By Shams Uddin, Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism (CAMAT) – A vigil rally was organized in Booni, northern Chitral, Pakistan, as part of the global “Vigil For Survival” movement calling for a strong climate treaty in Copenhagen. Standing in solemn solidarity with the citizens of the nations whose very survival is threatened by the climate crisis, thousands of rallies and candlelight vigils were held around the world on December 12th and 13th, 2009. (Source: 350.org)

The Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism (CAMAT) celebrated the International Day of Climate Action on Oct 24th, 2009 in the Kalash Valley region (Rumbor, Chitral District, Pakistan) promoting actions with the motto “think globally, act locally.” The theme of the day was “The Impacts of Global Warming on the Kalash Communities,” and the CAMAT’s October 24th events gathered together local environmental groups, students, community leaders and women’s groups.

Ruby Falls (Chattanooga, Tennessee), America’s deepest commercial cave and most-visited underground waterfall, receives over 400,000 visitors annually. This 80-year-old natural attraction with a 1928 Irish style castle, listed in the National Register for Historic Places, has in recent years been transformed into a more sustainable business operation with progressive energy-saving strategies, waste reduction efforts, and sustainable land use initiatives – and a Green Globe International seal to testify to the successful implementation of these sustainability efforts.

The Galapagos Islands is a region folks love to visit. Managing environmental and infrastructure demands created by upwards of 145,000 visitors a year is front of mind with one visionary travel company. Ecoventura has taken an environmental leadership role to create structure that will ensure that visitors can continue to come here. This family-owned cruise company transports 4,000+ passengers annually aboard a fleet of three expedition vessels, identical, superior first-class 20-passenger yachts with 10 double cabins.

“Without tourism, the Pantanal (in South America), the world’s largest wetland, would have just turned into a major cattle feed-lot for McDonald’s” – Costas Christ, at the International Symposium on Sustainable Tourism Development. Highlighting the roles of tourism in supporting and promoting conservation, this article discusses the social, economic and environmental sustainability of travel and tourism, noting that “the very essence of tourism is selling culture and nature, and those must be protected or there will be no industry.”

The current economic situation and its impact on the industry was “the hot topic” at the 2009 Annual Cruise Shipping Convention in Miami, though discussions on the impact cruise tourism has on the environment “was not covered enough,” reports this article by Vacation and Cruising. Fuel consumption by cruise ships, which includes energy use for laundry, restaurants, leisure club activities, water and waste treatment, can, according to a 2008 study, be nearly three times those of the new Airbus A380.

The Initiative “Peace with Nature”, which gives birth to the National Strategy for Climate Change, and which plans to convert Costa Rica in a C – Neutral country by the year 2021, asks for great changes and reveals big challenges to be overcome. This proposal invites us to redefine and re-invent our creative capacities in order to assume the greatest task human kind has ever faced both as a victimizer and as victim at the same time: to overcome the self imposed threat of climate change and global warming.

Let’s suppose that because of measures to mitigate climate change, eg carbon taxes or trading systems or whatever, travel gets much more expensive. Let’s say it gets twice as expensive as it is now, relative to your income – i.e., if you were to continue travelling as much as you do now, it would use up twice the proportion of your total income as it does now. (We’ve had a bit of experience of this recently, though unrelated to climate change, with oil price increases..).