This essay will compare and contrast Sujata Narayan’s paper "Below the Surface: the Impacts of Ecotourism in Costa Rica" with Jennifer Talbot’s paper "The Tuareg People and the Air Tenere Conservation and Development Project: Niger, West Africa". Both of these papers examine similar challenges surrounding ecotourism activities in developing countries. However, the geographic, political, and economic situations of the countries have lead to considerably different conditions and thus different levels of success.

Costa Rica’s high level of biological diversity and social, political and economic stability have created excellent conditions for ecotourism development. Niger, however, does not have such favorable conditions. While Costa Rica has been referred to as the "Switzerland of Latin America" because of it social and political stability, Niger has had a civil war in the area of one of its largest tourist attractions. Because Costa Rica is both intercontinental and interoceanic it has very high levels of biodiversity, which are appealing to researchers and tourists. Niger, does not have as high levels of biodiversity as Costa Rica although its Air mountains do create a microclimate within the desert, containing several endangered species. Economically Costa Rica is in a more favorable situation too, for both investing in tourism infrastructure and generating domestic tourism. Costa Rica’s GNP per capita in 1992 was $2000 while Niger’s was only $220. Costa Rica attracts hundreds of thousand of tourists annually and generated $661 million in international tourist receipts in 1995 whereas the Air Tenere Reserve attracted several thousand tourists per year before the civil unrest and Niger’s international tourism receipts totaled 15 million in 1995. Costa Rica has 21% of its national area under protected status, which is equal to about 1,000,000 while Niger has a smaller percentage at 7.7% but a larger overall area (almost 10 million hectares) due to its larger size. Thus while the conditions for ecotourism in Costa Rica are excellent and those in Niger, less so, Niger does have some potential for smaller limited ecotourism if it is integrated with other activities.

In both cases there are similarities in the difficulties with ecotourism management. Both areas have problems with habitat disruption and litter. In both areas fragile sites of ecological and cultural significance have been degraded by unregulated tourism. Both areas have also shown that ecotourism is not benefiting locals sufficiently but that there are potential benefits in terms of economics and conservation through including local communities in conservation and ecotourism activities.

Ecotourism can offer opportunities of employment and can provide incentives for biodiversity conservation. Local people can provide food and lodging and work as guides. However, in the case of Niger, where the tourism potential is less and the region is more politically unstable, projects need to be sure to focus on other appropriate conservation and development activities in addition to community based tourism.