Ecotourism in India:-
Ecotourism thus imbibes mainly education and interpretation of responsible tourism practices that in practice ensure environmental conservation, is sustainable tourism and looks after the welfare and concerns of local communities.
According to The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), adopting certain principles is necessary for those who are involved in managing ecotourism activities such that these goals are fulfilled. In this education of nature and natural phenomena are foremost as an ecotourism practice that can achieve the aims of environmental conservation and sustainability. There are however, certain other practices that form a compact of the total practice that ensures responsible ecotourism.
For example, TIES posits that managing ecotourism activities should aim to minimize the harmful psychological, behavioural, social and environmental impacts of tourism, build awareness, provide good experiences for tourists and raise their sensitivity to local issues, create financial benefits out of environmental conservation for both local people and the tourism industry, design and construct facilities whose harmful impacts on the environment are low, create partnerships with local communities by recognizing certain rights that could assist in achieving sustainable ecotourism, etc (TIES, 2017).
The Problem of Data
Tourism as a whole is a rapidly growing industry the world over, and within this nature tourism is among the most prominent and fastest growing segments. According to Filion et al. (1994), approximately 32 per cent of tourists to Australia and New Zealand are interested in natural elements such as scenery, and native plants and animals. In Africa the proportion of tourists preferring natural elements was significantly higher at 80 per cent. This figure was between 69 to 88 per cent in terms of European tourists to North America and between 50 to 79 per cent of tourists to Latin America. Over 100 million Americans are said to be interested in exploring wildlife.
According to statistics from the World Trade Organization (WTO) (2000), the total number of tourists globally is expected to reach 1.6 billion by 2020. The tourism industry is the largest employer in the world, creating directly and indirectly almost 200 million jobs, which is about 10 per cent of total global employment (Honey and Rome, 2000). However, in the case of ecotourism, given the definitions of ecotourism and the meanings associated with it, these as yet do not serve as functional definitions whereby statistics on ecotourism can be gathered. As yet no global institution exists with a mandate to gather data on ecotourism, and studies rely on data provided in other studies.
The Centre for Responsible Travel (CREST), a non-profit research institute based in Washington D.C. in the US, reported that global tourism grew by about 4.4 per cent in 2015. The total number of global tourists was 1,184 million in 2015 with CREST expecting growth in numbers to continue in the foreseeable future. They report that out of the 25 million people travelling from the US in 2014, those participating in sightseeing comprised 82 per cent, those travelling to small towns or the countryside comprised 46 per cent, cultural tourists comprised 33 per cent, while only 8 per cent comprised of people participating in ecotourism (CREST, 2016). This data cannot be called conclusive, as although ecotourism is a key component of the economic system in countries all over the world, data on ecotourism remains without institutions mandated to present data on ecotourism and much is relied also upon organizations that monitor ecotourism.
K.S. Bricker of the United Nations (UN) goes a step further, in saying that while sustainable ecotourism is an important segment in tourism that is a growing segment, what is lacking is primary research that can quantify the market globally. There is thus a lack of consistent data that can conclusively verify claims and action on ecotourism (Bricker, 2013). International bodies can seek data from organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) in terms of market and visitor data. A mandated statistical research framework is found wanting thus in the case of global ecotourism which can impact ecotourism as a sustainable economic activity.
A Policy Approach to Ecotourism in India
Ecotourism can provide formidable economic benefits which at the same instance require environmental conservation and the co-operation of local communities. As an essential part of economic development, it then assumes importance as a conservation strategy that requires overall sustainable development and forms a component of it at the same time.
Many developing countries all over the world are now adopting sustainable ecotourism as a prerogative and are now including it in their environmental conservation and economic development strategies. Although partially implemented in practice, the basic argument is similar to the lines of if heritage monuments can be protected such that tourists continue to marvel at their grandeur, why cannot ecotourism destinations be protected in a similar manner as well?
Ecotourism practices further impose as a statute the operation of responsible tourism practices as well. Sustainable ecotourism in this sense deals primarily with learning about and experiencing nature and natural phenomena along with the participation and with knowing about the economic and social development of local communities as well.
Sustainable ecotourism thus involves evolving a symbiotic relationship between tourists and the natural environment. This symbiosis can conserve the natural objects of study such that greater knowledge and intimacy could result in greater possibilities for conservation. However, although the science for this sort of pedagogical approach is present, what might be developing is the integration of this pedagogical approach in the case of policy. This sort of pedagogical approach for now exists largely as philosophical founding and a cohesive policy approach is still very nascent. Sustainable ecotourism needs to feature as a total social and economic activity that also brings forth the participation of local communities.
Many ecotourism hotspots exist in India such as in the Himalayan region, Kerala, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and many more.
Thenmala in Kerala is India’s first planned and certified ecotourism destination. Other than this there are many national parks and sanctuaries in India that act to cater to tourism and work towards environmental conservation at the same time (Eco India, 2008).
After witnessing the devastating effects of mass tourism in India on the natural environment, since the 1990s, efforts were made to make tourism more benevolent. Tourism was fronted under many heads such as ethnic tourism and adventure tourism to design tourism policies that could be more sustainable. Ecotourism in India came under one such type of niche tourism. The problem in India however, beyond national parks and sanctuaries, is whether ecotourism could open up undisturbed locations to economic exploitation (Kumar, 2015).
Ecotourism was introduced in India after the World Tourism Organization announced 2002 as the International Year of Ecotourism coming under the United National Environmental Program. In its conjunction of environmental conservation co-operating with the market mechanism, it became a very popular ideology within India’s policy establishment. However, according to Kumar (2015), although India has flourishing entrepreneurship in its tourism industry, sustainable ecotourism as learning and intimacy with nature practically seems non-existent in India. The consciousness of nature in terms of sustainability and conservation seems to be largely insufficient among tourists in India to form a practice of ecotourism within India’s policy infrastructure.
Although India has immense natural wonders and institutional knowledge is sufficient to provide the basic prompt for overlaying a policy for ecotourism, promoting it is difficult for it to figure in policy. Although in philosophy many international guidelines exist for guiding ecotourism principles in India, such as the UNWTO guidelines for the development of National Parks and protected areas, the PATA code for environmentally responsible tourism, the guidelines of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the Himalayan Tourism Advisory Board’s Himalayan code of conduct and the guidelines of TIES, implementation of such guidelines in practice has not yet been witnessed in a widespread manner in India.
There are immense obstacles to developing a practice of ecotourism in India. Some of them include the denial of the fundamental rights of local communities and their widespread displacement for tourism projects, changes in indigenous practices, waste produced as a by-product of tourism activities even if these activities were ecotourism activities such as vehicular waste, changes in wildlife behaviour due to human interference, a lack of partnerships between public & private entities and people, the lack of scientific knowledge among tourists that cannot for example guide their carbon footprint in pristine habitats, etc.
Ecotourism that is not properly implemented in a learned manner can thus fall prey to commercialization, and more often than not commercial interests can overrun the pedagogy of policy on the ground level. Ecotourism that is commercially intended also runs the risk of imposing human intervention in regions that were previously pristine natural habitats. However, if pedagogy is correctly installed purely as a learning experience for tourists, much can be gained in terms of awareness and agency for environmental conservation and sustainability. Without a proper pedagogical infrastructure in place, ecotourism can easily fall prey to commercial exploitation that may claim to protect the environment but can have extensive knock-on effects to the detriment of environmental conservation. Sustainable ecotourism thus requires that a proper pedagogy in policy can be correctly installed.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.