Eco-tour
COURTESY : tourismnotes.com/
Around the world, ecotourism has been hailed as a panacea: a way to fund conservation and scientific research, protect fragile and pristine ecosystems, benefit rural communities, promote development in poor countries, enhance ecological and cultural sensitivity, instill environmental awareness and social conscience in the travel industry, satisfy and educate the discriminating tourist, and, some claim, build world peace.
Ecotourism is a form of tourism that attempts to minimize its impact upon the environment, is ecologically sound, and avoids the negative impacts of many large-scale tourism developments undertaken in the areas which have not previously been developed.
History of Eco Tourism
The origins of the term ‘ecotourism‘ are not entirely clear, one of the first to use it appears to have been Hetzer(1965), who identified four ‘pillars‘ or principles of responsible tourism: minimizing environmental impacts, respecting host cultures, maximizing the benefits to local people, and maximizing tourist satisfaction. The first of these was held to be the most distinguishing characteristic of ecological tourism.
Other early references to ecotourism are found in Miller’s (1978) work on national park planning for ecodevelopment in Latin America, and documentation produced by Environment Canada in relation to a set of road-based ‘ecotours’ they developed from the mid-1979s through to the early 1980s.
Ecotourism developed ‘within the womb’ of the environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Growing environmental concern coupled with an emerging dissatisfaction with mass tourism led to increased demand for nature-based experiences of an alternative nature.
At the same time, less developed countries began to realize that nature-based tourism offers a means of earning foreign exchange and providing a less destructive use of resources than alternatives such as logging and agriculture.
By the mid-1980s, a number of such countries had identified ecotourism as a means of achieving both conservation and development goals. The first formal definition of ecotourism is generally credited to Ceballos Lascurain in 1987.
Definitions of Eco Tourism
According to Ceballos-Lascurain, ecotourism is the, ” traveling to relatively undisturbed or uncontaminated natural areas with the specific objective of studying, admiring, and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural manifestation (both past and present) found in these areas.”
Ecotourism Society defines ecotourism as,” responsible travel to natural areas which conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.”
According to the Ecotourism Association of Australia, ” ecotourism is nature-based tourism that involves education and interpretation of the natural environment and is managed to be ecologically sustainable.”
This definition recognizes that ‘natural environment’ includes cultural components and that ‘ecologically sustainable’ involves an appropriate return to the local community and long-term conservation of the resource.
According to Tickell, ecotourism is “travel to enjoy the world’s amazing diversity of natural life and human culture without causing damage to either”.
Ecotourism is ecologically sustainable tourism that fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation.
Types of Ecotourism
Fennell considers that ecotourism exits within the broader classification of tourism types which, at an initial level, can be divided into the following types:
- Mass Tourism
- Alternative Tourism
Mass tourism we saw as the more traditional form of tourism development where short-term, free-market principles dominate and the maximization of income is paramount. The development of the tourism industry was originally seen as a desirable and relatively ‘clean’ industry for nations and regions to pursue. This was particularly true in terms of benefits in foreign exchange earnings, employment and infrastructural development such as transport networks.
These days we are more prone to vilify or characterize conventional mass tourism as a beast; a monstrosity which has few redeeming qualities for the destination region, their people and their natural resource base.
This is not to deny that ‘mass tourism‘ has caused problems, because it has. There has, quite justifiably, been a need to identify an alternative approach to tourism development that lessens the negative consequences of the mass tourism approach.
Thus the ‘alternative tourism‘ perspective has become a popular paradigm. This alternative approach has been described as a ‘competing paradigm’ to mass tourism, but it can also be viewed as a complementary approach to tourism. That is, it is not possible to have ‘alternative tourism’ to.
So, the discussion returns to a semantic debate, perhaps it is best to accept that alternative tourism is a natural outcome of the maturing understanding of tourism development and its strengths and weakness. Fennell states that:
Alternative tourism is a generic term that encompasses a whole range of tourism strategies (e.g. appropriate, eco, soft, responsible, people to people, and green tourism) all of which purport to offer a more benign alternative to conventional mass tourism in certain types of destinations.
However, Weaver quite rightly points out that there are also many criticisms of alternative tourism. It is clear that just because alternative tourism has developed as a reaction to the negative consequences of mass tourism it is not necessarily less harmful or better than its alternatives.
Nature of Ecotourism
Tourism activity is expected to grow by 4.3% per annum in real terms between 2008 and 2017. Ecotourism or nature-based tourism has become the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry growing 3 times faster than the industry as a whole.
There can be no doubting of the increasing trends in environmental concern allied with the historically prevalent trend of travel as for, of escape to nature, driven by the pressures of urban living encourage people to seek solitude with nature, therefore, increasing the numbers of visitors to national parks and other protected areas.
There are a number of dimensions to nature-based tourism. All forms of travel to natural areas are not necessarily ecotourism, but this provides a useful step in differentiating nature-based tourism from ecotourism and gives us a number of levels at which to distinguish the relationship between specific tourism activities and nature:
- Those activities or experiences that are dependent on nature.
- Those activities or experiences that are enhanced by nature.
- Those activities or experiences for which the natural setting is incidental.
There are several classes of nature-based tourism, each utilizing a combination of these dimensions. Bird watching, for example, can provide a pleasant and relaxing holiday based around a general interest in nature and the environment. So that without the natural environment it would be difficult to carry out the activity.
Similarly, camping is an activity/experience which often enhanced by nature. Most people would prefer to camp in some type of natural setting rather than on the side of a busy road. Therefore, nature is an integral part of these experiences but not the fundamental motivation for them.
