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| Know More » Eco-Tourism |
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India is a country of great natural diversity. The forests, the wetlands and the deserts- we have them all. We inherit the tradition of art, culture and science. We belong to the land of ancient civilization. However, this natural diversity and traditional wisdom is seldom appreciated and honored in tourism simply because of the fact that we lack good interpretation facilities. We come across thousand years old temple or pristine rain forest but we can't recognize its worth because of poor or zero interpretation services or facilities. Growing tourism often has adverse relationship with the status of natural resources owing to the insufficiency of interpretation facilities. Ecotourism is primarily a sustainable version of nature tourism, including rural and cultural tourism elements.
Eco-tourism has been defined as a form of Nature-based tourism in the market place. The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) [previously known as oikos] in 1991 produced one of the earliest definitions, "Ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well being of local people." IUCN (now called The World Conservation Union), states in 1996, that Ecotourism, "is environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and any accompanying cultural features - both past and present) that promotes conservation, has low negative visitor impact, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local populations."
Eco-tourism Destination Development
The emergence of eco-tourism in tourism business has provided new horizon for tourist attraction, employment generation and nature conservation. This new form of tourism has a good capacity to generate income, foreign exchange and investment. For this 'green' business to flourish it is mandatory for it to maintain 'green' in our world as an indispensable capital. The present situation in some countries including India is such that eco-tourism is equated with nature tourism and the diversity and beauty of this country's rich and varied natural heritage is at stake owing to random exploitation of natural resources and sprawl development. In India, protected areas, i.e., wildlife sanctuaries and national areas that are supposed to protect bio-diversity cover slightly more than 4% of the total area on paper. In theory, they are to be kept inviolate to protect and conserve all the non human beings that they hold. In reality, they are all being opened for tourism activities and are threatened by the practices that don't fulfill the purpose of protection of biodiversity. This situation can certainly hamper the status of environment and growth of tourism business. If we want to save both, the only effective solution is to create new destinations for eco-tourism. There is a lot in this business to offer to the tourists apart from pristine natural beauty. By developing new eco-tourism destinations it is possible to,
- Protect and preserve natural resources and biodiversity of eco-sensitive areas.
- Conserve resources outside protected areas and thereby providing links to national parks and sanctuaries.
- Introduce innovative recreational activities to combine conservation and enjoyment.
- Involve native people as active participants of development.
- Aesthetic, cost effective, well-planned and eco-friendly development of countryside areas.
It is a challenge for developers, architects, engineers, tour operators, administrators, managers and all the resource persons and agencies to play a positive role in creating and shaping eco-tourism destinations to restore our natural capital and promote tourism business in a sustainable way ! |
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