IBGE census 6,791 1920 Municipal dataIBGE census 5,869 1940 UFRRJ 1992: 29IBGE census 6,760 1950 Ramuz1998: 116 IBGE census 8,249 1960 UFRRJ 1992: 29IBGE census 7,518 1970 UFRRJ 1992: 29SUDEPE about 7,600 1978 Vieira 1987:20-1 IBGE census 6,187 1980 Alves 1991: 10IBGE census 4,370 1991 UFRRJ 1992: 29 IBGE census 4,363 1993 Municipal dataMunicipality 4,697 1997 PMAR 1998:15

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15 Many urban dwellers stay registered in Rio or São Paulo while maintaining a second residence on IlhaGrande, notably in Abraão.

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With the downswing in fisheries, and workers moving back to the continent, population declineddrastically in the end-1970s and 1980s to less than 4,500 by the beginning of the 1990s. Since then,there has been a renewed but minor increment. In a comparative setting, it is interesting to note that,while the municipal capital of Angra dos Reis has more than quadrupled its population in this century,that of Ilha Grande has been halved. This clearly indicates the gradual marginalisation of the islandwhich, together with the structural shift to 'forest-neutral' activities (fishery, tourism, etc.), has allowedits forest cover to experience a pronounced regeneration.

Table 2 supplements this picture by showing the geographical distribution of the population for therecent censuses in 1991 and 1993. The figures for 1991 included the 416 inmates of the reformatoryso, among the 'voluntary residents' of the island, there has been a yearly growth of almost 5% from1991 to 1993 (from 1993 to 1997, yearly growth is 1.8%). Much of this rise is related to the rise oftourism and the immigration of urban residents that own residences and guesthouses, a trend which isunder-estimated by the present figures.15 Half of the people live either in Abraão (E) or Provetá (W),with some additional occupation of the northern beaches; the southern areas remain widelydepopulated. The figures also indicate that the geographical distribution on different zones of the island,experiencing radical shifts historically, has been rather stable between the two years.

TABLE 2: Population distributed on sites, 1991 and 1993

YEARS 1991 1993

LOCATIONS Resident % Resident %

Araçatiba/LongaEnseada do SítioBananal/FreguesiaProvetáAventureiroDois Rios (prisoners)AbraãoPalmas/ManguesSaco do Céu

379156456

65416

182502

8.713.59

10.4825.651.499.56

24.804.18

11.54

428179514

1,25973

-1,139

205566

9.814.10

11.7828.861.670.00

26.114.70

12.97

TOTAL 4,351 100.00 4,363 100.00

Source: Municipal data/IBGE

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3 The state of forests on Ilha Grande

Two root causes for the largely preserved, or cyclically re-established forest cover of the island wereoutlined in the previous section. One was the prolonged presence of the reformatory and sanitaryinstitutions, which blocked the development of transport infrastructure, for security motives. The secondwas the growing comparative disadvantages of the island as a primary commodity producer, facingexcessive transport costs of wood, crops and cattle products. However, let us have a more precise lookat the variable human impacts on forest cover and quality over time. Table 3 sketches the most likelyeffects of the different cycles, some of which are overlapping in time.

TABLE 3: Likely forest impacts of different productive cycles

CYCLE PERIOD FOREST IMPACT

Hunters & gatheres 1,000 AD - Mammal extinctionLimited, selective logging

Tupinambá slash and burn Pre-conquest period Mammal extinctionSelective loggingExtensive forest modification

Brazil wood extraction Colonial period Selective logging

Whale oil extraction Colonial period Forest-neutral

Settlement prohibition Colonial period Forest-neutral

CaiHara slash and burn Post-conquest period Mammal extinctionSelective loggingExtensive forest modification

Plantation period(sugar, coffee, etc.)

18th & 19th century Intensive deforestation of valleysand coast-near areasLasting soil degradation

Fishing boom about 1940-80 Forest-neutral

‘Service sector’ (slavetrafficking, hospital,reformatory)

19th & 20th century Forest-neutral

Tourism boomConstruction boom

1900 -1900 -

Widely forest-neutralCoast-near deforestation

Condensing these historical cycles even further, three general scenarios can be distinguished:

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16 The alleged forest-neutrality of tourism will be discussed in greater detail below.

17 For instance, almost all of the area surrounding Abraão appears to be forested on the map, but on closerinspection, much of it is previously deforested scrub vegetation (E. Lardosa, pers.comm. Nov. 1999, and ownobservation).

18 C.Athaide, pers.comm., Aventureiro, Aug. 1999.

19 Magnanini et al. (1981), cited and reproduced in Alves (1991: 65).

20 Of this total forest area, primary forest was supposed to make up 56.4% in 1966 and 51 .9% in 1991,respectively. This share is much larger than the 20% estimate above. However, it should be noticed that theprimary forest area was not actually inventoried (UFRRJ 1992: 161), which may have inducedmisinterpretations in the categorisation of the forest types.

12

C intensive agricultural booms (sugar, coffee) with corresponding intensive, site-specific forestconversion, occasionally with lasting land-degradation impacts;

C extensive rotational agriculture (of Amerindians and caiHaras) that modifies large forest areas, but

typically allows for cyclical forest-cover regeneration;

C forest-neutral cycles (agricultural bust periods, booms in fishing, tourism,16 and other serviceactivities) that allow for a continuous natural vegetation regrowth and increase in forest cover.

The net impact of this historical sequence of interventions is that forests today have widely recovered,because of the predominance of forest-neutral cycles over almost a century. According to the mostrecent data used in the Map below (aerial photos from 1997), of the 236 km2 total surface 86.0% iscovered by sub-montane forest, 6.6% by montane forest, 0.6% by restinga forest and 0.5% bymangroves. This would mean that 93.7% of Ilha Grande’s land area is covered by forest, although therather aggregate scale of the aerial photographs used may cause a slight over-estimation of forestcover.17 Most of this is secondary forest, due to the multiple previous interventions of both intensive andextensive type; only high and inaccessible areas are primary forests. A loose estimation, based onvarious over-flight observations of the island's vegetation, is that about 30% is primary forest - in thesense that it has never been cleared or heavily intervened.18 The remaining 70% would be secondaryforest, of variable age and state of regeneration, marked by the past impact of slash-and-burnagriculture and/or plantation crops.

How has forest cover changed over time? Approximate historical maps of forest cover on the island19

show an almost complete forest cover for the 16th century map, a certain deforestation of coastal areas(especially on the northern side, facing the continent) in the map for 1960-70, and some regrowth in theone for 1980. For the State Park of Ilha Grande, a protected area near Abraão representing aroundone fourth of the island's land area, more detailed information is available. Forest cover in 1966 wasestimated at 3,692 ha (84.8% of land area); in 1991, it had increased to 3,917 ha (89.9% - UFRRJ1992: 106).20 This seems to confirm that a natural reforestation of the island has occurred over the lasthalf-century.

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A further reason for the sizeable forest cover on Ilha Grande is institutional: continuous efforts have beenmade by various public institutions to protect the natural environment of the island by creating variousconservation units. However, the forest institutional framework has also been highly contradictory. Themost important conservation areas are the State Park of Ilha Grande (created in 1971) and theBiological Reserve of the Praia do Sul (created in 1981), respectively. They are administered by twodifferent institutions of the Rio de Janeiro federal state: the State Forest Institute (IEF - InstitutoEstadual Florestal) and the State Foundation for Ecological Engineering and the Environment(FEEMA - Fundação Estadual de Engenharia do Meio Ambiente). The biological reserve wascreated as a direct response to the plans to create a large-scale tourism complex on the island, whichwould have included road building and multi-storey hotels. It thus had an important direct conservationimpact vis-à-vis potential external intruders.

However, beyond the two mentioned conservation units, the jungle of environmental legislation on IlhaGrande appears to be more dense and impenetrable than the lush rainforest that it pretends to protect.Ramuz (1998: 116) mentions that ten different parks and reserves exist on Ilha Grande, at least 'onpaper'. In PMAR (1998: 32-4), a description of eight of these areas is given, three of which embracethe entire island. The management devices contained in the different legislation and decrees are directlyantagonistic. For instance, decree 9,728 of 6 March 1987 created for the entire island territory the'Biological Reserve of Ilha Grande' - in principle, a more restrictive conservation unit than the Area ofEnvironmental Protection (APA - Área de Proteção Ambiental) which had been created just fourmonths before. Yet, the existence of the Biological Reserve has been largely ignored by the localauthorities and inhabitants alike - it remains a 'paper park'.

One radical point of view is that environmental legislation has 'little or no effect on the conservation ofecosystems on the island' (PMAR 1998: 32). A more moderate vision is that the creation of new,unrealistic, and in its roots populist conservation declarations is directly harmful to the efforts ofconservation, as it creates a precedence of de facto deviations from the de jure legislation. Forinstance, if pre-existing residential constructions are included in a newly declared 'Biological Reserve',it is more difficult to inhibit new constructions in pre-existing biological reserves. For the local managerof a conservation unit, this creates a difficult situation (C. Athaide, pers.comm., Aug. 1999). On theother hand, legislative confusion may also create degrees of freedom for the local authorities in theindividual interpretation, i.e. the development of ad-hoc 'rules of thumb' in the day-to-day distinctionbetween what is legal and what is not (see below).

On aggregate, it would be wrong to say that all conservation units on Ilha Grande are 'paper parks'. Inregard to the local population, they frequently limit the exploitation of forest resources, compared towhat would have been the case otherwise. Although staffing is limited, it appears that the year-longpresence of police forces on the island has contributed to a prevailing attitude of legal obedience onbehalf of most islanders. More importantly, conservation units provide restrictions on external impacts:

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21 Nevertheless, large areas where 'development' today is impossible (i.e. where clear-felling and constructionare prohibited) have been bought up by financial groups and wealthy individuals who speculate in thealleviation of these restrictions at a later stage.

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land trafficking and commercial take-overs by urban developers are limited, and so is the expansion ofphysical infrastructure.21

Large variations in floristic composition are found between different sites and altitudes, as shown by theexample of the Biological Reserve of Praia do Sul (Dunn and Ribeiro 1988). In terms of biodiversity,certain mammals normally found in continental Atlantic forests, e.g. tapir (anta - Tapirus terrestris),capibara (capivara - Hidrochoerus hidrochoerus) or cayman (jacaré - Caiman latirostris) are notfound on Ilha Grande. Some of these mammals may never have colonised the island, while others havebecome extinct because of excessive habitat loss and/or hunting (UFRRJ 1992: 163). Some extinctionhas occurred historically (Alves 1991: 79), e.g. in the case of jacaré (Vieira 1987: 96), other speciesmust have disappeared more recently, as they are still remembered by older inhabitants of the island(Magnanini 1978).

