Ecotourism often operates on a “Field of Dreams” strategy: Build it and they will come.

Well, sometimes they don’t. And to complicate matters, every new enterprise seems to create another definition of ecotourism.

Small wonder the term has yet to make it into the dictionary—and that the ecotourism industry in Latin America, dynamic and promising though it is, remains very much a work in progress.

There is no shortage of evidence that ecotourism can achieve what has to be one of its most basic goals: the promotion of community development and conservation.

Consider the Alándaluz Lodge, an 8-year-old venture on Ecuador’s Pacific coast. The owners, an agricultural cooperative and an ecotourism consulting firm, have built a profitable resort that has encouraged conservation locally.

Starting with an environmental education center in 1991, the cooperative quickly discovered its organic agriculture projects were not self-supporting. So it expanded into tourism, creating a visitors’ hostel.

The lodge feeds its guests organic fruits and vegetables from its 790-acre (320-hectare) farm and wildlife sanctuary. It also is undertaking reforestation.

By building cabanas with bamboo-like caña guadúa and other local materials, Alándaluz organizers sparked a boom in similar low-cost, ecological construction of guest houses and family homes elsewhere in the country.

Meanwhile, their conservation practices—including waterless, composting toilets, re-use of grey waters on crops, and garbage recycling—served as a model for Ecuadorian municipalities interested in reducing waste.

Amid such successes, however, are ecotourism projects hampered by poor financing, strained community relations, marketing blunders or failure to emphasize conservation.

That’s the case despite strong overall ecotourism growth. The World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. says that while tourism worldwide is increasing at an annual rate of 4%, nature travel is gaining 10-30% a year.

Some ventures fall short because they’re developed in an office rather than in the field.

Beginning in 1991, the environmental group Conservation International promoted the development of the Scarlet Macaw Trail near the Tikal Ruins in northern Guatemala.

The plan was to bring international tour groups in for tropical forest trips, generating income for local residents and environmental programs benefiting the Maya Biosphere Reserve. The strategy, however, didn’t pan out; the Scarlet Macaw Trail never became part of international ecotourism’s beaten path.

So the project has been re-christened Caminos Mayas, and the U.S. organization, through its Guatemalan branch, Conservation International-Peten, has shifted its focus to the local backpacker market. Though visits have increased, the project has not become the community and conservation income-generator its organizers had envisioned.

Another difficulty facing the industry is that while many ecotourism ventures—like Conservation International’s—are guided by an environmental ethic, some are not. As a result, “ecotourism” is used to sell everything from community development to jet-skiing.

“People talk about ecotourism, but the fact is that the tourism industry is always looking for a quick buck,” says Doug Rhodes, whose Hotel Paraiso del Oso offers bird-watching and horseback riding in Mexico’s Copper Canyon.

Rhodes’ hotel has sewage treatment—a rarity in the Copper Canyon, even though international lenders and the Mexican government have targeted the area for ecotourism.

Says Rhodes: “Hotels throughout the Copper Canyon still lack waste treatment facilities. Some of the garbage is thrown into the canyon or disposed of in community wells.”

There are, to be sure, private and public initiatives to promote genuinely eco-friendly tourist operations. Such efforts are farthest along in Mexico—but a long way from fruition.

Private entrepreneurs set up the Mexican Association of Adventure Travel and Ecotourism, or AMTAVE.

Association president Marlene Ehrenberg says members must protect natural resources and offer some degree of environmental education. The association also checks to see they have such tourism necessities as clean kitchens and trained guides, she says.

Mexico’s tourism and environment secretariats, meanwhile, have agreed to collaborate on ecotourism development. The accord was reached in 1995, but it has been dogged by a lack of funding and by pressure from competing interests, says Aaron Gallego, technical secretary of the Environment and Ecology Commission in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies.

Says Gallego: “Ecotourism has an enormous potential to protect our ecosystems and generate employment and income, but it’s in semi-abandonment.”

More government initiatives are on the way, however. Since October, Mexican lawmakers have been holding forums aimed at developing regulations and fiscal incentives for the ecotourism industry.

Still, in Mexico as elsewhere, any such efforts require defining what does and does not constitute ecotourism—an elusive goal. A study of ecotourism policy in the Americas done for the Organization of American States found that of the 25 tourism agencies to define ecotourism, 21 used their own definitions.

And worldwide organizations such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Sierra Club and the American Society of Travel Agents have honed many different guidelines for eco-friendly travel.

The Environmental Conservation Tourism Association, Partners in Responsible Tourism and the Ecotourism Society, meanwhile, only require travelers and hosts to pay a membership fee. Their self-regulatory approach, though well intended, does not provide for auditing or penalizing members.

The absence of accreditation programs in the ecotourism industry has prompted some to suggest the creation of a third-party organization, such as those used to certify organic produce for the world market.

But others argue such a system would be unworkable because ecotourism is a social process rather than a commodity, one that would be exceedingly difficult to measure or regulate successfully.

“I only have one question about accreditation,” says Michael Kaye, owner of Costa Rica Expeditions, an adventure and nature-travel company in San José, Costa Rica. “Who will accredit the accreditors?”