HISTORY
The United Nations declared 2002 the "International Year of
Ecotourism." The declaration came as a result of the United
Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)-related
meeting of the Ad-Hoc (Inter-Agency) Working Group on Tourism,
convened at Heredia, Costa Rica in 1999 in which the World
Tourism Organization (WTO) and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) were mandated to work
together toward a World
Ecotourism Summit, which took place in Quebec, Canada in
May, 2002.
CRITICISM
The official gatherings did receive a good deal criticism --
as did the second Earth Summit held the same year. There is
also post-event criticism, such as that the Quebec
Declaration does not include travelers as valued stakeholders
-- a serious omission.
Some groups were critical of the top-down process, citing lack
of transparency and information from the sponsoring institutions
and within the hierarchy of development agencies, foundations
and NGOs. "Do we need the international year of ecotourism?"asked
Anita Pleumarom of Tourism Investigation and Monitoring Team.
Criticizing these environmental organizations, Pleumarom's letter
explains: "Too often, international agencies have used the South
for misguided and outright destructive development experiments."
[Source]
The letter goes on to oppose the idea of the International
Year of Ecotourism in that it serves as "an instrument for ecotourism
experiments in developing countries, which are likely to cause
more harm than good." Criticism can be made of the critics,
though, as most lost interest once the IYE was underway and
have not followed up with the same passion shown in 2001.
PLANETA
Having covered ecotourism on the Web since 1994, Planeta.com
followed the IYE with great interest. In 2001, we published
the first edition of this resource guide and we created the
IYE 2002 Forum
to promote a dialogue among interested parties. The public forum
was developed to promote a dialogue among IYE proponents and
critics and was moderated by Ron Mader and later by John Shores.
In April 2002, Planeta website founder Ron Mader developed
and moderated the Sustainable
Development of Ecotourism Web Conference. During this event
we suggested a proposal
(see below) toward improving information sharing among those
working in ecotourism:
POST IYE
Following the Quebec
Summit, Planeta.com hosted topical dialogues including Financing
Sustainable Tourism, Ecotourism
Marketing and the Environmental
Impact of Transportation. |