Local extinction will normally be irreversible on an island where the sea provides an effectivegeographical barrier to natural species reintroduction (Ribeiro and Coelho Netto 1996: 115). On theother hand, local cultural taboos prohibiting the felling of certain trees, such as fig trees (Ficus), haveinduced a larger population of monkeys and birds living off these specific plant resources. The mosaicof forest patches with different states of regeneration promotes diversity in certain species (ibid.). Inspite of some extinction, 146 species of invertibrate fauna could still be identified in the State Park ofIlha Grande by the beginning of the 1990s (UFRRJ 1992: 164). Projects on the artificial reintroductionof native species are at the stage of consideration (ibid.: 165).

Several analyses have been published on the ecological impacts of slash-and-burn agriculture on IlhaGrande by the caiçaras (Ribeiro et al. 1994; Ribeiro and Coelho Netto 1996, Ribeiro 1999, Toffoliand Ribeiro 1999). The caiçaras, and ethnic mix between Portuguese, Indinas and Black, constitutethe traditional rural dwellers in large parts of the Atlantic forest area in SE Brazil. On the entire coastbetween Rio and São Paulo, traditional caiçara communities have been strongly impacted, and oftenreplaced, by the changes brought about by the Rio-Santos road (Luchiari 1997). On Ilha Grande, onlya few genuine caiçara communities are left today - the case study village of Aventureiro (see theAventureiro case study below) is one of them. In general, both the productive and cultural traditions ofthe caiçaras are rapidly eroding.

In his doctoral dissertation, Ribeiro (1999) defends the general hypothesis that caiçara shiftingcultivation on the island is a sustainable land use. Shifting, mixed cultivation methods and erosionenhancement have proved both to preserve the long-run agricultural soil potential and to secure a rapidecological recovery of forest functions in abandoned fallows. In general, this sustainability depends onappropriate cultivation methods and long fallow periods, which again are preconditioned by low plotproductivity and a low population density (Toffoli and Ribeiro 1999). Surprisingly, the above-ground

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22 The actual numbers are: 29 tree and shrub species after 10 years, 72 species after 25 years and 57 speciesafter 50 years (Toffoli and Ribeiro 1999).

23 D. Toffoli, pers.comm., Rio de Janeiro, July 1999.

24 For instance, MMA and DAI (1997: 95) claim that the restinga (beach-near) vegetation of the Praia do Sulholds a high degree of endemism, which would justify the status of Biological Reserve currently held by thearea.

25 Indeed, tourism was a main motive for the creation of the IEF State Park of Ilha Grande, as is revealed byvarious unpublished documents available in the IEF library in Rio de Janeiro, and by the Master Plan of thePark (UFRRJ 1992: 25).

15

biomass accumulated in a 3 year-old regenerated forest is almost equal to that of a 150 year-old forestplot. The number of tree and shrub species on the former, however, is less than half that of the latter,although the relation between tree species and regeneration time is non-monotonous.22 Also, agro-biodiversity is enhanced by rotational slash and burn (about ten different types of cassava are usedlocally),23 and the same is true for the diversity of soil micro-organisms (Toffoli and Ribeiro 1999).

However, as indicated by the data for tree diversity, it must be expected that overall forest speciesdiversity is reduced in areas that continuously are put to slash-and-burn cyles, and thus are not allowedto reach more advanced succession stages. In other words, the relation between, on the one hand, theaccumulated human impacts and, on the other, the multi-dimensional concept of biodiversity, are highlycomplex, and present-day forests on Ilha Grande are the result of a co-evolution of the human andbiological systems (Ribeiro 1999: ch.6).

The general justification for forest protection on Ilha Grande does not appear to be the preservation ofkey endemic species, although exceptions to this verdict may exist.24 The maintenance of protectedareas is thus rather motivated by the unique combination of elements at the landscape level. Maciel etal. (1982) note that the Praia do Sul Reserve on Ilha Grande is the only place in Rio de Janeiro statewhere five different ecosystems are still well-preserved on the same single site: restinga (coast-near)vegetation, mangroves, lagoons, rocky coast, and hillside tropical rainforest. In principle, this type ofprotected habitat should be compatible with (and motivated by) tourism. In fact, this has been the casefor the protection of Ilha Grande,25 a discussion which will be taken up in the following section.

4 Strategic choices on tourism development

The recreational vocation of Ilha Grande has long traditions. One source states that even the pre-conquest Tupinambá in part used the island as a 'sanctuary', due to its healthy air and good climate(Nesi 1990: 53), naming it Ipaum poranga, which in tupi means <the beautiful island' (ibid: 46). Asmentioned above, this tradition of the Placentia island was later continued with the reception centres

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26 The ferry charges a price of R$ 9 on weekends versus R$ 1.80 on workdays, as a way of price discrimination:most travelers on weekdays are islanders versus tourists in the weekends.

16

for slaves and the quarantine hospital for European immigrants, making Ilha Grande an intermediate linkbetween The Old World and mainland Brazil. The recent upswing of tourism in the Angra dos Reis region was made possible by the construction ofthe Rio-Santos road (opened in 1974). Especially when the road became paved in the 1980s, itprovided rapid access to the region from both Rio and São Paulo (Luchiari 1997). Tourism on IlhaGrande is often supposed to have been even more obstructed by the Dois Rios prison than theagricultural activities on the island. Both a real danger from escaped convicts and the broader image ofthe island would not be associated with a 'relaxing holiday break' (Tangará 1998; Ramuz 1998: 115;de Quadros 1999: 3; Santos 1999: 6). It is true that the abolishment of the reformatory in 1994 openedup for a marked expansion of tourism but, as will be shown by the figures below, this process wasalready well underway in the early 1990s.

In the 1990s, tourism has been growing in a rapid and spontaneous way. Although Abraão is the mainpoint of entry, access to the island is extremely decentralised, with many small beaches that can bereached by schooners and other small and medium-sized boats. One estimate is that the ferryboat - theonly legal concession-holder of transport between the island and the continent - only transports about15% of all tourists; the rest would arrive by smaller boats, either arranged directly by the guest houseor by independent informal operators (PMAR 1998: 23). A growing number of individuals hold asecond residence (holiday cottage) on the island, and numerous privately invited guests add further tothe number of visitors.

Visitation to Ilha Grande is extremely seasonal, with peaks in the summer months (December, January,February) and certain public holidays (Carnival, New Year, Easter, school holidays, etc.). During thesepeaks, hostel prices rise to the triple of the corresponding low-season prices. Boat transport prices alsorise during peak demand periods.26 A main reason for the island's extreme tourism seasonality is thatair and water temperatures during much of the year drop to levels that are unacceptable to the typicalBrazilian 'sun and beach' tourist. Another factor is that transport to the island, and especially to its moreremote beaches, tends to take too much time to make a visit worth wile during ordinary weekends. Because of the decentralised, informal and seasonally fluctuating arrival, the number of tourists, timestheir average length of visit (PAX), is unknown. Data collected during 1995-97 for the elaboration ofthe island's Tourism Master Plan (Tangará 1998) focused on 14 selected guesthouses and 3 campinggrounds. But the study concentrated on determining seasonal fluctuations, rather than absolute figures,based on Abraão and the northern beaches (excluding e.g. Aventureiro or Palmas in the south andeast). Alternatively, de Quadros (1999) estimates that Abraão is visited by a yearly total of 97,200tourists (of which 78,000 in the three summer months), the northern beaches receive 9,300 visitorsyearly, while the figure given for Aventureiro is 17,200 (of which 7,600 in summer). This would yielda yearly grand total of 123,700 visitors staying at least one night (length of stay is unknown), plus a

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27 See discussion for Aventureiro below.

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certain number of day trippers. However, the sources of these estimates remain unclear, and some ofthe figures are over-estimated.27

Information is also available on ferry passengers for both return trips to the continent, i.e. from Abraãoto Angra and to Mangaratiba, respectively (PMAR 1998: 10). The total number of passengers (bothdestinations) rises from 114,812 in 1992 to 168,865 in 1995, but then drops to 113,637 in 1997. Yetthese figures also include the trips made by the islanders. Figures are also distorted by port reparationin Mangaratiba during a two-year period. For Angra-Abraão-Angra alone, passenger figures tripledfrom 1992 to 1997, but interpretation of this information should bear in mind the partial character ofthese figures.

Perhaps the most reliable source on the growth of tourism is the number and capacity of guesthouses,as shown in Figure 1. Not all hostels and private rooms are registered by the municipality; neither are'informal' camping sites. However, to the extent that both the degree of informality and the averageoccupation rate of the establishments stayed more or less constant over this period, this should give usthe best hint about the growth in visitation.

Figure 1 depicts the rapid increment in the capacity of guesthouses during the 1990s - both before andafter the prison was abandoned. Growth takes off around 1990, and could appear to follow an S-curve:growth accelerates initially, succeeded by a gradual saturation of hostel capacity. At least, this is thecase in Abraão, while bed capacity in the rest of the island is still growing at a fast pace. Note also thatthe number of hostels (the lines in Figure 1) have been growing more rapidly over the last half-decadethan the number of beds (expressed by the bars in Figure 1), indicating that many quite small, often'primitive' hostels have been opened lately.

In spite of the unknown total number of visitors, municipal authorities (PMAR 1998), tourismconsultants (Tangará 1998; de Quadros 1999) and other tourism observers (Ramuz 1998; Alves 1991)all agree that, at present, an excessive number of tourists is visiting the island. High visitation in thelimited peak periods is supposed to endanger tourism sustainability, in all of its traditional triangulardimensions: ecological, economic and social impacts are seen as turning into the negative with theaccelerating tourism boom.

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FIGURE 1: HOSTEL AND BED NUMBERS ON ILHA GRANDE

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

1979 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

YEARS

BE

DS

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

HO

ST

EL

S

Abraão (Beds) Total (Beds)Abraão (Hostels) Total (Hostels)

Note: 1998 figures are interpolated.

Source: Municipal data

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28 E. Dalboni de Souza (Secretariat of Planning, Environmental Division), pers.comm., Angra dos Reis, August1999.

