We may take pride in inserting
an energy efficient light bulb in our house, giving a £10
donation to the World Wide Fund for Nature, and occasionally
walking to the shops instead of taking the car, but
have you ever thought what a big environmental impact your holiday
can have, and especially the pollution involved in transport
getting there?
Three excellent sites to visit:
Influencing Consumer
behaviour towards Sustainable Tourism -
Flying off to a
Warmer Climate - a fun site which calculates
for you the air pollution caused by any flight route you choose.
It will make you think twice.
ECO-Tourism
Some good letters on the Web on pros and cons
of sustainable and eco-tourism.
AirportWatch
learn about problems caused by aeroplanes and aerports |
Did you know that
- Since the year 2000 more people in the world
are employed in the tourist industry than in any other, including
arms and agriculture..
- Aeroplane travel causes more pollution per passenger
mile than trains. Some estimates are between three and eight
times as much.
- Air travel is often cheaper than train because
there is no international tax on aviation fuel. Is this fair?
- In many cases of mass tourism, 80% of the holiday
fee goes to the tour operator and travel company and less
than 20% to the local people.
- In many parts of the world, including the south
of England, there are water shortages, whilst golf courses
continue to be built.
- In India women are becoming slum dwellers as
the fields they used to farm have been turned into golf courses.
Many have then been driven to prostitution to support their
families.
- Golfers, caddies and residents near golf courses
can suffer from respiratory diseases. Up to 90% of the chemicals
sprayed on golf courses can end up in the air
- Some Britons have bad behaviour abroad. The
degenerative behaviour of larger-louts and drug abusers in
the Mediterranean led a British vice-consul to resign in 1998
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RESOURCES
 The Ecumenical
Coalition on Tourism (ECOT)
formerly called The Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (ECTWT) produces a
colourful quarterly journal with news of Sustainable or not so
sustainable tourism issues, called Contours and these are available online. there are other good reports.
The ECTWT produces easy to read leaflets in a variety of languages
(incl. English, French, Spanish) on:
- Golf Tourism
- Let's go Cruising
- Let's gamble
and booklets such as
- Palestine/Israel: To travel fairly. (Many Christians
go on pilgrimages to the Holy land .. but how much contact
do some package tours give people with the local Palestinians,
a good number of whom are Christians.?)
The ECTWT was founded in 1982 and is composed of the regional
conferences of churches in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Middle
East, Latin America and the Pacific as well as the Catholic Federation
of Asian Bishops Conferences.
ECTWT's address is: Ecumenical
Coalition on Third World Tourism Mr. Tan Chi Kiong, Ex. Secretary
CCA Centre 96 2nd District, Pak Tin Village, Mei Tin Road Shatin,
N.T. Hong Kong SAR Fax 852-26 94378 Email: contours@pacific.net.hk
Tourism Concern
This British based charity has a website with lots of good links,
and would welcome your membership to support its work
Flying off to a warmer climate
A This website enables you to calculate the amount of air pollution
produced when flying on different journeys. ..perhaps your upcoming
holiday or business trip. The Climate
Train Ecobalance Page which compares a journey by train
and boat with an air journey and finds that 3.8 times as much
CO2 per passenger is produced on the air journey,
but that the effect of all the other gases produced by the plane
(Ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and water vapour) at
high altitude is over 7 times the CO2 equivalent
of the ground journey..
Tourist Trap
Youth Topics Sheet: Issue 29 produced by CAFOD, Chirsitian
AId and SCIAF:
This is a FREE worksheet. So you could order say 30 of them
if you had a class of 30 to teach! (Whether intellegent 10 year
olds, secondary school groups or university groups or church
adult or youth groups.) This sheet deals with the social problems
of Tourism firstly, but there is a big overlap with environmental
problems. It forms an excellent basis for a participatory lesson
, or for running a discussion group. Christian Aid PO Box 100
London SE1 7RT. Tel: 0207 620 4444 SOME
POSITIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR HOLIDAYS
BECOME A NATURALIST
Why not use your holiday to learn more about nature, or to help
conserve nature in some way?
The Field Studies
Council has 14 residential centres in England and Wales,
and is now working with The Scottish Field Studies Association
with its centre at Kindrogan in Perthshire. They run week long
courses and weekend courses on topics on almost any natural
history topic you can imagine.. insects, flowers, geology, butterflies,
mosses, sedges, algae ...... Beginners are very welcome. Everyone appreciates
you have to start somewhere. And there are more general courses,
such as Walking, and Exploring Churches.
The British Trust for Conservation
Volunteers runs cheap holidays.. get fit, make friends,
help nature conservation.
Go to one of A Rocha's
Christian based Field Centres. e.g. in Portugal.. but try and
get there overland rather than by plane!.
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