Environmentally induced displacements in the ecotourism–extraction nexus

Abstract

Around the world, we increasingly see the often-deemed incongruent activities of ecotourism, associated environmental conservation and natural resource or fossil fuel extraction happening in the same spaces, often supported by the same institutions. Rather than being incongruent, however, these seemingly uncomfortable bedfellows are transforming spaces, livelihoods and social, political and environmental geographies in tandem through what we call the 'ecotourism-extraction nexus'. Drawing on case studies from around the world, we show that physical, symbolic and historical aspects of environmentally induced displacements are an integral part of these transformations, though often in less than straightforward ways. The paper concludes that environmentally induced displacements are a key mechanism to understand why these seemingly uncomfortable bedfellows in empirical reality and within a broader context of capitalist modernity go together surprisingly well.