29 All citations with my translation from Portuguese.

19

The main ecological impacts mentioned in these documents (and in corresponding interviews at theMunicipality)28 are the following: garbage and litter, insufficient (or non-existent) sewerage andfreshwater provision, over-crowding of existing tourist infrastructure, trail erosion, emissions anddumping of motor oil by boat owners in the bay, submarine harpoon fishing, jet-skiing and disturbanceof dolphin's habitat, etc. Among the suggested socio-cultural impacts are the 'acculturation' of thecaiçara population and the introduction of drugs by tourists. The third pillar of sustainability, the economic impacts of tourism, has our special interest in this study.The hypotheses put forward in the mentioned works are clear: the decline of traditional economicactivities paved the way for 'the growth of a predatory tourism that at the same time impoverishes theislander' (PMAR 1998: 10), creating 'large environmental and social impacts but little economic return'(ibid.: 14), because 'it does not bring real benefits to the population - at least not financial ones' (Ramuz1998: 117).29 The island's tourism sector is said to be based on an unstable, seasonal economy, wherea vicious circle is at work: environmental degradation diminishes product quality, which forces thelowering of prices, attracting more (and less-paying) tourists, which cause more degradation, and soforth (Tangará 1998: ch.2; PMAR 1998: 43).

A related, understandable pre-occupation on behalf of the municipality is that a unilateral dependencyon seasonal tourism is created on the island, while other productive activities decline (E.Dalboni,pers.comm., Angra dos Reis, Aug. 1999). This is one of the reasons why alternative activities arecurrently promoted, such as a World Bank-supported project aiming at the development of fish andmussel farming (Negraes 1999: 27).

Most of the blame regarding adverse tourism impacts is laid on low-spending tourist strata, onbackpackers that arrive by ferry, camp, bring most of their food and spend close to nothing, oftenlocally referred to as 'duristas' or 'farofeiros'. With little environmental consciousness and even lessmoney, they would leave only litter behind on the island (PMAR 1998: 43). Already in the late 1980s,the island's rustic character appealed to low spenders, although their numbers diminished when ferryprices went up (Garcia 1993). The fear is that, by continuously attracting low-income strata of tourists,Ilha Grande might become 'another Paquetá' - making reference to an island adjacent to the city of Riode Janeiro which during weekends and holidays is over-crowded by polluting tourists.

As the consensus diagnostics of tourism impacts says 'too many people', the unanimousrecommendation made by tourism studies on Ilha Grande has been 'restrict access', based on ananalysis of the tourism 'carrying capacity' on different locations of the island (PMAR 1998: 37-8, 41-2;de Quadros 1999). 'Carrying capacity' is a concept which has been borrowed from biology, and its

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allegation is that the environment of a determined site does only support a certain numbers of visitors -just as a piece of forest does only provide habitat for a certain number of mammals or birds.

Constraining capacity should thus avoid that physical limits are passed which would cause certainadverse environmental (and sociocultural) impacts. Specifically, the Tourism Master Plan proposes thedistinction between a 'popular' (minimum 9m2 per tourist), a 'controlled' (25m2 per tourist) and a'restricted' zone (400m2 per tourist - see Tangará 1998: 66/105). However, I will argue in the followingthat the application of 'carrying capacity' regulations on the island is generally not meaningful, to a wideextent impossible to implement, and at present not logically linked to an analysis of priorityenvironmental problems. Trying to implement capacity restrictions would thus be bound to do moreharm than good.

The concept of carrying capacity was already in the 1980s heavily criticised for its excessive simplicity.Unlike animals, human individuals differ in their behaviour and resource demand, and thus also in theirenvironmental impact, making criteria exclusively based on absolute visitor numbers problematic.Furthermore, good management, with preventive and corrective action combined, can often limit oravoid lasting local impacts. Focus should thus not be on numbers, but directly on impacts, it wasargued, proposing the alternative concept of 'limits of acceptable change' (Stankey et al. 1985).Carrying capacity may still be a useful concept for biologically extremely sensitive environments withhigh visitation rates (e.g. nesting bird areas on the Galápagos islands), where the sheer presence ofhuman beings may reach an excess. However, this is hardly applicable to an environment like IlhaGrande, which throughout its history has been characterised by multiple human impacts and alterations.

A second fundamental critique refers to the plain unfeasibility of implementing local capacity restrictions.It is hard to point to one single South American case where long-run capacity restrictions on risingtourist demand have been successfully implemented - at least for an only partially protected site of acomparably large size, with several local villages and with multiple access points. As the authors of theTourism Master Plan admit, it would be necessary to restrict tourist flexibility, selling exclusively fixedreturn tickets to pre-determined sites, in limited numbers (Tangará 1998: 79). Weekly, site-specificlimits would have to be established, and one would have to 'control and discipline the attraction oftourist boats to the island and its surroundings' (de Quadros 1999: 4), i.e. including marine areas. Inaddition, one would even have to limit the options of the proper islanders to travel between the differentbeaches, in order to avoid unauthorised tourist transfers (PMAR 1998: 44). Knowing the pronouncedindividuality and liberal preferences of the average Brazilian tourist (and of local residents alike), suchmeasures are indeed purely theoretical; they are confined to the imaginary world of public planners andenvironmental consultants. Third, it should be noted that none of the alleged ecological impacts of tourism on Ilha Grande hasactually been measured: most conclusions are based on on-site 'common-sense' observations. One maythus suspect that the notion of low-spenders' over-crowding is more determined by the subjective,

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30 This is confirmed by interviews with hostel owners and the President of the Ilha Grande Hostel Association,Mr. Luis Fernando Medina. The large amount of backpackers in Abraão during peak holidays causes anincreasing amount of litter, waste water, noise, ill smell and other congestion symptoms, which degrade thevillage as a tourist destination for the tourist with a higher income, and thus undermines the investments madein those hostels that cater to the latter. However, following the post-holiday clean-up, it is dubious whetherthese problems actually cause any lasting environmental degradation.

21

aesthetic perception by the luxury tourist ('get rid of all these poor devils!') than by a set of objectivelyobservable, unavoidable and irreversible tourism impacts.30

In the participatory workshop carried out prior to the elaboration of the Tourism Master Plan, litteringwas perceived as the main environmental problem (Tangará 1998: 73-5). Yet litter found on thenorthern beaches often comes from the generally polluted bay, and from local villages, i.e. notexclusively from beach-visiting tourists. Irresponsible littering is not restricted to tourists, but concernsall bay residents and users, including those that reside on Ilha Grande. Furthermore, litter problems canbe solved by raising consciousness of all actors and, in particular, by devoting the necessary resourcesto its removal. The laudable rubbish collection efforts currently made by the Ecological Brigade Mirimare illustrative in that regard. Restricting litter impacts is thus mainly a question of financing the cleaning,rather than of limiting the number of tourists.

Similar considerations apply to the problems of water provision and of sewerage. Investments in theseareas are currently undertaken, and should be able to alleviate current problems significantly. If this istrue, what environmental elements of Ilha Grande are then crucially threatened by an excessive numberof tourists? This depends on, what environmental assets are currently the most fragile, a question thathas not really been posed explicitly in the debate.

It seems certain that forests are not a top priority on the list of negative tourism impacts. Forestsfrequently visited by tourists are mainly secondary forests close to Abraão and along the way to someof the main beaches and attractions. Trail erosion has been painstakingly surveyed, and confirmed forsome of the main trails (Tangará 1998: 36-58), but this minor effect hardly constitutes a threat to thebroader integrity of forests. Again, it can be remedied for by undertaking the necessary maintenanceof the trails, provided financing is available. Recreational hunting by tourists may be a threat to forestwildlife. However, it occurs only infrequently, and probably makes up much less of a pressure onwildlife stocks than local subsistence hunting, which constitutes a main consumptive use of the forest(see section 6).

Much more fragility than in forests appears to be found in the marine environments. Alleged tourismimpacts range from harpoon fishing to jet skiing and wind surfers, an excessive number of boats passingthe key attraction spots during the peak season and, first and foremost, frequent oil dumping fromschooners. Some of these problems may indeed justify regulations of access. Yet, due to the type oftourism practised, per-capita marine impacts are probably much more severe from luxury tourists thanfrom campers. This serves as a footnote on the 'carrying-capacity' debate above: if marine 'carrying

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31 The participatory workshop confirmed the trade-off between recreational and artisan/commercial fishing -see Tangará (1998: 76-8).

32 The 'eco-development' proposals in Borges (1992) include 'a few, non-paved roads, hydrofoilaccess...resorts, tennis clubs, bungalows, horse clubs and a health spa'!

22

capacity' is surpassed, the access of luxury tourists should be restricted, not that of campers. Moreover,and without denying the need for certain regulations, one should remember that it is industrial and artisanfishing combined which constitute the main threats to the marine environment around Ilha Grande.31

Blaming the deterioration of marine environments on tourism would be totally out of proportion. The participatory workshop carried out prior to the elaboration of the Tourism Master Plan discussedfour different potential development options for tourism:

C laissez faireC laissez faire with public investment (no access regulation)C establishment of holiday resortsC ecotourism (investment with access regulation)

Due to the apparent need for investments to meet the increasing influx of tourists, pure laissez faire wasdiscarded from the beginning. So was the resort option which normally produces little benefits to localdwellers, as experienced by the corresponding development of the mainland coast (Luchieri 1997). Thechoice thus came to be between full-blown ecotourism cum capacity restrictions and laissez faire withincreased public investments.

The authors of the Tourism Master Plan exhibited a strong preference for the 'ecotourism withregulation' scenario, making the island attractive to international tourists - 40% of foreign visitors toBrazil enter the country through Rio International Airport, less than a day trip away. They stress theimpressive growth of the global ecotourism business, providing a large income potential (high spendingper PAX) that is compatible with nature conservation (restricted visitor numbers). 'Ilha Grande has oneof the best tourist potentials in the world', it is stated immodestly in the beginning (Tangará 1998: 5),based on its beaches, forests, underwater attractions, villages and local culture, and thus comparableto Virgin Islands, Bali, Seychelles, and Tahiti. However, according to the authors, ecotourismdevelopment cannot be reconciled with the island's present consolidation as a low-income 'sun & sea'campers' paradise.

Ecotourism has previously been recommended as a development option for Ilha Grande (Borges 1992),although with a devalued definition of the term that differs much from that of Tangará (1998).32 Beyondany doubt, the ecotourism potential of Ilha Grande is heavily under-exploited at present. However, Iwould like to make three qualifying statements. First, as an international ecotourism site, Ilha Grande'spotential is to be classified as 'good', but not as 'exceptional'. In environmental terms, primary forests(which lend themselves to environmental interpretation for the experienced ecotourist with a high

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33 'Nature' was confirmed as an attraction by all guesthouse owners (sample size not given) 'peace and rest'by two thirds, while nobody could confirm the factors 'handicraft', local culture', 'climate' and 'cuisine' (Tangará1998: 26).

