Development Tourism – Is it good?
My thoughts are, it’s not black and white – it’s not “all good” or “all bad”. In fact, personally, I find it mostly bad. Yet, it’s an industry I work in and believe in, because I think it CAN be done better.
Added my thoughts to the discussion started by Easterly’s criticism of MDV projects here:
http://tinyurl.com/kqu882
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When reading the first 25 pages of White Man’s Burden a few years ago I felt like Easterly was putting into words the exact problems I had seen working in development in Cambodia. In our tours at PEPY, we often have half of the travelers read this section detailing his planner/searcher mentality (with the other half of the group reading from Sachs and then discussing the differences). In those discussions, like in the above post, I tend to agree with Easterly often, but not 100%. Why? Because it’s not black and white – it’s complicated – and I think that some arguments from both camps completely disregard the majority of projects which are in the grey area. Continue Reading