Ecuador’s Agreement for Conservation and Tourism in the Galapagos Islands

Starting August 1, 2024, the Ecuadorian government will double the entrance fee for tourists visiting the islands in an effort to ease pressure on this unique collection of ecosystems. The Galapagos’ allure as the cradle of Darwin’s insights into natural selection continues to draw scientists to the volcanic archipelago. Located less than a thousand miles west of the South American mainland, this exotic evolutionary outpost is “Goldilocks distance” from the mainland: close enough for occasional wildlife like tortoises and iguanas to float across intact, while far enough away for populations to evolve independently.

New species are still being discovered, including the critically endangered pink iguana, which was only identified in 1986 and lives in a remote, high-altitude, active volcanic ecosystem on Isabella Island. A publication appeared in the journal Nature in February 2022 Heredity a new lineage of Galapagos giant tortoises identified from museum specimens and carcasses found in a cave on one of the islands.

There were no indigenous human settlements on the islands, and Ecuador claimed them as an overseas territory in 1832. Despite Darwin’s memorable visit in 1835 and the subsequent popularization of the islands for their unique ecology, their conservation value was difficult to monetize. Due to their lack of recoverable resources, Ecuador attempted to sell them to various countries in the early twentieth century. Some of the islands became penal colonies, while others were ravaged by feral goats and invasive plant species. The devastation caused by these practices led to a domestic environmental movement in Ecuador, which led to the islands being designated a national park in 1959.

The global environmental movement gained momentum after the Stockholm Conference in 1972, and the islands were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978 (the first in the world to be declared a natural heritage site). This put further pressure on the Ecuadorian government to implement conservation policies and limit development on the islands. The small settler population on the islands came into significant conflict with the Park Service, including a hostage situation in the 1990s in which settlers demanded higher sea cucumber harvest quotas from the Park Service.

With global interest in the islands’ tourism, the park service has since delicately managed economic activity for the island’s settlers who own properties prior to national park designation. The islands themselves are touted as a microcosm of sustainability initiatives, ranging from the world’s first fully “green” airport to ambitious archipelago-wide decarbonization goals.

There are ongoing concerns about invasive species and pests that are being studied on the islands. The government has instituted a strict quarantine system upon arrival, with customs checks meticulously enforced to ensure that no food is brought in. The main challenge of feral goats has been largely eliminated thanks to an innovative and sustained culling campaign that began on Isabella Island in 1997. First, herding techniques were used to gather the goats together using helicopters, and then they were shot with rapid machine gun fire to alleviate their suffering. However, this only succeeded in killing 90% of the goats, as they learned to associate the sound of propellers with impending death. Sterilized female goats (known as Judas goats) were then fitted with radio locators and scented with long-lasting hormones to make them appear to be in permanent heat. This false promise of reproduction also attracted goats that had previously been difficult to catch. Over the seven-year project, approximately 250,000 goats were culled. Now only the Judas goats remain.

While rigorous management of waste streams has kept marine macroplastic pollution in check on the islands, microplastic pollution in seawater is widespread and its impact on organisms is being closely monitored. Overall, the Ecuadorian government has done a remarkable job of upholding its conservation commitments to the Galapagos over the past decade. Despite pollution threats, tireless efforts by the park service and organizations such as the Charles Darwin Foundation have led to a revival of near-extinct species, such as the endemic tortoise species on the island of Espaniola. However, for a country still facing major human development challenges, conservation efforts inevitably require monetization and a balancing of trade-offs with other industry choices.

Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, recognized the need for short-term poverty reduction but also prioritized conservation. This led him to propose a grand land-based conservation deal. In exchange for not extracting oil from the biodiverse Yasuni National Park in the country’s Amazon rainforest, he asked for a commitment of $3.6 billion from the international community (half of what Ecuador would have realized in revenues from exploiting the resource at 2007 prices). More than $1.67 billion of this amount was raised largely from donations from Germany, Spain, France, Sweden, and Italy. However, the president decided to abandon the effort when a commission on the economics of financing concluded that insufficient funds had been received to offset the benefits of oil extraction.

During a field expedition to the Galapagos in March 2022, I had the chance to meet one of the architects of the Yasuni deal, as well as a previous “debt for nature swap,” Roque Sevilla Larrea. Mr. Sevilla has held many prominent positions in the public service, including director of the country’s forest service and mayor of Quito. He has strong environmental leanings, but is also a prominent businessman. His companies include the country’s largest tourism company, Metropolitan, which organizes expeditions to the Galapagos, and the only full-service resort in the archipelago. Given this broad experience in the public and private sectors, Ecuador’s current president, Guillermo Lasso, has also sought Mr. Sevilla’s advice on how to preserve cherished ecosystems like the Galapagos, while also helping the country develop at a time when it is struggling with massive debt. There is no doubt that at a time of high prices, oil revenues can help buffer Ecuador’s economy and provide more political space to promote conservation.

However, Mr Sevilla’s recommendations to the government focus on three key investment areas related to the food-energy-water nexus:

a) Developing voluntary carbon markets that benefit from the three main ecosystems in the country with high storage potential: i) tropical moist forests, ii) Andean paramo and iii) coastal mangrove forests.

b) Scaling up investments in geothermal energy in a country with huge volcanic activity, with the initial target of a 50 MW plant coming online in 2026. There are four large geothermal basins in the country that have not yet been exploited for this purpose.

c) Green hydrogen development using photovoltaic cells (as the country has the second largest solar potential on the continent after the Atacama region) and hydropower with technical and financial assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank’s Clean Energy Investment Mechanism. So far, Ecuador has developed only 40% of its hydrological potential in the river (which does not require large dams).

The success of these efforts will depend largely on how well they can be presented as a way to balance conservation and development. The conservation push is still strong among many indigenous communities in Ecuador, who also won a major lawsuit against metal mining development near the Colombian border.

As Ecuador clamps down on a wave of narco-violence with stringent measures and also faces a crippling drought, the Galapagos are a haven for the tourism industry. While some commentators have suggested that a green recovery is a “distant dream” for Ecuador, my field observations suggest more cautious optimism. The lessons the country has learned by prioritizing conservation in the Galapagos, while considering a range of green growth strategies with more conciliatory policies than many of its neighbors, bode well for its development path.