34 It is envisaged to approximate welfare gains by quantifying tourists 'willingness to pay' in a later stage ofthis research.

35 For instance, trekking in the Annapurna area (Nepal) caters much to backpackers, but has now been wellorganised in the ACAP project so as to minimise environmental impacts, and at the same time ensuresignificant income flows to the indigenous population (see Wells 1994).

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willingness to pay) are mostly restricted to the more inaccessible remnants at 3-400 metres above sealevel. Visible forest fauna attractions are rare, and the number of keystone or endemic species isprobably limited, compared to some sites in the continental Atlantic forests. Snorkelling may be goodby Brazilian standards, but is mediocre compared to prime international sites such as Belize, the RedSea or Thailand. Local traditional culture is already in the process of extinction, and neither as authenticnor as folkloric as that of the international comparisons made above. Ilha Grande's attractiveness thusrather lies in the integrity of its landscape, its access to quietness and 'piece of mind' - an observationthat was confirmed by interviews of hostel proprietors.33 In my opinion, it will necessarily continue tocater much to national tourist strata, rather than relying on international competitiveness as a mainstayof tourism income.

Second, even if a strong international demand was present, several social drawbacks would arise if theisland was to be converted exclusively to an elitist, high-spending destination. Obviously, the excludedlow-income strata of urban tourists would suffer a welfare loss.34 Perhaps more importantly, theexclusion and marginalisation of native islanders from the tourism business would be accelerated, as theydo not possess the skills needed to deliver a high-value ecotourism product. This substitution process,with out-migration of the local caiçara population, has been observed markedly both in Abraão andon the mainland (Luchiari 1997); it is likely to be proportional to the degree of sophistication in the site-specific tourism product: the more simple type of tourism, the better the options for the original islanderto participate.

As a third and more optimistic observation, the Tourism Master Plan develops too much pessimism onthe incompatibility of ecotourism with other forms of tourism. The island, as indicated by its name, isrelatively large, and there seem to be no serious obstacles to the development of different types oftourism on different locations, preferably combined with a zoning of the island. Also, as indicated byinternational experiences, ecotourism need not be for the well-to-do only.35 Indeed, the averagespending potential of international tourists on Ilha Grande may be over-estimated in the Master Plan,at least judged by the present foreign visitors, which include a large group of extremely price-elasticbackpackers. The importance of this group outside peak periods is a main reason why guesthouseprices in Abraão drop to only one third during off-season (J. Coutinho, Abraão, pers.comm., August1999).

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36 For instance, it would be difficult to make a fair distinction between locals (and their off-resident visitingfamilies) and 'pure' tourists. Also, boat transport reaches many different access points, making an efficientaccess control difficult. A feasible scheme may include levying of fees at the ferry plus on private boats,which would need to be registered and authorised, perhaps with an additional control carried out at thearriving guesthouses. An entrance fee per day would seem most fair, but hard to administer, due to theinformal (non-registered) character of many guesthouses and camping grounds. A flat rate per day or visitmay hurt frequent visitors excessively, e.g. those that come almost every weekend from Angra dos Reis.Consequently, various types of access permits (per day, weekend, or year) should be designed. Anotheroption minimising administrative costs would be to levy entrance fees only during public holidays, a schemewhich would be more designed to reduce peak visitation.

37 A later phase of this research will deal with the travel cost method (TCM). A demand curve is estimated inorder to reveal the expected fee-induced reduction in visitation, using interview data on tourists' current travelcosts.

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On aggregate, public authorities are excessively pre-occupied with command-and-control measuressuch as tourist access restrictions. More important would be the generation of funding necessary toremedy certain impacts, i.e. maintain and renew infrastructure and to meet the currently externalisedcosts of tourism, such as litter and water pollution. In order not to draw on tax payers' money, one wayto do that may be to levy an entrance fee on the island's visitors, although creative thinking is requiredto implement a both fair and efficient fee scheme.36 Some crude calculations in this respect are madein de Quadros (1999). However, this initiative would only make sense if the generated funds wereearmarked for environmental spending on the island, not if they flow into a broader federal or municipaltreasury. As a side-effect, this rise in tourist costs would also limit visitation to the island,37 probably ina more acceptable and feasible way than quantitative restrictions.

Finally, perhaps more than the excessive entry of low spenders, the municipal authorities should beconcerned with the 'privatisation' of coastline, beaches and other attractive areas that occurs with thecontinuous sale of land to private urban residents or speculators. Its negative impacts on both localpopulation and non-resident tourists have been widely noted on the continental coast, especially on thenorthern coast of São Paulo State (Luchiari 1997: 147-51). In social terms, the welfare effects ofpermanent access exclusion to attractive areas that become reserved for the occasional use by a smallelite of wealthy urban residents seem much more worrisome.

Aventureiro case study

5 The caiçara community of Aventureiro

As stated in the last section, the strong recommendations in the Tourism Master Plan on the need forregulations on Ilha Grande are not backed by a solid knowledge on the specific impacts of tourism. In

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38 Census data made available from the municipality of Angra dos Reis.

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this and the next sections, I will try to contribute to a better understanding in one specific field, thesocioeconomic impacts of tourism on the island's population, using the example of Aventureiro.

The village is a traditional caiçara community in the extreme southwestern part of the island.Aventureiro is a small and isolated place, about 2½ hr by fishing boat from Angra dos Reis. A one-hourfootpath connects it to the larger fishermen's village Provetá. The scenic beauty of the surroundinglandscape (beaches, hillside forest, restinga, large rocks, two lagoons) has since 1981 been protectedin the Biological Reserve of Praia do Sul, administered by FEEMA. The presence of FEMMA'sadministration and visitor centre has also facilitated a series of research projects in Aventureiro.

According to demographic census data, Aventureiro was inhabited by 65 people in 1991, 73 in 199338

and about 90 persons today (C.Athaide, FEEMA, pers. comm., August 1999). However, the villagehas a history of about 150 years, and it is estimated that the population previously may have been upto 300, by then with a larger weight on slash-and-burn agriculture (ibid.). Rotational agriculture(coivara) practised by the local caiçaras, has been studied extensively in the works of Ribeiro et al.(1994), Ribeiro and Coelho Netto (1996), Ribeiro (1999) and Toffoli and Ribeiro (2000). In spite ofthe sustained fertility of soils over time, the focus of the local economy during the 20th century hasincreasingly shifted towards fishery, and livelihood emphasis changed from the forested land to the sea.

An interesting comparison can be made with an anthropological study carried out about a decade agoby Neiva and de Avezedo (1988). At that time, 87 people lived in the village, though not asconcentrated on the beach-near areas as occurs today, i.e. with more people living more dispersed inthe forest, cultivating subsistence crops such as cassava, beans, maize and bananas. There was somecommercialisation of cassava flour and coconuts, using the footpath to Provetá as the main all-yeartransport outlet. During winter, the more stormy sea would often not allow the rudimentary boats andwooden canoes to navigate, and all merchandise had to be transported over land.

Work division in the village tended to be gender-specific: men went fishing while women mainly workedin agriculture. However, the rise in fishing opportunities led to the substitution of agricultural labour forfishing (Neiva and de Azevedo 1988: 21). Two types of fishing were carried out: artisan fishing nearthe village, and participation in seasonal industrial sardine fishing along the Brazilian coastline (fromCabo Frio to the Uruguayan border), organised by larger boats from Angra dos Reis and Provetá. Menparticipating in the latter could be away during the entire season (four to five months). They complainedabout the hard and often risky work. Remuneration on sardine boats is based on a portion of the catchvalue, and depends on labour qualification. As most people from Aventureiro participate as simple hiredhands, their profit share is limited. With marked catch fluctuations, the men would sometimes return withnegligible earnings, sometimes with a significant amount. As one contemporary fisherman says: "It's alottery". Yet, on average, sardine fishing had long provided the major monetary income source in

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Aventureiro. High seasonal earnings would gradually be dissaved from bank accounts during the restof the year.

Changes in this socioeconomic framework of the 1980s can be noted vis-à-vis the interviews carriedout in 1996 by Simão (1997). Slash-and-burn cultivation had been much further reduced, and 'by now,no family would exclusively make their living on agriculture' (ibid: 18). However, 14 of the 16interviewed women would still work on their plots (ibid: 29). The construction and purchase of largermotor boats had made boat transport the vital all-year link to the outside world. Fishing provided themain monetary income for 43% of the interviewed families. 9 out of 14 men (plus one woman) werefishing mainly for commercial purposes; the rest (5 men, 4 women) fished for principally for auto-consumption. Part-time local artisan fishing would provide an average monthly income of US$100-150from canoes and US$50-350 from small motor boats; seasonal full-time sardine fishing would yield inthe range of US$200-1000, though close to zero sometimes. However, by then the declines in local fishstocks were already evident, notably in key species such as tainha (Mugil platanus), due to over-fishing produced by the increasing competition from larger boats.

Today, just three years later, further significant changes have been induced by the rise of tourism. Neivaand de Azevedo (1988: 20) had observed the changes in symbolism and local meanings related todifferent productive activities: forest slash-and-burn was associated to a sedentary and predictablestability (the female element); fishing to the risky and evasive mobility in the search for quick profits (themale element). The shift in emphasis from agriculture to fishing thus also produced cultural changes andalterations in gender roles. In spatial terms, tourism has shifted the balance of economic and socialactivity further away from the forest, and consolidated a concentration near the beach - the physicalcentre of both fishing and tourism activities.

As I will argue below, tourism has provided a significant income transfer, which has mainly been usedfor consumer durables and various investment goods. Work requirements from tourism may be high,but only during limited periods of peak visitation. This means that, in principle, there is no markednecessity to substitute labour previously allocated to other tasks. However, by choice tourism incomehas been used by some villagers to buy more leisure: growing material wealth means that activitiesperceived as strenuous and low-productive (agriculture) or physically hard and involving high risks(fishing) have been reduced. Only three to four families still seem to produce crops, on a very reducedscale, and no external agricultural product commercialisation occurs any longer.

