Understanding Coupled Urban-Natural Dynamics as the Key to Sustainability: The Example of the Galapagos

Abstract

The Galapagos archipelago is arguably the world’s best-known example of a series of naturally evolving ecosystems where human intervention has been minimal and reasonably controlled since sustained human contact began over 500 years ago. With Darwin’s landing in the 1830s and the popularization of the fragile but charis- matic ecosystems described in his chronicles (Darwin 1839), interest in visiting the islands intensified. Nevertheless, it was only much later, as international travel became easier, that large-scale ecotourism took off.