Ecotourism and nature-based tourism

Scroll down for posts that have been tagged with “eco­tour­ism and nature-based tourism”.

Eco­tour­ism is respons­ible travel to nat­ur­al areas that con­serves the envir­on­ment, sus­tains the well-being of the loc­al people, and cre­ates know­ledge and under­stand­ing through inter­pret­a­tion and edu­ca­tion of all involved (vis­it­ors, staff and the vis­ited)” ― Glob­al Eco­tour­ism Net­work, 2016; What is (and what isn’t) eco­tour­ism.

Eco­tour­ism is a type of tour­ism that has a very low impact on the nat­ur­al sur­round­ings. It aims to pro­mote con­ser­va­tion and edu­ca­tion, while provid­ing vis­it­ors with an oppor­tun­ity to exper­i­ence unique nat­ur­al land­scapes and wildlife.

Eco­tour­ism could be though of as a sub-cat­egory of nature-based tour­ism, which the Travel Industry Dic­tion­ary defines as: “Leis­ure travel under­taken largely or solely for the pur­pose of enjoy­ing nat­ur­al attrac­tions and enga­ging in a vari­ety of out­door activ­it­ies.” Nature-based tour­ism includes a wide range of out­door activ­it­ies, such as hik­ing, camp­ing, bird­watch­ing, and wild­life safar­is, that are very much embed­ded with­in nat­ur­al environments.

Both forms of tour­ism focus on explor­ing nat­ur­al envir­on­ments in a sus­tain­able and respons­ible way, with the goal of pre­serving them for future generations.

Eco­tour­ism and nature-based tour­ism are gain­ing pop­ular­ity around the world. They provide oppor­tun­it­ies for trav­el­lers to learn about loc­al eco­sys­tems and appre­ci­ate nat­ur­al beauty. By enga­ging in respons­ible and sus­tain­able tour­ism prac­tices through eco­tour­ism and nature-based activ­it­ies, trav­el­lers can feel that they are pro­tect­ing the envir­on­ment (and sup­port­ing loc­al com­munit­ies). (Both types of tour­ism have the poten­tial to offer sig­ni­fic­ant bene­fits to loc­al com­munit­ies, as they offer incent­ives and oppor­tun­it­ies for loc­als to con­serve their nat­ur­al resources for a sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic benefit.)

Tags are inform­al; an after­thought to con­tent cre­ation. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog nev­er gets bogged down with tag­ging accur­acy or con­sist­ency. Feel free to com­ment on any post you think has been incor­rectly or insuf­fi­ciently tagged. “GT” encour­ages good-faith debate and dis­cus­sion and appre­ci­ates help­ful feedback.

Tourism in crisis: A Myanmar elephant camp & community pivot to plan B


An elephant of Green Hill Valley Elephant Camp, Shan state, Myanmar. (Image by Hollis Burbank-Hammarlund). Inset: GHV's Founders Tin Win Maw (Left) and Htun Htun Wynn (Image courtesy of GHV).

Through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and tour­ism crisis, hopes rest on con­tin­gency “plan B” to sus­tain the retired log­ging ele­phants of Green Hill Val­ley, Myan­mar and the com­munity of people who love them.  Hol­lis Bur­b­ank-Ham­­marlund of Work for Wild Life Inter­na­tion­al knows them well, hav­ing led ele­phant health­care and wel­fare work­shops at the camp in 2018 and […]

Read More Tourism in crisis: A Myanmar elephant camp & community pivot to plan B

As we build back better, is sustainable tourism enough to regenerate nature?

September 8, 2020

Elephants and the community (c. Mahouts Elephant Foundation)

Sus­tain­able tour­ism is a com­plex puzzle with lots of mov­ing parts. Toss in regen­er­at­ive prin­ciples and it becomes even more con­found­ing. For­tu­nately there are those who think deeply about import­ant parts of the puzzle, such as anim­al wel­fare con­sult­ant Daniel Turn­er of ANIMONDIAL. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Mr Turn­er shares how our industry might […]

Read More As we build back better, is sustainable tourism enough to regenerate nature?

Online courses by The Centre for Responsible Tourism Singapore: ‘Reinventing tourism learning’

June 4, 2020
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Centre for Responsible Tourism Singapore logo and two images

“GT” Friend Kev­in Phun of new “GT” Part­ner The Centre for Respons­ible Tour­ism Singa­pore (CRTS) has developed a series of short online courses for aspir­ing respons­ible tour­ism prac­ti­tion­ers — or any­one inter­ested in the sub­ject — to estab­lish a found­a­tion of know­ledge and a frame­work for think­ing about vari­ous aspects of respons­ible tour­ism.  “GT” 20% dis­count coupon: GTB-20-OFF Courses […]

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Her beauty and her terror … The wide brown land, Australia, is open for business

January 14, 2020

Epicormic regrowth from the base of a Eucalyptus tree, four months after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Strathewen, Victoria. Pic by Robert Kerton, CSIRO (CC BY 3.0) via Wikimedia. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/CSIRO_ScienceImage_10408_Eucalypt_regrowth_after_Black_Saturday_bushfires.jpg

“The best way to sup­port Aus­tralia, Aus­trali­an com­munit­ies, and the tour­ism sec­tor is to keep vis­it­ing,” says Tour­ism Aus­tralia on its bush­fire inform­a­tion resources web page. “If you can­not travel to an affected area due to bush­fires, one of the many ways to help includes res­chedul­ing instead of can­celing …”  If you didn’t already know, your […]

Read More Her beauty and her terror … The wide brown land, Australia, is open for business

How bees, trees, & tourism reduce human-wildlife conflict in Uganda

January 7, 2020

Looking relaxed. Chimp, Kibale, Uganda by Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rod_waddington/23355595510/

James Nadi­ope estab­lished the Africa Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Care Found­a­tion to address the prob­lem of human-wild­life con­flicts tak­ing place around Kibale Nation­al Park in west­ern Uganda. AST­CF’s first pro­ject was at Kahangi vil­lage, where com­munity con­sulta­tion led to the emer­gence of both tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern solu­tions to old prob­lems. One of those solu­tions was, of course, […]

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How tourism in India can help protect olive ridley turtles

June 5, 2019
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Olive ridley turtles by Chandan Singh (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/scorius/137320371/

In her second “GT” Insights con­tri­bu­tion, A Lajwanti Naidu shares what she has learned about olive rid­ley turtles and how the Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity does and can con­trib­ute to their con­ser­va­tion. Travel teaches more than books do. With this in mind, Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity organ­ised an edu­ca­tion­al tour to Diviseema and the Krishna […]

Read More How tourism in India can help protect olive ridley turtles