A second factor affecting monetary flows in the village economy has been the income from publicemployment. FEEMA employs three persons (two of which are villagers) for work tasks related to theadministration of the Biological Reserve. The municipality employs four persons for maintenanceactivities (in particular of the trail to Provetá) and litter collection. The Brigada Mirim also finances thelabour costs of youngsters collecting garbage. The bulk of these activities are thus indirectly linked tothe protected area and to tourism. Although the salaries paid are low by urban standards (about 130US$), they did make a difference in a remote village with limited monetary inflows. Of the 14 familiesinterviewed by Simão (1997), by then 6 mentioned salaries as their principal source of monetary

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39 Prime species were lizards (lagarto - Tupinambus merianae) and some birds (like galinha caipira ).

27

income. Tourism and salaried employment combined have thus introduced an important 'service sectorelement' into the local economy, and reduced the importance of traditional primary sector activities(fishing, agriculture, forest extraction).

6 Current forest uses in Aventureiro

The village of Aventureiro is completely surrounded by the sea, by restinga vegetation and, most of all,by hillside forests. Traditionally, the most important use of these forests has been as a source of nutrientsdestined for rotational slash-and-burn agriculture. As described in the references above oncomprehensive research carried out in Aventureiro, local crop management techniques, such as erosioncontrol measures and the planting of nitrogen-fixing species, have produced a land-use which seems tohave sustained soil potentials over generations. Sustainability was assisted by a low population densityand by a low degree of market integration of agricultural producers. Today, slash-and-burn uses of theforest have declined to a minimum, and staple foods are widely brought in from outside the village.

Animal extraction is an important activity in most of Ilha Grande. As mentioned in a tourist guide of the1970s, 'hunting is strong and frequent in all the territory of Ilha Grande', but the island 'is still rich inmany animal species' (Flumitur 1978). This characterisation is still widely applicable today although, dueto its illegality, information about hunting practices is not easily obtained. Even in the 'tourism capital'of the island, the main port of Abraão, regular hunting is still the rule among most of the native islanders,a fact that was underlined by a recent fatal accident, related to a trabuco - a shoot trap with amechanically triggered rifle (J. Coutinho, pers.comm., August 1999).

In Aventureiro, hunting has at least an equally important role, being an important complementary sourceof protein foodstuff. Principal forest species mentioned in the interviews were armadillo (tatu -Dasyptus novemcinctus), paca (paca - Agouti paca) and opossum (gambá - Didelphis harsupialis).In addition, the investigation by Simão (1997: 58), though generally more concerned with fish uses, alsoidentified a high diversity (13 species) of forest fauna extracted for local medicinal uses.39 The forestconstitutes thus not only a butcher store (practically no animal husbandry is practised in the village), butalso a good part of a pharmacy to local dwellers.

Plant extraction has traditionally been momentous, but it is a somewhat declining element in thelivelihood of the villagers. Simão noted in her work that 'whereas hunting is done in a very camouflagedmanner, plant extraction, especially of wood for the construction of houses, canoes, and for somedomestic instruments, is carried out openly' (Simão 1997: 92, my translation). Nevertheless, it appearsthat the prohibition of timber extraction has reduced plant extraction, comparing with what would havebeen the case had there not been a Biological Reserve.

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Structural changes in the village economy have caused additional, voluntary reductions in plantextraction. An illustrative example is the case of cobi (Anadenanthera colubrina), a tree species withmultiple human uses: it is nitrogen-fixing in the regeneration of burnt forest plots, and it is a goodfirewood species. However, the use of bottled gas has generally reduced the need for firewood in thevillage. In addition, cobi bark was formerly extracted, cooked and distilled to produce a resin for atreatment promoting the durability of fishing nets (D.Toffoli, pers.comm., Aug. 1999). However, withhigher income and the option to purchase higher quality synthetic nets in Angra dos Reis, the ratherlaborious process of cobi extraction and processing has become superfluous. This illustrates that risingmonetary income, increasing market integration and higher opportunity costs of labour tend to lead tothe abandonment of the most 'low-productive' (time-consuming) forest extractive uses, a process thatis commonly observed in many forest areas faced with increasing market integration. In principal, all types of extraction from the forest is illegal in a Biological Reserve. Obviously, upon thecreation of the Reserve, this legal requirement created initially a serious source of conflict with acommunity that had been using forest resources for the last 150 years (D. Toffoli, pers.comm., Aug.1999). One recommendation has been that the village and its adjacent areas should be excluded fromthe Reserve, to ensure compatibility with the Reserve's management principles (Neiva and de Azevedo1988; MMA and DAI 1997: 96). The contrary point of view is that the village’s forest use is widelysustainable, and even actively promotes plant diversity (see section 3), as well as diversity created bythe mosaic of forest plots in different stages of regeneration. Man is thus said to be an inherent part ofbiological diversity, and should not be expelled or administratively excluded from the protected area(Ribeiro 1999).

In the day-to-day management of the Biological Reserve, the extreme difficulties (and social costs) ofimplementing a strict prohibition of existing forest uses leaves space for more pragmatic approaches.As expressed by the local FEEMA administrator of the Reserve, firewood collection is tolerated, andso is small-scale extraction of wood poles from the juHara palm (Euterpe edulis) for the constructionof traditional type of houses. Palm hearts from the same tree, which on the continent are frequentlyharvested for sale, are not consumed in a systematic manner (C.Athaide, pers.comm., Aug. 1999).

For larger constructions implying an intensive use of timber, wood has to be imported from Angra dosReis. Canoe-building is an ancient tradition, and canoes built from high-quality species like inga (Ingaaffinis) allegedly have a durability of more than 100 years. However, large trees of the most desiredspecies have become scarce, and their illegal felling is apparently not tolerated by the FEEMAauthorities. Knowledge of medicinal plants is well-preserved among the older generation, but their usehas diminished with better access to Angra dos Reis and to the purchase of commercial pharmaceutics.

The example of local hunting also illustrates the difficulties of drawing pragmatic lines of legality. Assubsistence hunting constitutes a 'traditional use', it is implicitly tolerated by the reserve's administration.Opposed to this, illegal sport hunting by externals (mainly from São Paulo), which occasionally hasoccurred in the north of the Reserve, has been vigourously persecuted. This is in spite of recreationalhunting being a wildlife extraction on a much smaller scale (and of a potentially higher economic value)

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40 The same argument may be applied to lo c a l forest uses that are probably more controversial in theirbiological impact than tourist visitation. The more pragmatic motive is that tourists entering the forest on alarge scale would put yet another task on the already limited capacity of the Reserve's administration.

41 The index was calculated as a simple average of the possible three answers ('good'=3, 'regular'=2, 'bad'=1).

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than local subsistence hunting - with a good management scheme, it could generate additional incomewhile having a limited impact on wildlife. This principle reflects the traditional Latin American attitudeamong protected area managers to legalise (or tolerate) only what is a 'traditional' use of wildlife andother resources, while prohibiting that of external users. The rationale behind this discriminatoryapproach is not always to minimise biological impacts, but rather to defend local rights, and to minimisedaily conflicts with those that exert those rights.

Obeying the same logic, the highly 'non-traditional' activity of tourism, with purely external users, hasnot been allowed to reach into the forest. The (debatable) argument is that visitation is not anappropriate activity for a Biological Reserve.40 At present, large posted signs prohibit the access to theforest, except for the trail to Provetá. Also, many observers claim that ‘sun & sea’ is all that counts forthe backpackers that come to Aventureiro, and that the forest as such is of no particular interest.

Our tourist survey from October/November 1999 provides for some feed back on this hypothesis. Afirst observation is that backpackers highly appreciate the presence and quality of the forest. 91% ofthe 74 interviewed tourists judge forest quality as 'good'. Compared to the indices obtained for twoother environmental dimensions (water quality - 2.81; litter collection - 1.84), forest quality obtainedwith 2.91 the highest score.41 Furthermore, tourists were asked to choose a maximum of threeattractions (out of a list of nine) on Ilha Grande which for them had been decisive in choosing the islandas a tourist destination. 73% of the respondents gave one of their three votes to the category 'forestsand green vegetation', ranking second on the list following 'beaches' (85%), but surpassing factors suchas 'peace and tranquillity' (66%) and 'the sea' (51%). Other prospective assets of the island in general,and Aventureiro specifically, such as 'culture and local people' (11%), 'low prices' (7%), 'beauty of thevillages' (1%) and 'local cuisine' (0%) had basically no importance as comparative tourist advantagesin the perception of Aventureiro visitors. One part of the high appreciation of forests is 'passive', in the sense of a a green carpet that is perceivedfrom the distance, a visual recognition of landscape integrity. Another part of appreciation refers to themore 'active' use by hikers in forested areas. On average, Aventureiro visitors hike 5 hours and 5minutes per visit, which at an average stay of 3.3 nights comes out at 1½ hour per day; only 20% donot hike at all. However, a major part of this hiking time is currently spent in non-forested areas,principally on the hike from Aventureiro to Praia do Sul, and onwards to Panaióca, both of which passmore along the beach than through forest.

However, the interest in greater access to forest trails is remarkable. Among eight options for choosingthree desirable improvement in tourist infrastructure, 'forest trails and access' rank second (desired by

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42 A questionnaire by IEF among tourists in Abraão showed that 'hiking' was regarded the best recreationaloption among tourists (32%), ranking even higher than 'swimming' (28%) - see UFRRJ (1992: 44). Admittedly,nothing is mentioned in the source about the size and selection criteria of the tourist sample.

43 The full valuation analysis will be carried out in a later research stage.

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45% of the tourists), only surpassed by 'sewerage' (47%), but before factors such as 'better transportto the island' (44%), 'better camping grounds' (41%) and 'more tourist information' (30%). Along withthe example of Abraão, where forest hiking is probably the major tourist attraction,42 these results showthat there is a huge potential to augment Aventureiro tourist benefits by increasing access to the forest.The relevant decision basically lies in the hands of the administration of the Biological Reserve.

Finally, tourists were also asked the hypothetical question how much they would be willing to pay asan obligatory entrance fee to Ilha Grande, provided that all the money was spent on a forestconservation project, including park ranger costs and purchases of environmentally critical private landareas. In spite of the students' low income, the 'willingness to pay' (WTP) found in this forest contingentvaluation analysis43 was with US$ 5.21 only marginally lower than that of all tourist interviewed on IlhaGrande (US$ 5.61). An interesting feature is that the share of respondents that do not want to payanything was about one third for all of Ilha Grande, but only 20% for Aventureiro. In spite of the pre-dominance of low-income students, the 'free-rider' mentality was thus less pronounced than in otherparts of the island with wealthier tourists.

