Report addresses impact of tourism on Caribbean

Report addresses impact of tourism on Caribbean
   Conservation International will be releasing the most comprehensive
study to date
   of global tourism and its impact on the world’s most environmentally
sensitive areas
   on 12 September during the World Parks Congress in Durban, South
Africa. In the
   report, “Tourism and Biodiversity: Mapping Tourism's Global
Footprint,“ Conservation
   International advocates that given that global tourism numbers are
expected to
   double by 2020 from the current level of over 700 million
international travelers per
   year, actions need to be taken now to foster sustainable tourism.
   “Now is the time to address the problems of poorly planned tourism
that are literally
   killing the very things that attract tourists in the first place,”
says CI spokesman
   Jason Anderson.
   Anderson highlights that the world’s biodiversity hotspots saw
tourism increase over
   100 percent during the last decade. He says that tourism exploded by
more than
   2000 percent in both Laos and Cambodia, nearly 500 percent in South
Africa, over
   300 percent in Brazil, Nicaragua and El Salvador and 128 percent in
the Dominican
   Republic.
   The report acts as a real world manual to illustrate how tourism
development,
   guided by the principles associated with ecotourism - environmental
sustainability,
   protection of nature, and supporting local peoples - can have a
positive impact on
   biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. For example, in the
Caribbean,
   tourism accounts for 15.5 percent of total employment, or one in 6.4
jobs.
   Earlier this year, CI co-sponsored a workshop in the Dominican
Republic to create an
   awareness of the importance of sustainable tourism. The event was
held at the
   Punta Cana Resort & Club.
   See http://cabs.kms.conservation.org/wombat/puntacana/index.htm
   For an electronic copy of the Tourism and Biodiversity report,
   write to Jason Anderson at j.anderson@celb.org
Received on Tue Sep 9 08:16:43 2003