Encouraging Ecotourism

Ecotourism is a word that is derived from two words ecological and tourism. It is often referred to with different names like Green traveling, sustainable traveling, or environmental and cultural friendly traveling. But what is ecotourism; in simpler words, it is an environment-friendly travel practice that caters to protect nature and the cultural heritage of locals and the destination.

The term ecotourism was first coined by Hetzer in the year 1965 who designed four principles on which travel should be based; minimized impacts on nature, maintaining cultural respect of locals, maximizing benefits to locals, and a maximized travel satisfaction.

Ecotourism is an attractive spree for people who wish to interact and develop their knowledge and awareness about nature. There are different activities like trekking, adventure sports, agro-tourism that intrigue the interests of the people towards them. You get to enjoy everything in the lap of nature making the stay and travel exciting and fun. For eg: Panama creates an experience of flora and fauna of rainforests for travelers through canopy zip lines tours.

Ecotourism prepares tourists to have a minimum negative impact when traveling to sensitive environments and cultures, prepare to interact with local habitat be it humans, animals, or plants, to ensure minimized impact of traveler on the local culture, to use adequate leadership skills, and to ensure a small group to reduce the impact of larger groups and it is advisable to avoid areas that are over visited.

Ecotourism is important as it helps the individual or group to look at nature closely without damaging it, one gets to learn how nature works and also the survival of the locals living in that particular region. It is also useful for the local people as it generates revenue for them. Locals can participate by building a place of living e.g. Homestay, which can also provide travelers with food or recreational activities; this will also increase the local participation making the journey much more memorable and exciting.

India is a country that is rich in its cultural heritage and has many natural habitats, sanctuaries, plantations that one wishes to explore making India a perfect spot for foreign tourists. It will expand the roots of Indian culture all over the world. It will provide a platform to the locals of the villages and areas that are otherwise less traveled or undiscovered. It will help generate revenues for conserving natural habitats and also might improve the economic prospects of India.

Being the children of mother earth it is our responsibility to take care of the other aspects that come attached to her, we should solely and deeply indulge in practices that preserve nature and its locals do our best. Everybody should experience Ecotourism once in their lifetime as it is an adventure worth taking.

By: Arushi Bansal

Content- https://www.prb.org/resources/eco-tourism-encouraging-conservation-or-adding-to-exploitation/