Kommentar af Neil Webster, senior research fellow, DIIS
Oprindelige folk er det svageste led i værdikæden i Lower Omo Valley i Etiopien, hvor turister i dag overskygger regering og udvikling til gavn for de lokale. Det er der nemlig ikke meget af. Stedet skriger på en strategi for bæredygtig turisme.
If ever there is a need for a strategy for sustainable tourism that embraces development while respecting culture, then the Lower Omo Valley is crying out for such a strategy.
In 2 to 3 years it will be too late and that is a message to the government and its development partners.
The United Nations World Tourism Organisation defines sustainable tourism as tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.
This is interesting as it puts a focus on something we all do, but perhaps don’t think about enough.
Not surprising perhaps as it is holidaying after all and for some the more exotic the better.
The cultural tour in Ethiopia
Cultural is the description given to a drive to the Lower Omo Valley in south west Ethiopia as opposed to the more historical and scenic tours to the north or the geological experience of the Danakil Depression closer to Djibouti.
Eight indigenous groups comprising some 200,000 people live in the valley, for the most part pastoralists.
Here there is little by way of government services such as health clinics or schools.
The landscape seems attuned to the needs of wildlife safaris as in Kenya or Tanzania, but the story is that most animals fled to Kenya due to intensive hunting on the Ethiopian side of the border.
Of course what one person sees as over-hunting another can see as cattle protection; the number of Kalashnikovs and similar weapons carried supports both views.
Whichever, the weapons are more than symbolic, also being used in the sporadic conflicts that arise over cattle ownership and grazing rights.
Tourism as an income
In the late 1960s and the mid-1970s the government created the Omo National Park and then the Mago National Parka.
These provided the basis for a slow, but growing flow of tourists to the area with the main focus being the indigenous peoples and their cultural practices.
A Hama young man ’bull jumping’ with tourists in close engagement. Photo: Neil Webster
Culture had become something of a commodity to sell to tourists.
The Mursi decorate their bodies with white skeleton patterns, their faces as ornate masks.
The Mursi women cut and extend their lower lip away from the face after marriage and place a round clay decorative disc in the loop created.
Hama men leap across the backs of bulls in preparation for adulthood while women in the family receive whipped lacerations across their backs in a display of strength and solidarity to their male counterparts.
Daasanach people next to the Omorati River, previously pastoral, combine incomes from tourists with basic agriculture as they seek to move from pastoralism to agro-pastoralism, a transition the government is pressing more of these indigenous peoples to make.
Tourists come with cameras; they are the new local ‘tribe’. They jostle and press to get the best shot. 5 birr, that’s 25 US cents, is the repeated demand for each photo taken.
Men are in the majority amongst the tourists that arrive in the ubiquitous 4 wheel drive air-conditioned land cruisers.
Women are more often the focus of the camera and figure most in the descriptions found on the internet written by these intrepid tourists, who have ventured into Conrad’s ‘heart of darkness’, at least in their eyes and their blogs.
An absence of government for the(se) people
Where is the government? The park entrance fee and required park guide and armed guard are the most apparent representatives. They tend to be outsiders and fees and tips do not reach the communities it appears.
A local chief speaks of going to the government when there is hunger and being given some sacks of grain, but little more.
The government is now constructing a sugar refinery in the valley and preparing land for extensive sugar plantations and other commercial crops. In the border area with Kenya, gas and oil has been discovered.
The Gibe III dam will provide irrigation and electricity as part of this development, major access roads are under construction and the government points to the many jobs that will follow.
At the same time pastoral land will be lost, conflicts over the remaining land will increase and a growing dependency on tourism will occur promoted by international marketing aimed at bringing in dollars.
The indigenous peoples will remain at the tail end of this value chain, its weakest link with little representation, no voice and few if any rights.
See the 2012 Human Rights Watch report: ‘What Will Happen if Hunger Comes?
A strategy for sustainable tourism?
Development and change must and should come for such peoples and it will not all be welcomed.
At the moment the lack of respect that present tourists show towards these peoples and their cultures and the seeming lack of self-respect these peoples show for their own cultures are being compounded by the lack of respect shown by the national government for the indigenous peoples’ needs, interests and development.
Lower Omo Valley is not a cultural museum to be wondered at as long as it lasts.
Education, health and other changes that improve livelihoods do not have to destroy culture; culture is dynamic and continually reconstituted in new ways.
One only has to visit the Lower Omo Valley’s markets and see the diversity of ‘outside’ goods available and their incorporation into the indigenous peoples’ lives.
Experiences elsewhere have shown that cultural identities and practices can be maintained in ways that communities, their governments and the tourists can all gain from.
Commercial agriculture and gas and oil extraction in the Lower Omo Valley need to be part of this approach, not an alternative.
It requires transparency, dialogue, taking lessons from other cultural engagements with tourism and commercial resources, sharing the gains equitably and building greater accountability within and between the institutional actors involved.
DIIS står for Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier.
