Brazilian Post-Graduation in Tourism and Ecotourism as a path to Sustainability

Abstract

The impacts of ecotourism are directly related to the planning of the activity.  As such, its sustainability depends, at least to a degree, on academic and scientific knowledge on the subject. This work aims to verify if the well-known unsustainability of ecotourism in Brazil stems from the limited number of academically qualified professionals capable to plan and implement the activity in the country. The methodological procedure followed in this article is based on the presentation of a panorama of the Brazilian postgraduate programs in (eco)tourism (including master and doctoral programs in the field, with identification of the disciplines offered and topics covered) and the incidence of academic-scientific works on ecotourism in the country (including dissertations and thesis, research groups of the National Council for the Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq and articles published in scientific journals accredited by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - CAPES focusing on Brazil). We found that the number of journals, postgraduate programs, disciplines and scholarly dissertations focused on ecotourism is extremely limited. Thus, the analysis of the current panorama allows concluding that the unsustainability of ecotourism in Brazil is related to the mentioned limitations. As such, it is urgently necessary to increase the number of postgraduate programs in (eco)tourism and to improve their geographical distribution in the country, being fundamental that the existing and the new post graduation programs include in their pedagogical projects courses that contemplate ecotourism related topics. These two actions will certainly boost research in ecotourism, which is not very significant nowadays in the country, promoting the sustainability of the activity.