Ky Miller

Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Dean, Erin

Area of Concentration

Anthropology and Environmental Studies

Abstract

Like many communities and conservation organizations around the world, Monteverde, Costa Rica is struggling to strike a balance between the risks and rewards of using ecotourism as a financial resource for conservation and sustainable development, which has often suffered from a mismatch between ecotourism’s vision and practice. In this thesis, I assess how communities and conservation organizations economically dependent on ecotourism engage in debates regarding its value as a biodiversity conservation strategy and livelihood basis during the COVID-19 pandemic. I also examine how COVID-19 has affected conservation organizations’ protected area management strategies and engagement with nearby communities. By drawing on the results of four months of remote community-based participatory research as an intern with the Monteverde Institute and 14 long-form, semi-structured interviews conducted in English and Spanish with community members (n=6), Institute staff (n=4), and conservation organization staff (n=4), I place participants’ shifting and sometimes conflicting views surrounding ecotourism’s value in conversation with one another to situate Monteverde’s relationship with ecotourism and conservation during COVID-19 in the broader, global context of ecotourism-dependent communities’ and conservation organizations’ struggle to navigate the costs and benefits of integration into global markets through tourism. I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a revelatory crisis that has laid bare Monteverde’s overdependence on ecotourism and the dangers therein, but that the pandemic can serve as a catalyst for the community to chart a future for convivial, community-based, and resilient conservation in an era characterized by neoliberal conservation strategies and rapid global change in the form of both health crises and climate change.

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