What is Ecotourism
The concept of ecotourism holidays emerged from the nature based holiday market over the past 20 years or so. Thoughtful nature lovers and tour companies became concerned to ensure that their holidays were not putting environment and species at risk. A question of not killing the goose that lays the golden egg, really.
Over time a greater emphasis was placed on the impacts of tourism on local people as well as environment and species. While this was in part an overdue recognition of tourism impacts on local communities, it also acknowledged that the survival of habitats and species is mostly in local people’s hands, and that they need to be able to derive real benefits from their environment if they are to be conserved.
There is not a common universally accepted definition of ecotourism but one of the most widely quoted is that of The International Ecotourism Society -
Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people.
Sadly many unscrupulous businesses exploited the ecotourism trend by ‘greenwashing’ their products. Media headlines such as ‘ecotourist or ecoterrorist’ reflected the growing concern that companies were attracting larger number of tourists to fragile ecosystems with little or no regard for local people or the environment.
While attention needs to be drawn to these businesses and they need to change their practices, it is worth remembering that mass tourism accounts for far greater negative social and environmental impacts than ecotourism, and that this generally receives far less publicity than the relatively small numbers of misguided ‘ecotourism’ companies.
Responsible travel and responsible tourism is different from ecotourism in that it acknowledges that any form of tourism – and not just tourism to natural areas – can help improve tourism for the benefit of tourists, local people and the environment.