This report will analyze the ecotourism industry in Costa Rica with an emphasis on the fragile balance between income generation and protection of natural resources that comes with being a top ecotourism destination.
For the past several generations, humans have been socialized into achieving one clear goal: make money and a lot of it. This has created numerous environmental problems, a lack of accounting for these problems, rare efforts toward conservation, and a strong mind set that short-term, quick profit approaches are effective means of achieving what one wants: money. Ecotourism is a potential way of solving some of these issues, while fulfilling that need to achieve profit.
However, whether directly or indirectly, the influx of tourists to Costa Rica and other ecotourism destinations has a tremendous impact on the natural, sociocultural, economic, and political capital of the nation. Tourists bring in revenue, but
their very presence in these fragile ecosystems can result in negative consequences for plants, animals, and people that live in these areas.