7 Tourism income in Aventureiro

As mentioned in section 4, various studies put forward the specific hypothesis that current tourism, andspecifically low-spending campers, leave little money on the island, and thus generate little income forlocal inhabitants. Combined with their alleged degradation of the environment, this is said to lead to animpoverishment of local people and natural resources. The purpose of this section is to investigate if thecase of Aventureiro provides empirical support to this hypothesis. Information for this purpose isderived from two field visits to Aventureiro (one in low, one in high season), including on-siteobservations, interviews with Aventureiro residents and a tourist survey.

Tourism in Aventureiro is very homogenous: no hostels or other bed infrastructure exist, and all touristsare campers. They arrive by fishermen's boats from Angra dos Reis and stay in their own tents raisedin the backyard of resident houses and other flat, idle spaces in the village (camping on the beach isprohibited). Main attractions are the beach and surrounding landscape. Surfing, swimming, hikes to thelagoons of Praia do Sul, to Panaiórca and to a waterfall are some of the most common activities,besides of the relax and hang-around on the Aventureiro beach. Visitation is extremely concentratedon peak periods, while it is close to zero during the rest of the year.

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44 62 interviews (84% of the sample) were collected in Aventureiro, while 12 (16%) were made in Panaioca. Thereason for including the latter was that three fourths of the people staying in Aventureiro had also campedin Aventureiro during the same journey.

45 For instance, the summer period is supposed to consist of 3 months (12-13 weeks) but only 9 weeks areactually accounted for in Quadros' calculations (op.cit.).

46Carnival and New Year are the peak periods, but visitation is restricted both by tent space and boattransport. Visitor numbers given by Quadros (2,000) exceed the maximum tent capacity, which I estimate at810 tents (an average of 45 tents times 18 families). This corresponds to a maximum of 1,782 people, at theaverage of 2.2 persons per tent observed during the field visit in October and November 1999. Easter shouldhave been considered a visitation peak. The long weekend numbers (1,200) and that of summer day-trippers(3,000) is over-estimated.

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The sample of 74 tourist questionnaires from Aventureiro and the nearby beach of Panaióca,44 collectedduring October-November 1999, provides a broad tourist profile. Most visitors are very young people(average age 22.5), none of them travelled with children, and they stayed on average a little more thanthree nights. 70% were male, and no less than 60% were students, predominantly university studentswith a completed secondary education level. Average weekly work time of the visitors was 21 hours,a low average that was due to both the number of students and to less working hours among the non-student Aventureiro visitors, compared to visitors to the rest of the island. Ample free time is also anadvantage for the long trip required to get to Aventureiro - on average, visitors spend 7 hours and 10minutes to get from their home to Aventureiro. Average monthly income of respondents was 878 R$(488 US$), but their household income was 4,033 R$ (2240 US$), reflecting the large number of part-time or non-working students with little individual income, but an origin from middle or upper middle-class families.

No proper register of the arriving number of tourists throughout the year exists. As part of the tourismassessment by the municipality, Quadros (1999: 9-10) estimates a seasonal profile of visitation;however, the profile is not consistent internally45 and gives some erratic estimates.46 Table 4 providesalternative figures, based on interviews of residents, boat owners and the Biological Reserve'sadministration. Visitation reaches maximum capacity during Carnival and New Year (almost 1800visitors), but other significant peaks are Easter and the local Santa Cruz festival; in addition, there areseven different prolonged weekends in the off-season period. During these twelve weeks (or fractionsthereof), there are more than 350 tents in the village, corresponding to 800 people or more. During theJanuary-February and the July school holidays, about half the number of visitors arrives (300 to 400).

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TABLE 4: Tourims cash flow in Aventureiro

Yearly gross and net income, in US$ (1)

PERIOD OF

THE YEAR (2)

WEEKS AVERAGE

VISITORS

CAMPIN

G

RENTS

(3)

SALES

OF FOOD

(4)

SALES OF

DRINKS

(5)

BOAT

TRANS-

PORT (6)

TOTAL

GROSS

INCOME

Carnival 1 1780 14827 6285 8224 1107 30443New Year 2 1780 29655 12570 16447 2214 60887Easter 1 1400 11662 4943 6468 871 23944

Santa Cruz festival 1 1000 8330 3531 4620 622 17103Long weekends 7 800 42000 19774 25872 3483 91129

January/February 6 400 18000 8474 11088 1493 39055July summer holidays 3 300 6750 3178 4158 560 14646December 3 80 1800 847 1109 149 3906

March 4 30 900 424 554 75 1953Rest of the year 24 5 900 424 554 75 1953WEEKLY AVERAGE * 334 2593 1163 1521 205 5481

GROSS INCOME/YEAR * * 134824 61613 79094 10649 286180

External costs (7) * * 990 36968 59321 6389 103668NET INCOME * * 133834 24645 19774 4259 182513

" " distribution * * 73% 14% 11% 2% 100%" " per family * * 7435 1369 1099 237 10140" " per inhabitant * * 1487 274 220 47 2028

Sources: Field interviews and tourist questionnaire, August, October and November 1999

Notes:

(1) 1 US$ = 1.80 R$ in August 1999.

(2) In the present calculus, Carnival is assumed to fall in February, while the New Year fortnight is distributed equally

on December and January.

(3) Using an average price of 8.50 US$ (7.50 US$ off-season) for a maximum of seven nights.

(4) Calculated as the number of visitors times the number of weeks times the average length of 3.2 nights, times a

30% rate of tourists that eat out. The same calculus was made for a 20% share of tourists assumed to eat out for

breakfast, at US$ 1.60 per meal. Together, this equals a food consumption of, on average, 1.07 US$ per PAX.

(5) Assuming a beverage consumption of 1.40 US$ per PAX.

(6) Assuming a 5% participation of Aventureiro boat owners in all tourist boat transport, at a price Of 6.22 US$ per

one way trip, as identified in the questionnaires.

(7) External costs (food, gasoline, canned and bottled beverages, etc.) are deducted from gross income using the

following approximated external cost percentages: food 60%, beverages 75%, boat transport 60%; the calculated

cost for camping rent was 0.7% of gross income.

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47 Most holidays and prolonged weekends occupy only a fraction of a week, typically four days.

48 In spite of the mentioned differences to the calculation by Quadros (1999), his aggregate result is almostidentical: 17,200 visitors per year.

49 In regard to labour costs, for instance, our net income figures are not 'pure profits' over and above anaverage local wage rate, but rather serve as a base for calculating the implicit salary obtained from tourism-related activities.

50 1 US$ = 1.80 R$ in August 1999.

51 Installation of full sanitary installations (toilet and shower) had an average cost of US$ 555, but only halfof the owners (nine) had made such investments. The value of 990 US$ in Table 4 represents the annuity ofa loan to finance this investment, at a 20% real interest rate, thus approximating the opportunity cost of theinvestment in sanitary installations.

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During December, March and the off-season (24 weeks), i.e. at least half of the year,47 there are noor very few tourists in the village. The average weekly visitors in Table 4, 334 people, corresponds to17,368 visitors per year;48 at an average visit length of 3.2 days, this sums up to the remarkable numberof 57,314 PAX per year. Visitation figures can then be related to income-generating activities in thevillage, in order to calculate the likely amount of cash flows (Table 4). Our interest is not only in grossfigures, but also in income net of external costs (gasoline, labour from outside, food items purchasedin Angra dos Reis, etc.), which allow us for an appreciation of what is left for the remuneration of localproduction factors.49

The single most important income source is the rent of tent spaces. During carnival and the fortnightaround New Year, tents are covering almost every inch available. Rent had until recently beencollectively set at a uniform rate of 15 R$ (US$ 8.33)50 per tent per week (or fraction thereof),reflecting also an ability of the community to coordinate a key tourism parameters. However, off-seasondiscounts are now granted for short-staying visitors, especially by those 50% of the families that havenot installed sanitary facilities (shower, bathroom), and are thus unable to attract clients without loweringprices. Hence, I calculate with an average off-season price of US$7.50 for the entire village. Due to thelarge number of visitors during peak seasons, aggregate tent-space rental income in the village is almostUS$ 135,000. Of this income, some costs of investments in showers and toilets have to be deducted,but as total costs are less than US$ 1,000 per year,51 net income is almost equal to gross income, andbasically all camping cash flows end up in the village.

The situation is different for food sales. Aventureiro tourists typically bring their noodles, soups and rice,and cook them over a camping stove. Only about 30% eat standard meals (prato feito) prepared bynine small-scale, informal restaurants, at an average price of US$ 2.50. Similarly, participation inbreakfast and minor fast foods, amounting to about US$ 1.60, is only around 20%. Of the seven nightshe or she pays for, the average tourist actually stays less than half, which one must adjust for in theconsumption figures. On aggregate, gross yearly food sales stay quite limited, at about US$ 62,000/yr.Unlike tent space, this is not a pure economic rent: except for fish, cassava and some other locally

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52 Several of the interviewed women that cook for tourists reported that they work in the kitchen up to 18hours a day during the specific peak periods – but also that the effort is worth wile in terms of a goodremuneration in a short period.

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grown crops, most foodstuff has to be bought and transported from Angra dos Reis. In addition, duringpeak visitation food stall owners call in non-resident relatives and other labour from outside to help outwith the large amount of kitchen work,52 resulting in an additional 'leakage' of income. About 40% ofgross food sales (US$ 24,000) are estimated to stay in the village, basically for local labourremuneration.

Beverage sales create probably more gross cash flow than food sales: assuming an average purchaseof one large beer per PAX (sold at US$ 1.39 in Aventureiro), the estimate in Table 4 is almost US$80,000 per year. The reason is that it is too heavy for a camper to bring along beverages for severaldays all the way from the supermarkets - and even more difficult to keep them cold! Various of the barsand restaurants in Aventureiro have invested in sizeable refrigerators to take advantage of the goodmarket potential for chilled beers and soft drinks. During Carnival and New Year, entire boat trips aremade to Angra dos Reis just for the sake of beverages transport. However, external costs (the bottledor canned beverage, boat transport/gasoline, refrigerator financial costs) are higher than for food sales:they were estimated at 75%. This means that net income is reduced more than for food sales; on theother hand, this activity probably needs less local labour input.

Aggregating food and beverage consumption, the per capita daily consumption found in thequestionnaires is US$ 4.75, but part of that (US$ 2.28) represents the cost of food brought in fromoutside, while local consumption is US$ 2.47 per PAX. This is slightly less than the de facto per PAXcost of tent space, amounting to US$ 2.67 per day. In terms of local income generation, the differencebetween the two categories is that food and beverage sales involve large external costs, while campingrents consist of a 99% locally retained value.

