Nature tourism should be a priority in the country. Brazil has so many breathtaking landscapes that are still little known to the international market and even to a large part of the domestic public. After all, there are more than 600 parks, 76 of which are national and more than 200 state. Of the national ones, 16 are recognized by UNESCO as world heritage sites. And it was to focus on this potential that the Semeia Institute carried out an extensive study over two years. The institute intends to take it to the executive and legislative powers of all units of the federation and to all candidates for government and the Presidency. A breathtaking task for no one to fault, for sure.
“During the electoral period, the topic of tourism in protected areas, such as parks, does not have the prominence of many other topics”, highlights Mariana Haddad, public policy manager at the institute. “But we want to put the issue on the radar of these leaders, these political agents, to show the positive impact that this can generate from the point of view not only of environmental conservation, but also of the economy”, he adds.
The document was divided into three axes: positioning ecotourism as a strategic and priority economic activity, improving infrastructure and services in Brazil’s parks and transforming the country’s parks into a source of pride.
The objective of the material is ambitious: to reach the year 2030 with national parks receiving 19.7 million visits annually, an increase of 57.6% compared to the 12.5 million recorded in 2024, the latest data available. “We are talking about an impact on tourism, accommodation, hospitality and food that could reach R$20 billion”, says Mariana.
To make this goal viable, Mariana points out that “firstly, it is necessary to treat the issue as a political priority, to ensure that decision makers have the political will to transform all this potential into reality, so that the parks are truly seen as strategic.”
And if given the current reality the proposal may seem visionary, she guarantees that the proposal “is super viable”. “We collect national and international cases, we bring data, it is not only viable from a strategic point of view, everything is described in the examples we have gathered”, he explains.
One of the cases highlighted in the study is the United States, whose 63 national parks received, in the same year of 2024, around 332 million visitors. “There, we have several examples of initiatives that encourage children and young people to get to know and fall in love with these spaces from an early age”, he says. The development of campaigns and initiatives that mobilize people to get in touch with nature is one of the main vectors of the study to boost ecotourism.
But the proposal does not rely exclusively on public authorities, which are known to be volatile when it comes to investments. “We want to bring third sector organizations, civil society organizations, collectives, in short, sectors that can strengthen this agenda”, he states, “because we see a window of opportunity that we cannot miss”.
Mobilization for visitation in itself, however, is not enough. One of the diagnoses that the study brings is the fact that “the parks do not have the infrastructure to receive visitors as they deserve to be received”, says Mariana. To overcome this problem, the text points to the importance of applying Law 15,180, approved in July last year, which allows the creation of financing funds for visits to conservation units with financial institutions recognized by the Central Bank.
The funds, according to the law, must be made up of 5% of the amounts collected in environmental compensation, donations from public and private, national and international entities, in addition to resources arising from legal transactions such as terms of conduct adjustment.
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