Mountain Protected Areas and Ecotourism for Sustainable Development: A Case Study of Ecuador

Abstract

Protected areas are essential for the conservation and management of biodiversity and mountain ecosystems that now enhance existing landscapes. The objective is to analyze the scope of conservation of biocultural diversity and the local situation of protected areas and their impact on ecotourism in Ecuador through the analysis of the information collected through literature review, anecdotal observation, and critical discourse analysis. Aspects on landscape change, protected areas’ policy and management, and ecotourism in mountain areas are described. Finally, the study concludes that the mountainscape linked to the boom in ecotourism and the enhancement of natural and cultural resources is currently a reality supported by the different local development policies. Likewise, a more adapted administration to increase the accessibility of the mountain landscape could generate benefits by mobilizing more local people near tourist attractions, including tourists who could further support the conservation of protected areas by becoming stakeholders of the hybrid culture-nature socioecological system worth protecting.