EnglishBy Jason G. Goldman
Later this month, more than 250 surfers from 52 nations will take to the waters of El Salvador to compete in the 2021 Surf City El Salvador ISA World Surfing Games. Meeting in the town of El Tunco, around 80 kilometers east of Los Cobanos on El Salvador’s Pacific Coast, the athletes will compete for the twelve remaining slots available for competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games, which have been postponed due to the pandemic. The Tokyo games will be the first ever to feature surfing as a sport.
This is the culmination of a plan envisioned by President Nayib Bukele, potentially the world’s first politician to make the establishment of a surfing industry a campaign promise. It wouldn’t be the first time the Central American country has tried to support a surfing economy. After what seemed like a promising start in the 1970s, El Salvador slipped into a civil war that lasted over a decade. Surfers began to return in the early 1990s after the war ended, but there was never a concerted governmental push to support the industry – until now. Indeed, the economics support it: in 2015, some 350,000 tourists visited El Salvador from the U.S., with nearly forty percent choosing the country because of its beaches.
Both the development of Surf City at El Tunco and the promotion of surfing tourism in El Salvador in general have the potential to be either a boon or a nightmare for coastal conservation and for biodiversity, and it is still too soon to know which version of Surf City the future might hold.
Though surfing is itself considered a “non-consumptive” nature activity, because nothing is taken from the ocean by the act of surfing, it can still have negative impacts.
Once a particular area becomes popular for surfers, all the trappings of human development can quickly follow: trash, roads, erosion, water pollution, light pollution, noise pollution, habitat loss, deforestation and more. Eventually, surfers will move on to a newer, cleaner, less crowded spot – and leave behind a mess. It’s a pattern that Surfer Magazine‘s editor-at-large Steve Barilotti called “surfer colonialism” in a 2002 article.
Perhaps the worst part of surfer colonialism is the loss of local identity as a culture becomes commodified into trinkets and souvenirs, and as McDonalds and Starbucks move in and outcompete local, family-run restaurants and other businesses. This can result in a loss of authenticity or, perhaps even worse, a sort of contrived, staged authenticity for the benefit of wealthy tourists. Indeed, small-scale fishermen in El Salvador are already feeling – and resenting – the impacts of the wealth and business interests behind the drive to establish a surfing industry there.
On the other hand, because the sport is so intimately tied to the ocean, surfers are in a unique position to drive sustainability and conservation efforts to protect the place they love. In part, that comes from demanding higher, stricter, and tougher environmental standards not just from the businesses they support – like hotels, restaurants, and other parts of the tourism industry – but from the countries they choose to visit as well. Surfing tourists can also opt to support businesses that make direct financial contributions to conservation initiatives, and that are owned and operated by members of local communities.
A sustainable surfing industry can also inspire the establishment of national parks and marine reserves in order to protect natural resources for human and non-human communities alike, especially if park fees or other tourist taxes can be levied to support the ongoing oversight and enforcement costs involved in maintaining a protected area.
And while surfer colonialism represents one vision for the infrastructure that follows tourism, there is another, more sustainable pathway wherein tourism stimulates governmental (and private) investment in improving sewage treatment, waste management, transportation, cellular and internet access, and so on. If managed thoughtfully, these sorts of investments can lead to a long-term improvement in quality of life for the people who live in a place like Surf City, rather than the reverse.
Finally, like other sustainable nature-based tourism activities, a surfing economy offers full- and part-time jobs to members of local communities, which can offer alternatives to unsustainable sources of income (whether legal or illegal) such as poaching, mining, or logging. Most importantly, a community-oriented, sustainable surfing economy can facilitate meaningful cultural exchange between hosts and visitors, and can allow communities to preserve and share their cultural traditions through the establishment of special events and festivals.
It is still early enough in El Salvador’s drive to create a surfing economy that the country can go down either a more colonial or a more community-oriented pathway. Through its partnerships with El Salvador’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, Paso Pacifico is working to ensure that the more sustainable pathway is chosen.
