Ecotourism combines nature tourism with responsibilities for nature conservation and social development. It is seen by international conservation and development agencies and national governments as a means to foster sustainable development. Since its emergence in the 1980s, ecotourism now outpace the growth of the global tourism industry by three times. Growth however is uneven, with many developing countries still heavily dependent on funding rather than market revenues. This may be due to a lack of infrastructure, coordination, technical capability and alignment with the global ecotourism industry. The paper argues that globalization is the main cause of this uneven development as ecotourism is very much a product of globalization and so countries that are not fully engaged in the global k-economy will not be able to share the benefits of the industry‟ s development. To date, developing country ecotourism generally still tends to ignore the business aspect of ecotourism, focusing almost entirely on nature conservation, although there are increasing number of exceptions, eg Sabah, Malaysia. The paper proposes four strategies for developing countries, namely:

1. engage international NGO and technical expertise to (a) develop resources for ecotourism and (b) increase destinations‟ visibility through association with global knowledge networks; 2. develop products and services that meet the demands of the sophisticated ecotourism market; 3. help local and indigenous communities value and commoditise their heritage for ecotourism while safeguarding the communities against exploitation; and 4. local authority to bring together technical experts, businesses and local communities to plan, develop products and services, and develop infrastructure to facilitate ecotourism.