By Aaron Smith – I spent over a year traveling around doing sustainable hotel/resort site inspections. Rarely did I get to spend more than one, or two nights, at each property. For me to be thorough, I needed to have an action plan, call it a comprehensive checklist to ‘grade’ each property. I saw every shade of ‘verde’ from the washed-out, to the vibrantly pure, and it was in this journey that I formed a deeper understanding of the industry, its operational challenges, and perhaps surprisingly, I grew a transcending appreciation for those not quite green enough yet.

By Ali Zerriffi

Barra De Potosi is a small coastal village at the mouth of a lagoon which runs along the coast of the Municipio de Petatlan. The lagoon network regulates the lives of both human and animal lives and has a balanced ecosystem that has kept its people employed and its environment protected. The people of Barra de Potosi are now confronted by a development project that they believe will destroy the existing ecosystem, in spite of Mexican laws protecting the environment.

In South Africa, an estimated 30,000 children under the age of 18 are said to be victims of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC). Even more shocking is that many of these victims are children between the ages of 10 and 14 years old. Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa (FTTSA), South Africa’s leading responsible tourism NGO, is now challenging citizens to become involved and assume their role as protectors of our children, forming part of their initiative where key players in the travel and sector are stepping up and taking a stance against Child Sex Tourism (CST).

Since Alex Haley’s book ‘Roots’ was published in 1976, tourists have been flocking to the villages of Juffureh and Albreda in the Gambia where the story began. The book and subsequent film tell the story of Kunte Kinteh, a man captured as an adolescent from Juffureh and sold into slavery in the United States. Today, around 2000 people live in Juffereh and Albreda, including decedents of Kunte Kinteh’s family. Tours to the villages involve international visitors arriving by boat and spending a few hours in the community learning about the slave trade and life in the village.

In recent years, increased tourism in the Park, infrastructure development, electricity lines and mobile phone stations has becoming the case of uncontrolled littering around the camps set-up for visitors and at scenic spots, selected for picnics or camping. Over 90% of he garbage disposed of improperly in the park are done so by Mongolian visitors and Mongolian employees of the visitors camps. Up to date, there is practically no non-biodegradable products that are produced in Mongolia: virtually all plastics and other polluting elements are imported.

Boundless Journeys’ annual charity event incorporates meaningful community service into an amazing travel adventure. Boundless Journeys’ August 2-9, 2009 Peru: The Sacred Valley & Machu Picchu trip serves as a special charity event to benefit the Instituto Machu Picchu and a community school in the village of Huanca. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Peru and its iconic archeological site, Machu Picchu, but very few visitors get off the beaten path and truly connect with the people and places they are there to experience.

Tourism Australia, Tourism Queensland and Gold Coast Tourism are staging the seventh National Conference on Tourism Futures from 17-19 August 2009 at the Surfers Paradise Marriott Resort & Spa, the Gold Coast. The Conference takes a forward perspective on the industry, looking out over a ten year timeframe and examining opportunities and issues for the future. The 2009 conference theme is ‘Redefining the Future’ and will examine the ‘over the horizon’ trends and opportunities that are reshaping the future of Australian tourism.

“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 Maasai of Kenya and Namibia’s Himba—two of the oldest cattle cultures on earth—are emerging from a century of ‘white man’s conservation,’ which turned their lands into off-limits game reserves. Now, with a new model of conservation, wildlife is back in their hands and the tribes are vying for a piece of the ecotourism pie. But can poachers become protectors?” On April 7, the Emmy Award-winning PBS series INDEPENDENT LENS presents David Simpson’s MILKING THE RHINO, which examines the deepening conflict between humans and animals in an ever-shrinking world.

Jamaica for Sale, a documentary about tourism & unsustainable development, takes a sharp look at the environmental, economic, and social impacts of tourism such as: degraded water quality and shoreline habitats, depleted marine species, poorly regulated large-scale development that relies on low-wage, unskilled local labor, and uncontrolled development of an industry that leads to inflation in land and housing prices, and consumes large amounts of local natural resources.