Finally, boat transport to and from Angra dos Reis (2½-3 hrs) is a major item in backpackers'expenditure (about US$ 13 for the return trip), but this business is dominated by larger fishing boatsfrom both Angra dos Reis and Provetá which diversify into the tourist business whenever demand issufficiently high. The smaller fishing boats from Aventureiro take along tourists on a more occasionalbasis. In Table 4, I have assumed a flat 5% participation of Aventureiro fishermen in this activity, whichresults in a yearly gross income of US$ 10,649 and, discounting a 60% costs, a net income of US$4,259.

Looking at the aggregate picture in Table 4, the grand total of gross yearly income is estimated at US$286,180; net income is US$ 182,513 (63.8% of the former). No less than 78% of gross income isgenerated in 'high season': Carnival, New Year, Easter, Santa Cruz festival and seven long weekends.Yet, this outspoken seasonality also means that the negative side-effects from tourism - the heavy work

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53 In fact, some of the interviewed claimed that individual local residents are involved in the trafficking ofmarijuana and other drugs. During our two short visits, it was not possible to confirm this; correspondingly,income from local drug sales are not included as an item in the cash-flow figures in Table 4.

54 This is true for Aventureiro, but camping in Panaióca occurs both on a private ground and, illegally, on thebeach.

55 One reason for investing in sanitary installations is that, in some cases, tourists are using family toilets enmasse which creates a hygienic problem, especially for those families that have small children.

56 Basically, labour inputs are confined to the cleaning of private areas after the tourist have left.

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load, congestion, and to a certain degree noise, pollution and some drug consumption53 - arephenomena that are highly concentrated in time, while interfering little with villagers' life during the restof the year.

Comparing the weight of different activities in total net income, it becomes apparent that camping rentsare the clearly dominating element (73%), while food sales (14%), beverages (11%) and boat transport(2%) have complementary roles. What Aventureiro residents sell is 'access to a beautiful spot' - muchaided by FEEMA which, by effectively prohibiting 'wild' camping on the beach,54 protects the localmonopoly of Aventureiro residents in providing that space to tourists. Leaving aside the inconvenienceof literally living surrounded by backpackers during peak visitation periods,55 it is a relatively 'easymoney' to earn, in the sense that it involves neither significant labour efforts56 nor other notable costs:it is a rent transfer from young urban tourists to the caiHaras of Aventureiro.

8 Distribution and impact of tourism income

In general, there can be no doubt that tourism income, because of its remarkable size vis-à-visalternative local income sources, has had a revolutionary impact on the local economy. Table 4 denotesa yearly tourism-derived net income of US$ 10,140 per family and of US$ 2,028 per capita.Considering that Brazil's overall per-capita income for 1999 will be somewhere in the neighbourhoodof US$ 3,300, it would not be correct to speak of Aventureiro as a poor community: tourism has madea difference which belies that statement.

Compared to traditional earnings within the local economy, the contrast is striking. According to ourinterviews, traditional income is in the range of US$ 1,500 - 4,000 for a fisherman, and US$ 1,800 fora public employee (FEEMA and Municipality). In other words, the rise of tourism can easily havedoubled or tripled the income for the average Aventureiro family. Returning to the common hypothesisstated above that 'backpackers leave no money behind, but only environmental degradation', themonetary part of that statement can definitely be rejected: backpackers do spend little per PAX, buttheir sheer numbers imply that they generate large income flows to a small community with limited

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57 An obvious conflict exists between those that voluntarily have invested in sanitary installations and thosethat have not: The former blame the latter for the amount of excrements deposited by tourists in public areas,or tourists that 'steal their way' into the neighbour's toilet, i.e. of economising on infrastructure at the cost ofnegative externalities shared by all the community.

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alternative income sources. The poverty alleviation impact of tourism in Aventureiro stands beyond anydoubt.

The second part of the hypothesis, referring to environmental impacts, is not tested in this work.Nevertheless, from observation of the village in both high and low season, the main environmentalimpacts of tourism - waste water and littering - appear to be temporary, in the sense that they do notseem to leave permanent traces that would be visible to an off-season visitor. Littering can be aproblem, but in fact most of the young tourists are aware of the aesthetic impact of throwing litter onthe ground, and in the interviews many of them expressed that more waste baskets are needed - anobservation that this author agrees to. Lacking sanitary facilities and sewerage is a main problem in peakperiods, and was identified in the tourist questionnaire as the most needed improvement in touristinfrastructure, proving that the young tourists are quite conscious of the nature and priorities ofenvironmental problems.

However, this dilemma could be resolved if all camping ground owners agreed to use part of theirconsiderable profits to make the necessary investments. The insufficiency of sanitary installations is thusmainly a problem of finding mechanisms to make all owners comply to a set of minimum standards thatreduce environmental externalities of tourism. In this way, rather than reducing tourists' numbers andaccess to Aventureiro, one should look towards forms of intra-community organisation that help to setand enforce minimum standards, as well as resolve existing conflicts created by the 'free riders' amongthe camping ground owners.57

Returning to the economic analysis, it was stated above that tourism has had a marked povertyalleviation impact. A caveat to that characterisation, however, is that camping rents - the principalsource of tourism income - are unevenly distributed within the community, mainly because not all campsites are equally attractive to the tourist. The factors determining the attractiveness of a specific campingground (and thus the income generation differences between families) are, in the following order ofimportance:

1. Closeness to the beach2. Size of flat space available3. The existence of sanitary installations

This set of 'comparative advantages' put different families in highly differentiated positions. Especiallythose houses that are situated in flat, beach-near areas attract basically all off-season and long-weekendtourists - except for a few that prefer the views from and solitude of the hillside areas that extend behindthe beach-near belt, in an area dominated by cassava cultivation and other crops. These hillside grounds

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58 For instance, an occupation of 15 tent spaces with 2.2 persons during the 5 peak visitation periods onlyyield, at the high-season rate of US$ 8.33, a total income of US$ 1374.45.

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thus mainly serve as buffers that fill up only during the four main tourism peaks, while visitation remainsvery scattered during all the rest of the year.

Nevertheless, it is worth stressing that, although the distribution of benefits is unequal, all families actuallyparticipate in tourism income, and are economically better off than before tourism appeared. Even aremote hillside ground with limited space apt for camping and no sanitary installations would still receivea benefit in the range of US$ 1,000 - 2,000 per year,58 which can be further supplemented by sellingbeverages, cooking meals, or working in neighbours' restaurants (the going local day-labourer wage rateis in the range of US$ 8-14). In addition, family ties probably also imply some redistribution of incomeacross households.

What has this inflow of money over the last 3-5 years been used for? In answering this question, thereare basically three items to account for:

C ConstructionC Consumer durablesC More leisure

Regarding the first item, economic progress is visible in terms of many new houses that have been, orare in the process of being built: traditional caiçara clay houses have either been replaced or standbeside new brick houses, with material brought in from Angra dos Reis by boat.

Current consumption (foodstuff, clothing, etc.) does not seem to have been influenced much by tourism-generated wealth, but there has been a remarkable expansion in the possession of consumer durables.A pre-condition for this expansion has been the widespread purchase of gasoline-driven electricitygenerators. In prolongation, some durables purchases (freezers, refrigerators, cooking stoves) shouldpartially be seen as investments, given their use in the sale of food and beverages. Other items, such aswashing machines, televisions, parabolic antennas and furniture clearly have an exclusively consumptiveuse.

Third, as mentioned above, Aventureiro residents have also used part of their new income to buy moreleisure, specifically to reduce high-risk, strenuous or low-return activities, such as sardine fishing andslash-and-burn agriculture. For instance, various middle-aged fishermen say that they have abandonedsardine fishing in order to stay more time with their family, and that this has been made possible by thereduced necessity to bring in cash from the sea. Similarly, the younger women express normally littleinterest in the roHa (slash-and-burn agriculture) because, as one of them said, 'it does not reward theeffort'. It is noteworthy that it is not necessity (e.g. tourism-induced labour shortages) that forces theseproductive changes, but rather a deliberate choice on behalf of Aventureiro residents. While one can

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59 For Aventureiro, e.g. D. Toffoli, pers.comm., Rio de Janeiro, July 1999 (ongoing Ma. thesis work). Forpublished studies focusing on cultural impacts of tourism on the caiHaras, see Luchiari (1997) on the Northerncoast of São Paulo state and Ramuz (1998) on Ilha Grande.

60 In general, my impression was that Aventureiro tourists are not particularly interested in the caiHaras, butthey have a fair level of education, consciousness and a high appreciation of nature.

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discuss the sustainability of both slash-and-burn agriculture and sardine fishing (see references above),it should be clear that these income-led productive changes do not harm the environment, and mostlikely alleviate pressures on natural resources.

Finally, many of the academic scholars visiting Aventureiro focus on the cultural changes that masstourism in a tiny village must be causing: during Carnival and New Year, the ratio of visitors to residentsis 20:1! It is thus postulated that the loss of control over ones own space, tourists' lacking knowledge,interest and respect for the local culture, and the introduction of 'exotic' elements (notably, marijuanaand other drug consumption) may cause a process of cultural erosion and loss of identity among thelocal population.59

While cultural aspects have not been the focus of this work, a couple of minor observations shall bemade. First, the 'madness' and over-crowding of the village is mainly restricted to the four principal peakperiods while, even during an average long weekend, much of daily life in Aventureiro seems to followits usual rythm; high seasonality may thus be an advantage in limiting direct cultural impacts. Second, thepresence of and contact with the tourists and their (arguably) bad habits60 may actually constitute a lessimportant cultural impact than the indirect one that works through higher income and changingconsumption patterns. The attitude that local dwellers develop towards the tourist is mostly one ofindifference, of a necessary short-term companionship for which they have to set basic rules in orderto protect their privacy. However, the income-induced arrival and spread of television alone may havea far more important cultural impact on daily life than the occasional presence of marijuana-smokingcity-slickers. This raises the broader question of the self-selected abandonment of certain caiHaratraditions and cultural elements - perhaps empirically a more important feature than the externallyimposed or induced changes.

9 Conclusion and discussion

This paper has dealt with the distinctive history and present of stakeholders and corresponding land-usechanges on Ilha Grande, from cannibals to pirates, slaves and escaped convicts, from hunters &gatherers to slash-and-burn cultivators, sugar barons and sardine industrialists. How has this historybeen influenced by the most recent of the booms, the rapid rise of tourism? Our special interest herehas been in the role of forests for promoting this boom and, vice versa, how tourists' forest utilisationand perception relate to more traditional forest uses. Among a long series of historical land-usessequences, three categories of cycles can be distinguished to narrow down the forest impacts ofdifferent land uses:

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61 Part of the argument here is that the two 'functioning' protected areas on the island in the long run need toprovide social and economic benefits which justify their maintenance. In this respect, recreation benefitsappear to be the most important candidate for Ilha Grande.

