Abstract
This chapter explores the proposal to develop a new reserve in the Maya Biosphere Reserve financed by Mirador Basin tourism as it has been presented to the public throughout the years. This alternative vision for conservation and development was initially presented through Alfonso Portillo’s 2002 Presidential Decree and more recently to Bill S-3131, which was presented to the US Congress in 2019. This chapter explores the contents of these plans, how they are promoted and the critiques against them. Through analysis of the narratives used to make the case for Mirador Basin tourism, this chapter argues that their intersection with global discourses on saving tropical forests makes these narratives more trustworthy to Euro-American publics than to local concessionaires.
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Notes
- 1.
LiDAR (laser imaging, detection and ranging) is a method with multiple uses, which includes scanning and mapping the earth’s surface.
- 2.
Selva Maya is Spanish and means Maya Jungle, a reference to the term Maya Forest, often used by conservation NGOs (Ybarra 2012, 490).
- 3.
The journalistic article referenced here is Allen (2017).
- 4.
This publication has no page numbers.
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Ystanes, M. (2021). Narratives of Tourism and Conservation. In: (Mis)trusting Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89320-0_4
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