Last week I mentioned that not every travel package that bills itself as “ecotourism” or “green travel” really is environmentally friendly. The term is in danger of becoming just one more buzzword that travel companies use to sound politically correct. In fact, when I did a few short web searches on the topic, I was disappointed to find most links were to travel agencies, and that many (certainly not all) of the trips sounded like they were nothing more than rampant consumerism gone to scenic hotspots – sort of a “Baywatch Goes Native” attitude and certainly not what I was hoping to find. So let’s start with the basics – what exactly is ecotourism? In its original context, ecotravel or ecotourism meant traveling in a way that minimally impacted the earth or even helped preserve it rather than waste resources to please our tourist tastes, while helping to sustain local economies rather than international corporations.
The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) suggests that we use our travel time and money for “purposeful” travel. They suggest a new viewpoint incorporating some excellent goals that I’ve included here. Travel should be more than leaving our own pools and shopping malls to go visit pools and shopping malls somewhere else. Travel should be a way by which we *rediscover our passions* and *broaden our horizons*. Use your travel choices not to go visit the hot spots all your friends are talking about, but to reconnect with yourself. Think for a minute. What is, or was, your passion? Kayaks? Rare birds? For a truly life-enhancing experience invest your time, money, and energy in activities that are meaningful to you personally rather than just visiting another tourist trap.
In addition to a valuable way to connect with yourself, travel can be used as a positive tool, to *help sustain fragile environments and indigenous cultures*, and even *spread the wealth* of industrialized nations to the developing world. I mean come on, does the Marriott at Vegas really need more of our tourist dollars? Before I sound too righteous, though, let me freely admit that my family and I went to a resort once in Jamaica for a sports event. We enjoyed the temporary luxury, especially since we never expect to do it again. And my sister and I did lounge by the pool on our last afternoon there, when it occurred to us that we were about to leave and had yet to work on our tan. But we spent most of our spare time away from the resort, finding local entreprenaurs to provide sight-seeing tours and snorkeling trips. True, we saw more poverty and trash than we wanted to, but that’s because we saw the island as it really was rather than the imaginary island depicted in travel brochures. We felt giving our tourist dollars to local vendors, not international corporations, was worth the price of giving up our fantasies about the island country. True, we couldn’t help but notice that our local hosts weren’t nearly as concerned with protecting their fragile ecosystem as we were, but life is like that sometimes. The important point, I think, is that we are trying. And you are, too. And "purposeful travel" is one more thing we are learning to do.
