Celebrating the “aha!” in learning
Leon Mach ’05 didn’t travel much growing up. Family vacations to Ocean City, Maryland, were about as far as he went. But as he got further into his Economics studies on the Hill, he grew close with his Economic History professor, John Olsh ’67. “We had a lot of side chats, and he kind of encouraged me to study abroad,” Mach recalls. The world — and his future career — opened up to him when he spent the spring semester of his junior year studying in Australia.
“When I studied in Australia, I got really interested in surfing. I probably could have majored in it!” he says, laughing. Since graduation in 2005, Mach has done a little bit of everything, starting with a stint in Ocean City until winter chased him west to California, where he did a lot of surfing and took on some odd jobs while he figured out his next steps. He’s been on more surf trips than he can count, worked with Outward Bound, and founded a study abroad program called Sea State.
Now with a master’s degree in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development and a Ph.D. in Energy and Environmental Policy, Mach is an associate professor at The School for Field Studies in Bocas del Toro, Panama. He’s still chasing the highs of surf tourism, but doing it a little bit more responsibly — and teaching the next generation to do the same.
I was introduced to the idea by Dr. Olsh, and I ended up writing my Economics thesis on the topic. At that time, most of the literature on ecotourism was written about the Galapagos. I started to think about how that was such a fragile ecosystem, and it was heavily reliant on biodiversity. But the fact that more and more tourists were wanting to visit it was killing the goose that laid that golden egg. As I studied tourism more, and then studied in Australia myself, I realized how formative those experiences could be. I still work in study abroad and still study the impacts of tourism on remote communities and coastal towns, but it all started on the Hill.
In a lot of places in the world, tourism is one of the few options to bring in revenue from outside sources to enhance people’s quality of life. But often, people with capital from other countries will come in and make investments quickly to make large returns. That can tend to exclude local people from the economic development aspect, and degrade the ecosystems that people rely upon. Some of the biggest issues are not putting in proper sewage treatment, not having proper facilities to get rid of the plastic pollution that increases with visitation, and cutting down trees for development.
Ecotourism is all about trying to inspire business owners to follow the best possible practices in terms of local hiring, utilizing fewer water resources, and investing in renewable energy. If tourism’s not consciously thought about and planned out, it can really overrun some of the most beautiful places on earth.
It’s hard not to say Panama — my first surf trip here really sucked me in, but I’m a resident here now. In terms of travel, I’d have to say El Salvador. I met my girlfriend there and continue to work directly with the federal and local governments through a USAID-funded program to try and usher in sustainable surf tourism management plans in two coastal towns. It’s a place I have a long history with and care a lot about.
A lot of times people just book their travel based on reviews online. But I almost always call the hotel ahead of time, select hotels that are locally owned and operated, and try to talk to management about their sustainability initiatives. Even if they’re not implementing everything yet, you can get an idea about their passion for sustainability and know their hearts and minds are in the right place.
“I can’t help but think of the therapeutic aspects of being outdoors. Being immersed in an ecosystem and playing and having fun is so incredibly important to my mental health and well-being, and more and more people are seeing that light since the pandemic. It doesn’t have to be surfing a big wave — even having forests that we can walk through that are undisturbed and have biodiversity in them is huge. You can’t have personal mental health or well-being benefits from nature without having spaces where you can be immersed in it and appreciate it. I worry that we’re dramatically losing our access to those areas, and we need to fight for them.”
— Leon Mach ’05 on environmental wellness