Environmental recreations in relation to cultural and nature tourism in Ecuador: local actors, economic agents, administration and tourists

The project we present aims to analyze: 1. The different environmental recreation processes experienced in the Urban Center of Cuenca and the Archaeological Area of Ingapirca, based on tourist activity. 2. The social, political, and environmental consequences of these processes. This analysis will allow us to deepen local strategies when investigating new paths that contribute to the empowerment of sustainable tourism, in which social profitability does not necessarily have to be contradictory with economic profitability. To carry out this project, an interdisciplinary team will have to be constituted with members from different areas: Anthropology, Sociology, Ecology Tourism, Economics. This fact guarantees not only the viability of the project, but also the integral analysis of a reality that is usually analyzed in a plot. The project contemplates the analysis of a tourist space. The selected areas, and the reasons for their selection (which will be detailed more priority) respond precisely to the diversity of situations in which tourism activity has become one of the central axes from the socioeconomic, cultural, political, environmental point of view. The project presented provides some novel aspects since it analyzes together, both the transformations that have meant novel aspects for the development of tourism activity, and the transformations that have meant this type of activity for local actors (who have seen one or another forced to adapt in a reality). Likewise, changes in social, economic, cultural, political and environmental relations generated by the activity. The project will have the participatory character among the actors involved in the various tourist spaces chosen: community, private companies, public institutions, tourists, etc. If this project is approved in this first phase, there are the conditions for it to be approved as part of a comparative study of environmental recreations between Ecuador and Spain in similar contexts, where Spain will investigate environmental recreations, in the Urban Urban Centers of Granada and Seville. In addition, a second phase is expected in the following areas: Environmental Recreations in environmentally degraded areas, in Spain the Observation Unit will be the mining basin of the Red River in the province of Huelva and in Ecuador the Zaruma mining area. Environmental recreations in agribusiness contexts in Spain; The observation unit in Spain will be the regions of Alpujarra (Granada) and in Ecuador, the Tarqui agroganadera zone, specifically where the Kuchiwaira tourism project is located. 4. Environmental recreations in coastal spaces; The observation unit for Spain will be the tuna coast in Cádiz and the Cabo de Gata Coast in Almería and by Ecuador the coastal area of the province of Machala.

IV RESEARCH PROJECT COMPETITION AND I RESEARCH PROGRAM COMPETITION