{"id":87,"date":"2020-04-02T16:06:37","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T20:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/patagonia\/?page_id=87"},"modified":"2020-05-11T18:17:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T22:17:42","slug":"mina-t","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/patagonia\/mina-t\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable Tourism – Mina T"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h3>\n

Tourism has been on the rise in recent years, and more people are traveling to national parks and other nature-rich destinations<\/p>\n

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Venice (picture taken from The Times)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

as the tone around climate change becomes more and more alarming over irreversible human industrialization.\u00a0 Tourism now makes up about 10% of the world economy, and new tourist hotspots like Iceland praise the tourism industry as their \u201csavior\u201d (Kummerer) while tourist-destination veterans, Such as Venice and Spain, attempt to curb tourism to give back jobs to their local and seasonal workers (Crabtree).<\/p>\n

Patagonia represents the intersection of the boom in nature conservation awareness and popular destinations, providing us with a unique perspective into the effects of modern tourism on local regions, including the environmental impact of tourism.<\/p>\n

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Number of Tourists (from Our Wold in Data website)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perceptions of Patagonia<\/h3>\n

Patagonia is a region shrouded in mystery. Few people know the exact location. In the 21st century, most people probably know the company Patagonia<\/strong><\/a> better than the actual place. Founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, picked the name for this very reason:<\/p>\n

“To most people, especially then, Patagonia was a name like Timbuktu or Shangri-la\u2014far off, interesting, not quite on the map. Patagonia brings to mind, as we once wrote in a catalog introduction, “romantic visions of glaciers tumbling into fjords, jagged windswept peaks, gauchos and condors.” Our intent was to make clothing for those rugged southern Andes\/Cape Horn conditions. It’s been a good name for us, and it can be pronounced in every language.”<\/p>\n

\u2014Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing<\/em>, pg. 38<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These emotions evoked by the name Patagonia can be traced back to “the result of the intervention of a sole individual, the British naturalist Charles Darwin<\/strong><\/a> … Darwin established a compelling repertoire of images and tropes that has ruled the system of representations of Patagonia until today” (Nouzeilles, 5). In his\u00a0Voyage of the Beagle<\/em>, Darwin describes Patagonia as a desolate land where \u201cthe hour of life has run its course\u201d (Darwin, 166). This perception made a lasting impact with the rest of the world, and until Bruce Chatwin came along in the 1970s, Patagonia for the outside world remained Darwin’s Patagonia.<\/p>\n

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Photo taken by Jerzy Orzechowski, found on Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Increasing Tourism in Patagonia<\/h3>\n

Over the years, Patagonia has changed from this \u201csavage land\u201d imagery with the introduction of sheep farming, but there are still very few people living in the region, and, until In Patagonia<\/em> by Bruce Chatwin<\/a><\/strong> pushed Patagonia into the eyes of tourists, the region was not well-known in other areas of the world. As Chatwin\u2019s journal brought Patagonia into the tourism industry and Chouinard’s company brought the name Patagonia to regular people outside of Chile and Argentina, accessibility increased and more people began to travel to Patagonia for leisure. What started as a location for hardcore outdoor enthusiasts\u2014mountain climbers, rock climbers, and more\u2014has turned into a hot spot for tourism, especially among the environmentally conscious. In recent years, the expansion of Patagonian tourism has also impacted Antarctic tourism<\/a><\/strong>, where we see rising numbers almost every season.<\/p>\n