6.1.7

Ecotourism

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Sustainability and Ecotourism

There have been increased efforts to make tourism more sustainable. Ecotourism is one way of doing this.

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Sustainability

  • The Brundtland report (1987) says that sustainable development is:
    • 'Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'.
    • (including social, economic and environmental factors).
  • Sustainability operations need to be aware of present and future consequences.
  • Sustainability is not easy to achieve, especially in places in the world that attract 1000s of tourists each year.
  • The economy depends on these tourists keeping on coming.
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Ways of making tourism sustainable

  • One way of making tourism more sustainable is flying less to reduce pollution levels.
    • This means that we should move away from the current trend of lots of short weekend breaks in favour of fewer, longer holidays.
  • To reduce leakage and make local economies more sustainable, we should use non-MNC hotels.
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Ecotourism

  • Ecotourism is tourism directed to places that need looking after because they are ‘at-risk’ environments (e.g. corals or rainforests).
  • This kind of tourism educates tourists and encourages them to benefit local projects.
  • Ecotourism locations either have preservation rules (allowing no changes) or conservation rules (non-damaging change is allowed).
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Ecotourism in practice

  • Tours and hotels are run by local people.
  • Preservation areas like national parks may be created.
    • E.g. the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya. The Masa Conservancy run part of the park. They are a local not-for-profit group made up of local Maasai people.

Jump to other topics

1Geography Skills

2Geology of the UK

3Geography of the World

4Development

5Weather & Climate

6The World of Work

7Natural Resources

8Rivers

9Coasts

10Glaciers

11Tectonics

12Climate Change

13Global Population & Inequality

14Urbanisation

15Ecosystems

16Life in an Emerging Country

17Analysis of Africa

18Analysis of India

19Analysis of the Middle East

20Analysis of Bangladesh

21Analysis of Russia

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