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C intensive agricultural booms (sugar, coffee) with corresponding intensive, site-specific forestconversion;

C extensive rotational agriculture (of Amerindians and caiçaras) converting large forest areas, withsubsequent forest cover regeneration;

C forest-neutral booms (fishing, tourism, public services) allowing for continuous natural regrowth andincrease in forest cover.

The relative weight of these partially overlapping cycles, and in particular the balance between the landand the sea as sources of natural-resource derived wealth, have determined whether forest covercontracted or expanded, and whether forests were degraded, modified or left passively to recover -both at the village level of Aventureiro and for the entire island. The relation between different humaninterventions and biological diversity proved to be non-monotonous and complex in this respect.Tourism, in particular, does pave the way for land speculation and a construction boom that fragmentsthe landscape, but in general tourism has helped to consolidate and expand the island's 'serviceeconomy', which in the long run is a precondition for the conservation of its forests.61

The long-lasting presence of the Dois Rios prison has been highly influential in shaping this development,but the decisive change for current and future land use on Ilha Grande has been the construction andpaving of the Rio-Santos road. This event dramatically shortened the distance to the two metropoli (Rio,São Paulo), and thus implied a significant revaluation to the island's territory, by making urbanrecreational uses feasible. In this sense, it is hard to imagine a scenario where caiçara slash-and-burnon the island survives on any significant scale: space has become too valuable to all stakeholders, andlocal labour now tends to find better alternatives to an extensive, low-productive and low-incomeactivity. Even if areas are protected from external take-overs and conversion, local dwellers willautonomously want to benefit somehow from the revaluation of the space surrounding them, whichdefinitely they cannot achieve on the basis of rotational slash-and-burn agriculture.

Tourism in Aventureiro is exactly an effort to benefit from the revaluation of space - and a quitesuccessful one, judged by the size of cash flows generated. The common hypothesis that 'backpackersleave no money on the island' is clearly rejected by our results for the village of Aventureiro. Campersspend little per capita, but their large numbers imply that net income is sizeable, particularly in a smallcommunity: tourism income per family is over US$ 10,000, and per-capita income is over US$ 2,000.The main income-generating element is the rent of camping spaces, which implies only negligible localcosts, and thus in practice becomes a financial transfer from tourists to residents. Food and beveragesales as well as boat transport are additional, complementary elements. In addition, the fact that income

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62 Even under the best imaginable circums t ances (dense stands of commercial palm trees, extreme marketcloseness, specialised producers), Anderson and Ioris (1992) found an average income of about US$ 4,000per family, which is much less than the US$ 10,000 found in the present study.

63 For instance, it was mentioned that wooden miniature ships of good quality are occasionally fabricated inthe village, but at present only for domestic use.

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is almost exclusively generated by national tourists underlines that Northern tourists are not aprecondition for making nature tourism pay off locally.

No other productive activity in Aventureiro can compete with the income generated by tourism. Fromour local tourist survey, tourism income on Ilha Grande is found to be conditioned by environmentalquality in general, and by the conservation of an integral forest cover specifically. Finally, tourism as aforest-related service has a good income potential in areas accessible from urban areas in developingcountries. The size of income is clearly superior to that of other, traditional, subsistence-oriented forestuses (plant and animal extraction). In parenthesis, it is also higher than any of the income figuresreported for the extraction of non-timber forest products in case studies elsewhere in Brazil, notably inthe Amazon.62 In fact, higher income from tourism has accelerated ongoing substitution of some 'inferior'uses of forest products on Ilha Grande (firewood, resins, medicinal uses) - 'inferior' in the sense thatthey demand much labour time for a limited product value.

Although local tourism income is already high, there would in fact be various options available to raiseit further. The most obvious opportunity for villagers would be to invest in larger boats in order toaugment the participation in the externally dominated tourist-transport business. Other options wouldlie in tourist services, e.g. as local hiking guides (in case that tourist access to the Reserve is legalised)or handicraft sales, where some traditions pre-exist.63 On the other hand, with the rapidly augmentingflow of income from existing sources, one may doubt that sufficient incentives exist at present for adiversification of tourist products and services by local residents.

Strategically, more important than promoting higher local income would be an effort to safeguardminimum sanitary standards on camping grounds. This investment should be paid by the high currentprofits of the ground owners. The unclean conditions in the village during tourism peaks are at presentto the detriment of both tourists and residents. Regarding negative environmental and cultural impactsin Aventureiro, these seem somewhat over-stated in previous studies, and generally appear to betemporary. At least, there is no doubt that Aventureiro residents in general view tourists, if clearly notwith passionate affection, so at least as a highly welcome business object. They fear that externalintervention of the 'carrying-capacity' type, imposed by the municipality or by environmentalists, maydeteriorate or even destroy their business.

The argument which I sustain more generally for Ilha Grande is that 'tourist carrying capacity' is anoutdated criterion, not applicable to the Ilha Grande case; it is a dubious indicator for decision making,and a concept which it would be impossible to implement efficiently on the island. It is also argued thattourism environmental impacts are largely unknown, but that they probably are more significant for the

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fragile marine than for the terrestrial environment, and more critical for luxury tourists (that mainly usethe sea) than for campers (that mainly stay on land areas). Littering and waste water, two of the mainproblems raised in the tourism plans, are probably quite seasonal, occurring in peak periods, and maylargely be overcome by making the necessary investments.

A conceptual distinction between 'environmental deterioration' (a lasting change in ecosystem functions)and 'aesthetic deterioration' (a mostly transitory change in the tourist's perception) of the island'sdifferent sites should be made, as the indicators for the two concepts will suggest quite different policyresponses. In spatial terms, a zoning of the island would be a useful tool that would allow for the paralleldevelopment of ecotourism and low-income 'sun-and-beach' tourism. Finally, most attention should begiven to the threat of 'privatisation' of Ilha Grande by land speculators and to constructions that fragmentand permanently destroy the perception of the island's landscape - in tourism terms, the latter was foundto be the most important source of benefit.

It is important that low-spending tourists are not precluded from the local 'eco'-concept, that ecologicaltourism does not become for the elite only. One reason is that the native islanders, the caiHaras, havelittle options for participating in a highly sophisticated, elitist tourism product. For them, the 'tent rentalspace' concept, practised in Aventureiro as well as in Abraão, is the most realistic basis for makingmoney from tourism, at least in the short run. A second reason is the significant welfare loss that wouldoccur to those urban low-spending tourists that are denied access to the island: their 'economic vote'may be quite limited, but there is clearly a social dimension that would speak against their exclusion.

This argument refers fundamentally to rights, fairness and egalitarian principles, but there is also a morevisionary, strategic element to it. Many of those university-student campers that today consider everycentavo that they spend on Ilha Grande will soon become professionals and decision makers, also inareas that involve natural resource management decisions. Access to the marvellous nature of a placelike Ilha Grande also provides some environmental education; it enhances the ability to appreciate anddevelop sensitivity towards nature. Personally, I think this 'externality' represents a human quality to thebenefit of society as a whole; it is an investment in the ecological consciousness of the future generation.

Indeed, most young tourists in Aventureiro accepted a long trip and high travel costs, principally for thesake of nature appreciation. They were surprisingly conscious about environmental problems, desiredto use nature more actively than currently possible (trails etc.) and, on average, they were willing to paythe same amount in fees for forest conservation as wealthier tourists in other parts of the island. In aperiod where both the Amazon and the Atlantic forest are facing rapid deforestation, it is important tobuild a future constituency in the Brazilian society for forest conservation. The well-preserved andaccessible green forests on the 'Big Island' are thus not only assets for present-day cash-flowgeneration; they are also opportunities for promoting more long-run objectives.

To what extent are the findings of this study applicable to a larger geographical scale - i.e., in order ofmagnitude, to all of Ilha Grande, to the coastal Atlantic forests, to the rest of Brazil, or to other forest-

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64 However, see Wunder (1999) for a case study from Ecuador with radically different tourism modes andpreconditions, but similar, positive conclusions on local income effects.

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oriented tourism sites in developing countries? It is obvious that the Aventureiro constellation of manytourists, few inhabitants, beautiful beaches and a well-preserved vegetation is particularly favourable toa high per-capita tourism income at the village level. In other parts of the island, several of those factorsare less favourable, while others (notably, access and transport time) may actually be moreadvantageous. The overwhelmingly positive evaluation of tourism’s local economic impact inAventureiro still represents a rare case in the tourism literature.64 This has to do with a limited amountof case studies, but it may also have to do with what I perceive as many studies' excessive focus on thedistribution of tourism-generated income, inspired by a dependency-school approach. To many localcommunities, absolute tourism income will be a much more interesting indicator, which they willcompare to alternative, pre-existing options of local income generation, rather than to what the averagetourist has paid for his trip in his city of origin.

For Ilha Grande in toto, the distinct characteristics of an island, the long periods of seclusion, aremarkable state of nature preservation and the sudden opening of access from and to the outside worldconstitute special features which also provide special opportunities. This scenario is highly favourableto the design of 'win-win' strategies, but the assumptions cannot directly be extrapolated to other naturalsites with prolonged and intense human impacts, e.g. in terms of deforestation and forest fragmentation.In terms of the cultural impacts from tourism, it also seems obvious that the detrimental impacts ofintroducing mass tourism would be much more pronounced in those areas of Northern Brazil that aredominated by large indigenous populations with limited previous contact to the market economy.

However, many features sketched in this study are thought to be increasingly relevant, not only fornatural sites in the developed coastal South and Southeast of Brazil, but also to other forested areas indeveloping (especially middle-income) countries that are more or less accessible from urban centres.For the local dwellers that live adjacent to those sites, some options for income generation will almostalways be available – the results in Aventureiro illustrate the huge poverty-alleviation impact, even fora simple type of tourism and tourists. The factors that generally drive the higher demand for recreationalbenefits from those forested areas are:

C a growing urban middle class with higher per-capita income and C a rising interest in nature; C an expansion of infrastructure and falling travel costs and, last not least,C ongoing processes of deforestation with agricultural conversion and ofC 'privatisation' (urban land purchases for elitist construction projects); both reduce the number of

attractive sites available to the public.

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