Resumen

MARTINEZ-BERNAL, Liven Fernando; CARO, Ana Lucia; TORO CALDERON, Javier  y  LEON GONZALEZ, Carmelo Javier. Tourism in Postconflict Colombia: Environmental Impacts and Contributions to Local Development. Estud. perspect. tur. [online]. 2020, vol.29, n.4, pp.1028-1056. ISSN 1851-1732.

The end of the armed conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Colombian government in 2016 has meant an impulse of tourism, making it to become one of the economic activities that contributes most to the country's economy, especially in areas that were isolated by the conflict. In this scenario of peacebuilding, the national government has proposed the realization of policies focused on the promotion of tourism, with Ecotourism being one of the most notorious modalities, especially in protected areas such as the National Natural Parks of Colombia. Due to the high expectations generated by the promotion of tourist activities in these areas, it becomes necessary to evaluate its role in local development and its impacts on the interior and exterior of these natural areas. To this aim, four protected areas were selected for the application of of an evaluation methodology based on network analysis. This methodology allowed to evaluate the impacts through the causal relationships that occur between human activities and changes in the environment, finding out that the most significant impacts inside the parks are those related to soil compaction, loss of vegetal cover, the chasing away of fauna and the alteration of the quality of the superficial water. However, outside the parks there are generated important changes in the economic activities, the acceleration of urban expansion, the stimulation of the local economy, the change in the supply of local goods and services, and the withdrawal of other activities such as agricultural production.

Palabras clave : post-conflict; ecotourism; environmental impact assessment; modeling; network analysis..