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Born in its current form in the late 1980s, Ecotourism came of age in 2002, when the United Nations celebrated the "International Year of Ecotourism". The meeting was a watershed event, but it was not created with those who had pioneered the niche.
Source: Wikipedia
Dr James Ephraim Lovelock (born July 26, 1919) is an independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Cornwall, in the south west of Great Britain. He is most famous for proposing and popularizing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism (a term coined by Lynn Margulis).
In particular, it argued that the ensemble of living organisms has jointly evolved an ability to control the global environment — by influencing major physical parameters as the composition of the atmosphere, the evaporation rate, the chemistry of soils and oceans — so as to maintain conditions favorable to life.
This vision was largely a sign of the times, in particular the growing perception after the Second World War that human activities such as nuclear energy, industrialization, pollution, and overexploitation of natural resources, fueled by exponential population growth, were threatening to create catastrophes on a planetary scale. Thus Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, while controversial among scientists, was embraced by many environmental movements as an inspiring view: their Earth-mother, Gaia, was "becoming sick from humans and their activities".
Source: Wikipedia
One criticism against ecotourism is that the air travel to often remote places is not included in the "environmental impact calculation". Aviation is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions, already accounting for eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year - more than 10 per cent of the UK total (Lynas, New Statesman, 03/04/06). By 2050, aviation could contribute 15% of the world's greenhouse gases (Transport 2000).
Source: http://www.planestupid.com
A survey of U.S., British and Australian travellers revealed that 70% would pay up to $150 more for a two-week stay in a hotel with a “responsible environmental attitude”.
Source: Travelbiz, “Green is Good for Hotel Business”
Greenwashing (a portmanteau of green and whitewash) is a pejorative term that environmentalists and other critics use to describe the activity of giving a positive public image to putatively environmentally unsound practices. The term first arose in the early 1990s (an early use of the word appeared as the title of an article in the 1991 March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine).
Corporations claim that the promotion of free markets policies, new technology and economic growth are essential to promoting sustainable development, and increasingly claim that they are more environmentally aware. Critics, however, claim that there is little evidence transnational corporations are substantially changing their behavior despite their rhetoric; and they claim that many corporations remain the primary creators of environmentally damaging and unsustainable technologies. Greenwashing is thus a deceptive marketing technique only.
Source: Wikipedia
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) by Marvin Gaye
See lyrics
Kay's Kitchen: Recipes from The Garden Gourmet
This is an example of a recipe that will “get you started on the road to more sustainable eating. Compared to the diet that most Americans eat, these recipes focus more on whole grains, fresh vegetables and fruits, beans and legumes, and other plant-based foods to create colorful and delicious dishes that are good for you and good for the planet.
See recipes
“Green manufacturing” and “Environmentalist bumper sticker” are both listed as oxymorons (two or more words used together which have, or seem to have, opposite meanings).
Source: http://www.oxymoronlist.com
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an amendment to the international treaty on climate change, assigning mandatory targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to signatory nations.
At the Kyoto conference, most of the world's nations recognized the importance of looking at ecology from a global point of view, on a worldwide scale, and to take into account the impact of humans on the Earth's environment.
The treaty was negotiated in December 1997, opened for signature on March 16, 1998, and closed on March 15, 1999, and came into force on February 16, 2005.
Source: Wikipedia
If you want to see an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror. (John Young, Astronaut)
This we know... the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to earth. All things are connected, like the blood which connects one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. (Chief Seattle)
For many countries, ecotourism is not so much seen as a marginal activity intended to finance protection of the environment than as a major sector of national economy and as a means of attracting tourists. For example, in countries such as Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nepal, Kenya, Madagascar and Antarctica , ecotourism represents a significant portion of the gross domestic product (or in Antarctica's case, economic activity).
Source: http://www.costarica-ecotourism.com
Some hotels have adopted some of the following practices: rerouting waste water to irrigate their golf courses and salvaging the sludge to use as fertilizer; reducing laundry water temperatures from 90 °C to 60 °C, replacing incandescent lights with compact fluorescent lamps, installing low-flow shower head and low-flow toilets, offering a sheet and towel reuse program whereby guests have their linens exchanged every two to three days instead of daily, installing solar panels to heat water, implementing a hotel-wide recycling program, and replacing individual soaps and lotions with wall dispensers. Adoption of green practices typically helps hotels realize considerable savings that can range from several thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Source: Wikipedia
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