Why Eco-tourism

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. According to a source at Conservation International , the numbers of international travelers has increased thirtyfold during last half century. As the human society gets prosperous, tour takes the top priority of people's choice to fulfill their desire to learn more about culture. However, flourishing tourism has caused many problems like destroying natural environment and damaging local culture due to indiscreet development of tour sites and mismanagement of programs.

According to the definition of Eco-tourism from Wikipedia, "Ecotourism, also known as ecological tourism, is a form of tourism that appeals to ecologically and socially conscious individuals." Ecotourism provides good chance to experience of travelling to remote places in which mostly plants and animals or cultural heritage should be sustained. In other words, the concept of the Eco-Tourism comes from the idea to minimize destrcution environment and maximize tourists' satisfaction toward the natural surroundings.

Nevertheless, Tricia Barnett, chief executive of Tourism Concern, a UK charity that campaigns against exploitation in tourism criticizes eco-tourism stating that there's an extraordinary amount of evidence to show that eco-tourism, like all forms of tourism, is not necessarily sustainable, and the name alone doesn't make it sustainable. It can be as abusive as any other form of tourism, maybe sometimes more abusive because it wants to go to areas where indigenous people live.and It's always been a marketing ploy and no more than that." According to ecologist, Vivanco, L. insists in his article, 'Ecotourism, Paradise lost-A Thai case astudy' that, although ecotourism is intended for small groups, even a modest increase in polulation, however temporary, puts extra pressure on the local environment and necessitates the development of additional infrastructure and amentities. The construction of water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, and lodges come with the exploitation of non-renewable energy sources and the utilization of already limited local resources. As an example, ecologist, Isaacs, J.C. in his article 'The limited potential of ecotourism to contribute to wildlife conservation' said that the conversion of natural land to such tourist infrastructure is implicated in deforestation and habitat deterioration of butterflies in Mexico and squirrel monkeys in Costa Rica.

But, we cannot ignore the advantage of eco-tourism in various fields if only we keep in mind what to do in order to protect ecosystems. Mindy Pennybacker offers these benefits of ecotourism by suggesting some principles ;

*Minimize impact upon natural resources, wildlife and habitat
*Build environmental awareness through education
*Invest in conservation efforts
*Provide direct financial benefits for conservation to local communities
*Provide financial benefits and empowerment for local people
*Respect local culture
*Be sensitive to the host country's political environment and social climate
* Support human rights and international labor agreements

Actually, they are not only the rules we should follow to keep a true green meaning of eco-tourism but also the cons themselves we can enjoy from the eco-tourism. According to Alyster Doyle, the environment correspondent from Reuter, there is increased more sites that tighten their grean criteria to protect eco-system like Australia and Costa Rica, and there are more and more corrections and adjustment to make eco-tourism stick to its strict principle to protect natural environemnt and more sustainable as much as possible. This kind of movement will eventually lead to find the best answer to the question of using eco-tourism as an appropriate way to keep our planet green and sustainable.



(How Consumers and Eco-Tourists Can Protect Ecosystems)
by Mindy Pennybacker
(What is Eco-Tourism)
Haste Makes Waste: Learning to Travel
by P.W. McRandle
From this site, you can find various and distinctive organizations which are supplying many types of eco-tour and information you are looking for.

How to Plan a Backpacking Trip #1: Inspiration and Saving Money

Have you had experience of backpacking tour?
Are you dreaming or planning the backpaking tour?
If so, the tips in this article would be very much helpful to you.
Backpacking tour needs budget without doubt. If you wan to join a group of novice of backpacking tourist, the author suggest that you save money on your own by plannig step by step from gathering small allowance to making strategy to widely report your backpack tour to your relatives in order to ask them to support you.
It would be a small step to do action for your wonderful experience in the near future.
Good luck!

Why Ireland?

Our group decieded to chose one attractive place to cover with our own each different point of view freely. We'd like to find out about the Ireland. The Ireland is the 3rd largest island in Europe and consists of two parts, which are Republic of Ireland and northern Ireland which belongs to United Kingdom. It has a lot of breathtaking scenery along the coast and a long history from ancient Celt to Republic of Ireland now through many legends, myths, and variety of historic stories as well. I'd like to recomment to visit the site 'a guide to the island of Ireland' to learn more about this terrific place.

Eco-tourism in Laos

I'd like to introduce eco-tour in Laos.
Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Repubic, is a landlocked country in southeast Asia, bordered by Burma, and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, an Thailand to the west. Laos traces its history to the Kingdom of Lan Xang or Land of Million Elephants, which existed from the 14th to 18th century.
Laos is known as one of the best designed Protected Area Systems in the world.
The thickly forested landscape consists mostly of rugged mountains. The climate is tropical and monsoonal. There is a distinct rainy season from May to November, followed by a dry season from December to April.In 1993, the government set aside 21% of the nation's land area as National Biodiversity Conservation Areas (NBCA), which may be developed into a national park system. You can find affluent natural environment in Laos and you also can enjoy eco-tour here.
If you'd like to find more about eco-tourism, please refer to Hebe's blog.

Story of Stuff

What should I do for the environment?
Recycling? Save the energy?
What I've already known is all that I could do?
How does it affect protecting environment?
What could we do more?
This film is all about these questions.
We've been used to use any product from the factory regarding as a gift of modern society in the name of convenience.
There are also a big city's consumption habit in Korea, but what's different from that of US is a little bit stronger restriction about managing and using waste. For example, we keep recycling strictly. And using single usage container is limited. etc. We also have to put stronger restrictions to wider and various parts of society. I think it's in the process of protecting environment in Korea.
Watching this film, I came to know more in detail what we care why we care for the environment. It'll definitely affect my daily consumption habit because I'm a human who cares about the future with conscious.
As mentioned in the film, the global climate change is attributed to the process of the waste management. Almost everything in the cycle of modern society's production affects the environment, mostly negative. We should be aware that only solution(would rather say 'way to slow down') is that every parts of society should care and give efforts organically in order to make the environment have ability to self-cure and keep it lively.

Eco-Touring Honduras

This article is about some people's touring in Mayan ancient site in Honduras.

It's always interesting for me to know about ancient civilization because to know or guess how they lived is to be a good source to compare how we live today.

The writer is comparing the movie scene which took Copan Maya its background and the real life the ancient civilization might have suffered with borrowing traveller's voice. The author guesses that the Mayan civilization might have been perished because they misused nature like cutting almost all the trees in the city which caused devastation of their land.

This article sounds like just a tour guide, but it is enough to warn us about human's abuse of nature at this century.

Food for thoughts

The author suggests that we can understand  a foreign culture by examining a food they usually eat. It means that what they are reflects on their food. He lists some countries with their food which show their status and international relations, as well. He concludes that we can notice what a country think it's important, the country's history, and even about the future through learning about their food.

It's worth trying to analyze a country's food in a sense, and it seems interesting. However,  it's just a kind of observation report, not a standard or good criteria to understand a country's culture and international relationship between contries. It's obvious to make influence each other if they are adjacent or they have a history to fight each other, politically or socially.

And it's not a balanced manner to write a country's cuisine culture scorning with his own taste, because a country's cuisine culture stands for the country itself in a sense.

It's not a matter of agree and disagree, it's a matter of comfort and discomfort when reading.

I'd like to pick up the most embarrasubg question rather than the most interesting question.

It's the last one, 'Can food attitudes in different countries be an indicator of future conflicts or resolution of current ones?'

It's because the author seems to do wordplay with food.