Time for tourism to lift its game
Yesterday, the Australian Tourism Export Council called for an urgent summit meeting with the government to find ways for the tourism industry to combat climate change.
The call comes in the wake of a damning report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warns that Australia can expect worsening drought conditions and water shortages over the next 20 to 50 years and the loss of the Great Barrier Reef within two decades.
Export Council spokesperson, Mr. Matthew Hingerty said the tourism industry had been very slow off the mark in understanding the threat to its future.
“The tourism industry is a widespread industry. We have a large environmental footprint, not to mention the aviation sector, and these are issues we should have been working with the government on for a long time. We haven’t been. It’s time for us to start, so I am calling for an urgent summit between us and the government,” he said.
In an earlier era, when the world’s largest industry was asked what it could contribute to the achievement of the Earth Summit’s Agenda 21, the World Travel and Tourism Council responded with ‘Ecotourism’.
Both the international ecotourism society and the Chutes Montmorency Declaration, completed on 24th May 2002 following the World Ecotourism Summit in Quebec City, define ecotourism as responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well being of local people.
In Australia, however, Ecotourism Australia has rewritten a homegrown definition of its own:
Ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas that fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation.
Why did Ecotourism Australia change the internationally accepted definition? Was it specifically to endorse tourism within protected areas, where the taxpayer conserves the environment and public service employment and commercial permit holders (predominantly from regional centres) eclipse the well being of local people? If so, then why hijack the international definition with activities that simply do not conform?
It is an indictment upon tourism that the prospect of losing the World Heritage Listed Great Barrier Reef is needed for tourism to begin talking about lifting its game.