Ecotourism, what is this word that is popping up all over the world as we try to stop the ever accelerating degradation of our natural environment? That is not such an easy question to answer, many definitions have been given and they are nearly all correct in their own way. One that springs to mind as not being an apt definition was the bus labelled Ecotour leaving Sydney Airport which visited a couple of theme parks, when the driver of the bus was asked how it was an Ecotour, his response was that it was an economy tour of the theme parks in the Sydney area.
In short, as we see it at EcotourismNZ, an Ecotourism Operation would be striving to
- improve the experience of the tourist by having smaller sized groups, include an interpretive dimension to bring the site to life, in short, the stories of the land need to be told
- the negative impact on the environment is minimised and hopefully we can involve tourists in the rejuvenation of the site they are visiting.
- ensure the benefits of having tourists visiting an area is beneficial to the local community through employment and profits going back to improve local services. A great example of this is in Costa Rica (http://www.american.edu/ted/costtour.htm)
- Have some engagement with the natural or heritage environment whether it is walking along a forest track, paddling a kayak along a pristine West Coast river or visiting an old settler’s cottage and imagining how life was for them.
We have all these stipulations as to how to behave as Ecotourism operators and this can be a bit daunting, examples of this may be the lack of recycling available on the West Coast, does this mean that all operators on the West Coast are not true Ecotourism operations, maybe, but do we need to be so purist in the early stages of the industry? We need to welcome tourist operators aspiring to be Eco sensitive and network together to find ways of minimizing our negative impact and not bash those that don’t quite make the grade first up.
The Government agency that is charged with administering many of the sites we visit with our clients is of course the Department of Conservation (http://www.doc.govt.nz/). They need to have a long term view of the DOC estate and this can put them at odds with many operators who are turned down for an application that appears to be sound. Some say that DOC have some people who are a bit vehement and anti-business and in few cases this may be true, but a majority of the time they are just following their brief from the government who also have a responsibility to future generations.
The more we work with the DOC, the stronger that relationship becomes and we need to forgive them if we don’t agree with all their decisions as they are not about to go away.
