What is ethical travel?

The planet’s been getting warmer for a few years now and more and more people are beginning to sit up and take notice - please welcome travel with a conscience...

More and more people are viewing their lives through eco-tinted glasses! Putting the rubbish out means remembering to recycle, buying the shopping means not using a plastic bag and now, going on holiday means looking for more ethical forms of travel. A report by Tearfund claims that 65% of people have sought advice on how to behave more ethically when travelling. But what exactly is ethical travel?

Ethical travel has two components; it must be responsible and it must be sustainable. Having one without the other is like having a ‘q’ without a ‘u’ in scrabble; useless! No matter how responsible you are when you travel somewhere, if that place is a fragile eco system or a fragile economy that can’t cope with large numbers of visitors then you’re going to do more harm than good. Equally if you travel to a sustainable project, drop litter and don’t bother learning about the culture, the positive effect that you have will be limited. In order to get a clearer idea of what ethical travel is, let’s start by having a look at what ethical travel isn’t!

The problem

Tourism is being changed from the inside; a new generation has seen the damage that irresponsible travel has done and said, “enough is enough”. The problems occur when destinations around the world are seen as money making opportunities. Operators flood the area with as many hotels, people, sun beds and restaurants as they can and when the boom is over and the bust comes, the travelling circus moves on to its next port of call. Unfortunately this leaves the local people and environment in a very difficult position. The large crowds have often disturbed the gentle rhythm of the natural world and international business has intercepted the tourist dollar before it reaches the local population. Worryingly, Tourism Concern has recently highlighted just this sort of development in areas still recovering from the 2004 tsunami.

A responsible, sustainable solution

The problems is that local people, who need to make money have no option but to take part in unsustainable tourism; they work in the bars and run the hotels and when the crowds move somewhere else they are out of a job in a place no longer attractive to tourists. One solution is to make tourism sustainable; only attract tourists to places that can cope with the influx and only develop attractions (like eco-parks, eco-lodges) that can exist in harmony with the environment and the local economy. In best practice, local people are employed so they feel an economic benefit and everyone, from travellers to the local population, has a shared interest in protecting the environment.

There are two sides to the ethical travel revolution; one is change on a large scale and the other is a smaller change in personal behaviour. Don’t think you can only affect the latter; the tourism industry is heavily consumer led and by demanding more ethical travel options the industry as a whole realises it needs to change further. The head of corporate responsibility as First Choice has recently said of more ethical forms of travel, “in a few years' time we will have needed to have integrated these principles into our supply chain."

As well as helping to shift trends and increase demand for ethical travel on a grand scale, there are things you can do every day that will make a big difference; Ethical travel, like charity, starts at home (or on holiday, if you see what we mean). We should all be aware that travelling to another country is a privilege not a right and that if we don’t do it properly then we shouldn’t be allowed to do it at all. Ethical tourism isn’t just a project you sign up to or a box you tick, it should be an outlook. Understanding a region and its culture, using local services when you travel and not dropping litter may seem like small things, but together they make up a movement that is becoming the fastest growing sector in the travel industry.

Useful links

• http://www.i-to-i.com/ethical-travel.html
• http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/
• http://www.climatecare.org/
• http://www.wwf.org.uk/
• http://www.developments.org.uk/

Page Comments

Add Your Comment!

Log in to leave a comment or Create an account