ABSTRACT
Ecotourism in the same place as extraction sites, oil pipes, or open-pit mines sounds like a strange, contradictory proposition. And yet this contradiction abounds in empirical reality: the ‘protected’ Campo Ma'an National Park is being developed for ecotourism by the Cameroonian Ministry of Tourism, 1 six miles from the Chad—Cameroon oil pipeline; there are indigenous eco-lodges right in the middle of Ecuador's infamous ‘oil patch’; 2 in Northern Russia we find lakefront eco-destinations literally minutes away from dimension stone quarries; 3 Luangwa National Park, one of Zambia's prime ecotourism destination's, continues to face possible oil exploration; 4 the British oil and gas company SOCO recently received oil prospecting concessions inside the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo — an ecotourism destination, and home to a population of endangered mountain gorillas; 5 and in Swaziland, there is an iron ore mine sitting in the Malolotja Nature Reserve, a World Heritage Site that is key in transboundary ecotourism developments along the border with South Africa. 6
