For the Peruvian travel industry, Machu Picchu is the goose that lays the proverbial golden egg, for although this South American republic offers the traveller the vestiges of over five thousand years of civilization and many of the world’s most breathtaking protected natural areas, it is this Inca city which people come to see.

And that is why a new bridge that will provide another access route to the ruins is causing such controversy in Peru.

The former mayor of the province of La Convencion, Fedia Castro, commissioned the construction of the bridge – opened this month – to link the impoverished village of Santa Teresa with Cusco and enable villagers to get their products out and to attract tourists in. The bridge cuts the journey time by road to Cusco from fifteen hours to just three.

Although the Carrilluchayoc bridge has the support of local government, who believe that the inhabitants of Santa Teresa have a right to benefit from tourism, it has been vehemently opposed by central government in Lima, the National Institute of Culture (INC) and the train company Peru Rail, a subsidiary of Orient Express.

David Ugarte, the director of Cusco’s INC, has said that he recognises local people’s need to access markets, but that he is concerned about the bridge’s possible negative impact on the nearby ruins of Machu Picchu. He points out that visitor numbers already surpass the carrying capacity of the ruins, and that if more visitors are able to access the site by road, then the UNESCO World Heritage Site will be swamped by tourists.

Currently, access to Machu Picchu is limited to those who hike the three-day Inca Trail or take the spectacular four-hour train ride from Cusco.

And therein lies the controversy. For although on the surface the issue of the bridge would appear to reflect the perennial concern of the travel industry worldwide - the need to strike a balance between tourism and conservation - there are other issues bubbling below the surface, just as there always are when huge amounts of money are in question.

Those who support the bridge point out that Peru Rail currently enjoys a monopoly on travel to Machu Picchu, and that the company stands to lose its multi-million dollar advantage if backpackers are able to take a local bus to Santa Teresa and then on to the ruins. As Cusco’s regional president, Hugo Gonzales points out, “Peru’s constitution prohibits monopolies, but Peru Rail has a monopoly because 92% of tourists who visit Machu Picchu go there by train”.  

Machu Picchu is no longer a lost city: local travel companies currently take around 2,500 people to the ruins each day, and many of them would like the opportunity to double that number. Conservationists point out that such human traffic will endanger the site over the long term, and are demanding that controls be tightened, while locals are indignant at what they see as huge profits for foreign companies like Peru Rail, while the villagers of Santa Teresa live in poverty.

But despite its opposition to the bridge, the government in Lima has done nothing to prevent its construction, and what is needed now is for all sides in the debate over the bridge to come together and establish measures to protect the Machu Picchu archaeological site and the 32,592 hectare wildlife sanctuary which surrounds it.

The construction of the new bridge has merely highlighted issues which already threatened Machu Picchu and many other World Heritage Sites around the world, particularly in developing countries: the conflicts – and contradictions - between sustainable development, poverty, conservation and the right of local communities to benefit from the modern world whilst retaining their traditional way of life.

It is up to us all to find a balance between the inevitable advance of consumerism and the need for conservation, and to understand that if those of us who live in the west –as well as those western companies who invest in poorer countries - cannot understand the need to adjust our expectations accordingly, then we have no right to expect some of the most disadvantaged communities on Earth to do likewise.