Locals call the Upper Navua River — which flows through a tropical canyon in Fiji — "the highway to our ancestors".
Kasimiro Taukeinikoro's company Rivers Fiji offers rafting experiences along the river, but as visitors arrive he asks them to treat the place with the same respect they would their own homes.
Concerned the area — located in one of Fiji's most valuable mahogany forests — would be compromised by logging or mining, Mr Taukeinikoro said Rivers Fiji convinced the Indigenous land-owning clans, the Mataqali, that low-impact tourism would be a better economic investment.
It was Fiji's first public-private conservation tourism area focused on sustainable tourism and creating economic opportunities for local communities.
"What we have here, it’s why the tourists come in the first place. They come because of our culture, they come because of our friendliness, they come because of our pristine environment," Mr Taukeinikoro said.
Tourism development has typically focused on coastal communities, but this initiative and others like it are providing an economic alternative to areas where mining or forestry would have been the only development option in the past.
Rivers Fiji guides tell visitors about the ecosystem, cultural traditions, heritage sites, and local preservation issues, and offer tourists the opportunity to understand daily life of Indigenous Fijians in the rural highlands.
Meanwhile, Rivers Fiji compensates landowners through employment opportunities, lease payments and protection of the area.
Why is tourism important in the Pacific?
Tourism contributes nearly 40 per cent to Fiji's GDP and employs more than 150,000 people both directly and indirectly.
Across the Pacific Islands, tourism is a core economic activity and creator of employment.
The border closures during the pandemic cost the region more than $1 billion in lost income according to Apisalome Movono, a senior lecturer in development studies at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Dr Movono said the pandemic laid bare the volatility, gaps and weaknesses of the tourism sector.
"People are trying to build resilience within the tourism system [for] when the next shock comes — and it will — and the frequency will increase, the volatility and the density of the storms will increase," he said.
"We need to be innovative, we need to think of how we can insulate, not just our golden goose, but also the many lives that tourism supports in the region."
Low-impact, sustainable tourism
Dr Movono said there were now calls for the sector to use the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink the entire tourism system, so that any new investment supports a recovery that delivers long-term benefits to local people and environments.
Last year, more than a dozen Pacific states and territories signed a regional commitment to promote sustainable tourism.
Its aim — to flip the narrative.
Rather than Pacific nations being seen as dependent on tourism, regional tourism itself depends on the Pacific and its people surviving and thriving, Dr Movono said.
As such, Pacific countries are calling for fairer and more meaningful relationships with tourism partners.
"After COVID-19 we've sort of realised in the Pacific … we're not tourism dependent countries, rather, tourism depends on us, our people, just as much as we depend on them," Dr Movono said.
"And so I believe that there is a shift in the Pacific in how Pacific leaders are viewing their tourism industries."
Palau pioneers conservation focus
In 2017, Palau began requiring tourists to sign a pledge on arrival promising to act in an ecologically and culturally responsible way during their visit.
Hawaii has since followed suit.
"He pilina wehena 'ole ke aloha honua (One's love for the planet is an inseverable relationship)," reads the homepage of Hawaii's Pono pledge website.
"I pledge to be pono (righteous) on the island of Hawai'i."
Tourists to Hawaii have been known to trespass and post photos to social media in places where they're forbidden, such as closed hiking trails on the island of Oahu.
Hawaii's passport pledge also includes, "I will mindfully seek wonder, but not wander where I do not belong".
So far, more than 22,000 people have signed the online pledge.
Last year, Palau launched the "Ol'au Palau" app which tourists use to "unlock experiences not by how much they spend, but rather how respectfully they act".
Points can be accrued on the app by activities such as using Palau's carbon calculator and reef-safe sunscreen, visiting culturally-significant tourism sites, eating sustainably-sourced local food and avoiding single-use plastics.
Rewards include access to parts of the island normally only for the local community, meeting elders and touring historic sites, visiting villages for taro patch tours, lunches with community members and traditional fishing at secret spots.
Ol'au Palau also highlights the importance of striking a balance between development and conservation.
"By launching Ol'au Palau we get to reward our most conscientious guests and protect our most highly-prized tourism asset: our pristine environment and unique culture," Alan T Marbou, board member of Palau Visitors Authority, said in a statement on the campaign's launch.
"The pandemic has provided our planet with a much-needed wakeup call and an opportunity to see what's possible when nature has a chance to rebalance itself."
As foreign dollars return to the Pacific, there's a growing movement to preserve and protect.
"This is our golden egg, it is why we are unique," Mr Taukeinikoro said.
"Our different landscapes and our culture which we are so proud of, and that's why we cannot afford to lose it."
