Ecotourism in Amazonas: Future Prospects through Senarios

In its concept, Ecotourism generates issues of concern in a world that is growing more aware of its economic, social and environmental crises. As such, it requires alternative strategies to generate economic efficiency, environmental conservation and social inclusion to ensure competitiveness in a context of rapid and profound world changes. The state of Amazonas is known as a National Reference in Ecotourism. Thus, it is the main objective of this study to show scenarios built for the future of ecotourism in the Amazonas Tourism Hub, which is made up of 14 municipalities (15.3% of the state), 10 of which were chosen for this analysis. This hub has a large concentration of Conservation Units, forming the largest protected area (5.7 million hectares) on the planet (Proecotur, 2009). For our methodology, we used the Godet prospective technique to build these scenarios. This model attempts to produce reflections on the future of its local ecotourism in order to identify public policies consistent with sustainability. The results have pointed to three scenarios: "Rational Optimists (A)", "The Uirapuru Song (B)" and "Ajuricaba (C)". We have found positive influences in the scenarios in spite of shifts between uncertainties and risks. In a strict sense, there is no ecotourism activity as such in Amazonas since its activities are still in a disordered stage of inception and are driven mainly by market opportunities, which is the prevailing view especially among the administrators involved in its planning. On the good side, these scenarios indicate activity growth in the coming years, although its uncertainties and risks need to be resolved by public policies in the sector.