galapagos at risk(英文全文-02)｜NPO法人日本ガラパゴスの会

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２．Galapagos is undergoing constant change

Galapagos is experiencing a period of accelerated change that began over 15 years ago (Figure 1). In economic terms, tourism has grown at 14% per year during the last 15 years (Epler, 2007). This extraordinary rate of growth has occurred despite the small increase in the number of tourism boats from 67 to 80 during the same period (Epler, 2007). Before 1998, the Galapagos National Park Service allowed smaller boats to increase their capacity to 16 passengers. This change partially explains how the total berth capacity grew from 1,048 to 1,805 in the last 15 years (Epler, 2007). Today, ships and boats are working more days (on average 60 more days per year); operators now work an average of 222 days a year (Epler, 2007). At the same time, the average number of days that a tourist remains in Galapagos has declined, but the major reduction in time spent in Galapagos occurred prior to 1991. These changes have allowed tourism to grow at an accelerating rate. Perhaps the best measure of the impact of tourism is passenger-days in boats and ships, which has increased by 150% from 145,408 in 1991 to 363,226 in 2006 (Epler, 2007).

Hotel-based tourism has grown at the same rate as boat-based tourism. In the last 15 years, the number of hotels has doubled from 33 to 65 and the number of beds in hotels has grown from 880 to 1,668 (Epler, 2007). In the same period, the number of restaurants and bars has increased from 31 to 114 (Epler, 2007). The markets available for hotels are limited because they cannot provide access to the majority of visitor sites (marine or land-based), except through island-based day trips.

Hotels now have almost the same number of available beds as boats, but they receive only 10% of the revenue that boats receive (Epler, 2007). This occurs because the majority of the hotels provide service to a market segment with lower purchasing power, including budget travelers, and because tourist volumes through hotels are much lower than in boats. Similarly, the growth of hotel-based tourism is tied to the growth in the numbers of land-based day operations. The owners of hotels recognize the need to either own day-tour operations or associate with operators running day tours.

The Galapagos National Park Service finds itself under pressure to release new tourist concessions. The driving force behind this pressure is the premise that these new concessions are necessary because they would increase benefit flows to local residents. Several groups are interested in these new concessions, including the hotel and fishing sectors, locally-based dive operators, outside investors and the existing tourism private sector seeking to increase economies of scale.

*1)Tourism is growing at an accelerated rate, which appears to be limited only by the capacity of the private sector to access markets, through the existence of guide controls, trails, itineraries and a limit on the number of tourism concessions (described in MacFarland, 2001).

Figure 1: Growth of the population in Galapagos and numbers of visitors to Galapagos

　To date, discussions about tourism growth have focused on the use of studies of "carrying capacity" of individual visitor sites as the basis for deciding on new tourism concessions. Carrying capacity studies examine the impacts of visitors at specific sites, but do not provide a strong technical basis for determining the impact of the total number of visitors in a larger system. Given that the most serious impacts of tourism in Galapagos do not occur directly, rather indirectly through the towns and increasing access to the islands, decisions related to new concessions should be made based on a more holistic analysis of the regional impacts of tourism.

　Increasing the number of concessions in Galapagos would increase short-term financial flows to residents, but would not necessarily contribute to long-term sustainability. Growing tourism through new concessions will lead to a more rapid cycle of growth that we already recognize as unsustainable. It is likely that there would be an increase in the transfer of concession rights from the original owners to those with economic power, exacerbating inequity in Galapagos.

　The vicious cycle of growth is reflected in Figure 2. The population continues to grow through migration, which leads to increased demands and pressure for jobs and access to resources. This leads to an increase in tourism and fishing, and ultimately a higher standard of living. This, in turn, increases the need for immigrant labor and further increases the population.

Figure 2: Cycle of growth in Galapagos

　The consequences of this cycle of growth for the biodiversity of the archipelago are well documented (Bensted-Smith 2001). Galapagos now has 748 species of introduced plants compared to 500 species of native plants. The number of registered introduced species in the archipelago in 2007 is 1,321, 10 times more than the 112 species registered in 1900 (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Totals of registered introduced species in Galapagos

　Up to 60% of the 180 species of endemic plants in Galapagos are now considered threatened according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. At least 490 insect species and 53 species of other invertebrates have been introduced to Galapagos; 55 of these species have the potential to cause severe impacts to native biodiversity. In addition, scientists have recorded 18 introduced vertebrate species, 13 of which are considered invasive. New vertebrate species continue to arrive and extremely invasive species may soon establish themselves in Galapagos with devastating results similar to the impact of the brown tree snake in Guam. Marine resources, including lobster, sea cucumber and grouper, have diminished precipitously. The Jessica oil spill in 2001 was also a consequence of the rapid economic growth in Galapagos.

　In the past, linkages between tourism, economic growth, local business development, immigration and public service demands, on the one hand, and invasive species, over harvests and pollution, on the other hand, have not been made explicit. However there are several studies that emphasize these links and demonstrate that they are cyclical (Kerr, Cardenas et. al. 2004; Taylor, Stewart et al., 2006; Cruz Martinez and Causton, 2007; Proano, 2006; Epler, 2007).

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