What is Eco-Tourism?

Ecological tour­ism or eco-tourism is a highly pop­u­lar term and pos­sibly one of the most mis­used in the travel industry. It should describe travel to fra­gile areas where the fauna, flora and cul­tural her­it­age are the main reas­ons for travel.

Essentially eco-tourism pro­tects and empowers local people and nat­ural areas, and at the same time provides vis­it­ors with a unique, but low impact experience.

The Ecotourism Society defines eco-tourism as 'respons­ible travel to nat­ural areas, which con­serves the envir­on­ment and improves the wel­fare of the local people'. Essentially eco-tourism should unite con­ser­va­tion, com­munit­ies and sus­tain­able travel.

However, it can get a little con­fus­ing. There are a hand­ful of sim­ilar terms used to describe this type of travel, like 'adven­ture travel', 'sus­tain­able tour­ism', 'respons­ible tour­ism', and 'green travel'. Most of these loosely adhere to the prin­ciples of eco-tourism. A walk through a rain­forest is not eco-tourism unless it also bene­fits the people who live there. And in the same vein, a safari trip is only eco-tourism if it raises aware­ness and funds to help pro­tect wildlife.

There are com­pan­ies who mar­ket them­selves as eco-tourism estab­lish­ments, when in fact they are not. So it is up to the trav­el­ler to ask import­ant ques­tions about the trip's abil­ity to con­serve and improve the des­tin­a­tion. Often the term is used as a mar­ket­ing tool to pro­mote nature related tour­ism. However, pla­cing a splen­did hotel in the midst of a fra­gile eco­sys­tem and call­ing it eco-tourism is 'greenwash'.

Two of the terms most often used inter­change­ably with eco-tourism are 'sus­tain­able tour­ism' and 'respons­ible tour­ism', both of which include aspects of eco-tourism.

Sustainable tour­ism means that resources should be unaf­fected by your visit and that your stay  at the des­tin­a­tion should not pre­vent future tour­ists from enjoy­ing the same experience.

Responsible tour­ism means that you min­im­ise your neg­at­ive impacts on the envir­on­ment, but often this also incor­por­ates an ele­ment of 'giv­ing back' to local com­munit­ies. The Responsible Tourism Awards describe 'respons­ible tour­ism' as tour­ists who 'want to inter­act with com­munit­ies on a per­sonal level, learn first-hand of their chal­lenges, exper­i­ence envir­on­ments and hope­fully, leave some­thing con­struct­ive behind'.

So what does one need to do make sure that eco-tourism is really the form of travel on offer?
By ask­ing the fol­low­ing types of questions:

• Is the envir­on­ment being looked after?
• Is the local com­munity being pro­tec­ted and uplifted?
• Does the travel build envir­on­mental awareness?
• Are resources remain­ing for future generations?
• Does the travel respect local culture?

It is not in South Africa alone that the term eco-tourism is used to describe 'adven­ture' or 'nature' trips that do not always meet the require­ments of true eco-tourism. There are only a hand­ful of coun­tries around the world with national eco-tourism cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­grammes in place, and these include:  Costa Rica, Australia, Kenya and Sweden. There are also attempts to cre­ate inter­na­tional eco-tourism accred­it­a­tion programmes.

In South Africa there is not yet an offi­cial reg­u­la­tion of the term eco-tourism. SATSA (South African Tourism Services Association) tries to 'provide high stand­ards of tour­ism and focuses on account­ab­il­ity, integ­rity and qual­ity con­trol', and awards like the local Imvelo Responsible Tourism Awards and the inter­na­tional Responsible Tourism Awards also influ­ence many tour­ist des­tin­a­tions and tour pack­age com­pan­ies. Eco-tourism can­not be mon­itored as closely as it should be, until a formal pro­ced­ure or frame­work exists.