| The Day12
Project |
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Sustainable Tourism
...change the way you travel |
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| as
backpackers we have
long been proud of the fact that mass-tourism has a greater impact
on the world than we do, and rightly so; backpackers generally tend
to stay away from the large resorts, and because we try to get off
the beaten track our tourist dollars benefit those outside the more
well-trodden parts of the world. Unfortunately,
our numbers mean we are having a profound effect on the places we
visit, and in 2007 the 119,000 British
backpackers who flew to Australia created
a sobering 480,000 tonnes of CO2
through their flights. |
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5, easy steps
1 Fly less
a round-the-world flight creates FOUR TONNES of CO2
2 Buy locally
buy locally and make sure your money stays in the local community
3 Shop sustainably
only by souvenirs from sustainable resources
4 Volunteer
spend some time working with a local charity
5 Ask a local
Ensure you tour operator, dive guides or trekking guide cares as much about the local environment as you do
top
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| When
tourism and its environmental
impact is discussed in the media, an 'industry spokesperson' will
appear to reassure us that everything is being done to blah, blah,
blah... but the 'tourist industry' is not an
IATA or ATOL accredited travel
agent in your high-street. The tourist
industry is a luxury hotel in Bombay
which employs cleaners for bed and board, or an Italian
owned resort in Honduras which throws
hundreds of empty plastic water bottles into a local landfill everyday.
The tourist industry is also the tourists
themselves - us. |
A round-the-world flight creates
4 tonnes of CO2 |
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In an age where backpacking and gap-year travel have become the norm, sustainable travel
is not just about the impact you have personally, it all comes down to numbers. There are an awful lot of backpackers out there. And we are just as capable of damaging the areas we visit as package tourists are. Rather than sticking to the illusion that we are the last of the world's explorers, it is vitally important now that we begin to see ourselves as part of the much larger group we represent. the key is to imagine that you are actually quarter of a million customers, not just one. If everyone is carrying the same guidebooks and eventually everyone reaches the same page then you're certainly not the only person buying a piece of that snake skin, and a quarter of a million bits of snake skin is more than just a couple of dead snakes. We need to get back to using our guide books as 'guides', not just the only option.
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Some of the impact we have is easy to address, and planting trees is a simple - and surprisingly cheap - way of off-setting the CO2 emissions from our flights. Some environmental groups question whether this is dodging the issue and is merely a way to assuage the guilt of those who only use their SUVs to take the kids to school, but while those kids could just as easily take the bus, backpacking is as important now as it has ever been. What better way to combat the culture of fear being propagated by the media, than to get out there and see the world for ourselves?
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| Marco Polo's been dead for 700 years and if there is anything left to be discovered it won't be done by backpackers, so it's time for us to be honest. We are still pioneers, but unfortunately it's for the travel industry and a backpacker centre now will be a tourist resort in ten years time. Our responsibility now is not just to be responsible travellers in what we do ourselves, but to show those parts of the world we visit that we value what they can offer us, be it virgin rainforest or a full-moon party, and that we want them to preserve not their lifestyles (a dubious idea anyway) but the environment as it exists now. |
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| Sustainable travel is not expensive, nor is it a barrier to local people making the life for themselves that they wish - but it is a chance for us to influence how the tourist industry, as defined above, treats its local environment. We are not explorers in the Marco Polo sense of the word - the world has been mapped and is waiting for us to arrive - but we can be pioneers for a new kind of environmentally and socially sustainable travel. |
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day12 magazine
