Biography

Rock Ethics Institute Faculty Fellowship Project

Inclusive Exclusion or Exclusive Inclusion? A Cross-cultural Analysis of the Ethics of Conservation Area Management 

ABSTRACT

Due to competing mandates to provide inclusive access to natural areas while excluding overtourism, crowding, and congestion, a need exists to bring the tools and procedural models of contemporary environmental ethics to this environmental management and policy dilemma. This project will examine these competing mandates at two scales: 1) an in-depth analysis overtourism growth dynamics in the Galápagos Islands, and 2) a comparative analysis of examples of ethical dimensions of visitor management policies in Galápagos and three additional contexts: the Panamanian National Park System, the US National Parks System, and the Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.  

Carter Hunt is an environmental anthropologist and associate professor at Penn State, where his research and teaching focus broadly on the social science of environmental conservation, with a particular interest in the relationship between tourism and protected areas on the social, cultural, and environmental well-being of surrounding regions.

His research is based on extensive fieldwork in Latin America over the past 20+ years. In his work he addresses how tourism influences biodiversity conservation, social capital, sustainable development, cultural justice, political empowerment, community institutions, and pre-existing livelihood strategies.

He has spent more than 30 months in the Galápagos Islands, where his current NSF-supported research brings an added human history and cultural heritage perspective to the robustly documented natural history of the archipelago.

At Penn State, he directs the Intercollegiate Minor in Sustainability Leadership (SUSLD) and the Dual-title Graduate Degree Program in Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Society (TREES).