We have seen articles about Eco Tourism in Laung Namtha and United Nations Awards to this UNESCO project. However, we have been monitoring this eco tourism on site, and we do not agree with the image that has been painted of it, by people who helped set it up, helped operate it, and helped portray it to the public. We do not think it is an honest representation to the public or to the government of how eco tourism stewards local peoples and resources.

One immediate solution is if tourists go through a training period associated with learning about the indigenous, as an oath of responsibility. We don't see this going on in Luang Namtha yet, and we know for a fact that the Akha have little to say in western terms, about what is happening to them in that district. Attempts to say that the eco tourism projects are community based are not in fact the case. Not from the standpoint that an advocate would take. The people running the tourism are saying this, not outside indigenous activists or consultants from the indigenous community who have not been bought off.

What we have noticed is that organized eco tourism is being fed by tourist dollars, and that the organizers will force themselves into the villages no matter what the Akha have to say on the topic, no matter how unethical it might be. The next step to prostitution is logical. The situation is exploitive.

One of the noteable situations here in Laung Namtha is that the eco tourist promoters say that it helps the communities. But the NGO's have gotten fat off the moneys they were suppose to be investing in the communities. If that had been done correctly as western donors wanted, then there would be no excuse that eco tourism was needed to help the communities. Eco tourism is about the indigenous having to sell themselves one more time. Eco tourism does not happen in Akha villages like it would be controlled in a western city to which people visit. The city gets the profit, all of it. This is a very basic dishonesty that the white people running these projects do not want to admit.
It is about white racism, plain and simple.

Only growing international pressure will go past the tinsel of awards and address the rights issues invovled.

Further, the eco tourism projects have all been added by western people, and given to the Lao government, without alternatives having been presented.

Early on we complained to David Feingold at UNESCO about the terms of these projects and we complained directly to Mr. Tizard who was the UNESCO person working on the project in the field. We did not get replies, let alone having our concerns addressed.

To reiterate our points:
1. The Akha do NOT have control of the money or the project.
2. Many tourists expressed shame at how they were pushed into these villages.
3. Medical conditions were not taken care of in the villages.
4. Mosquito nets were not provided to the villagers but were provided to the tourists.
5. Better food is eaten by the tourists than the villgers can afford.
6. Tourists are allowed to go and visit lands where the Akha used to live because they are so beautiful, but the Akha were evicted from these lands and the eco tourist organizations make no point about this, or which side they are a part of. Reports state clearly how the evictions were conducted and mortality levels up to 50% of village populations in the first year after the evictions. A tourist in one of these eco tourism projects will learn nothing of this, the water closing in over the graves of so many Akha.

Tourism Activism for Human Rights
Tourism Concern
Tim T.E.A.M.

Agencies and Individuals
United Nations
Unesco
David Feingold
Mr. Tizard

A Report on Eco Tourism by Chris Lytlleton
While this report promotes tourism in the area as good, in fact the report says many things about what the Akha are not in control of, visible to the skilled observer. Moneys are put into a fund. Moneys for the Eco Tourism agencies and operators they get equally and immediately. The Akha do not get this. The fund was not designed by them but by the outside exploiting white people.