Ecotourism is widely championed as a means of addressing some of the problems created by the degradation of resources and destruction of landscapes in the past half century through the untrammelled development of mass tourism. Yet in its rise to prominence the term ‘ecotourism’ itself has become so despoiled by unscrupulous operators and a gullible public, that its validity as a concept should be questioned. Social anthropology provides a holistic approach for representing environment, local people and tourists as interlinked components of responsible tourism in policy-making and planning.
