Volumes have been written about the correlation between conservation and tourism in the last 20-odd years. There are ideas, and more ideas that build on the earlier ones. But to see how things work out in practice, one might have to go no further than, say, a Facebook group that serves as a platform for those concerned about irresponsible tourism, specifically in protected areas (PAs).
- Avoid getting too close
- Finding out about the animal will help you judge an appropriate distance
- If you are too close, the animal's behaviour may tell you so
- Make your observation brief, then move on
- Don't chase an animal
- Move quietly, slowly and in plain view
- Use a blind if one has been provided
- Use calls, tape recordings of calls, or other device sparingly
- Divide large groups of people into small groups
Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
The wall of the group 'Rowdy Tourism in PAs' serves as a irksome documentation of what happens on the ground. There are pictures of VIPs rampantly flouting park rules, of people getting off vehicles and taking selfies on roads that pass through sanctuaries, and of illegal safaris that are organised by tour operators by throwing all ethics and rules out of the window. In short, the group's page comes across as a graphic pictorial documentation of all that is wrong with wildlife tourism in India. This is not to say that every tourist is irresponsible, but the more such pictures you see, you will yourself conclude that irresponsible tourism is doing wildlife in. And all that in spite of the forest-wildlife laws and innumerable ecotourism guidelines being in place.
Somewhere in the years since Rio Summit 1992 when the modern "ecotourism" concept took roots and spread far and wide, things have gone terribly wrong. There may be marginal or even yawning differences of opinion about the extent to which things have worked, but there would certainly be near unanimity among experts on the contention that things are not changing fast enough.
Post-Rio concepts and ideas
The early years after the landmark 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), better known as the Rio Summit, generated a lot of ideas and visions about the interplay between PAs and tourism. Among those that sought to translate the spirit of Rio into possibly implementable ideas was a document released by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Published in 1996, 'Tourism, ecotourism, and protected areas' was essentially a by-product of the IV World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas held in Caracas, Venezuela, in February 1992.
- 15.1: By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and drylands, in line with obligations under international agreements
- 15.2: By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally
- 15.3: By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world
- 15.4: By 2030, ensure the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity, in order to enhance their capacity to provide benefits that are essential for sustainable development
- 15.5: Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species
- 15.6: Promote fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and promote appropriate access to such resources, as internationally agreed
- 15.7: Take urgent action to end poaching and trafficking of protected species of flora and fauna and address both demand and supply of illegal wildlife products
- 15.8: By 2020, introduce measures to prevent the introduction and significantly reduce the impact of invasive alien species on land and water ecosystems and control or eradicate the priority species
- 15.9: By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts
- 15.a: Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems
- 15.b: Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all levels to finance sustainable forest management and provide adequate incentives to developing countries to advance such management, including for conservation and reforestation
- 15.c: Enhance global support for efforts to combat poaching and trafficking of protected species, including by increasing the capacity of local communities to pursue sustainable livelihood opportunities
It recognised the dangers that badly managed or uncontrolled tourism posed for the world's natural protected areas, and posed "ecotourism" as an answer. The publication laid out the clearly, "if ecotourism is to fully achieve this potential, well-founded principles and clear guidelines for the active involvement of local communities, protected area managers and private entrepreneurs, will be necessary. In addition, guidance is required to facilitate in-depth regional and site-specific research on the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of visitors on protected areas, and the development of appropriate local, national and regional tourism strategies."
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism, expanded the debate with its 'Global Code of Ethics for Tourism' a few years later, in 1999. This was, of course, more of guideline for responsible tourist behaviour, and had its roots in the 'Agenda 21 for the Travel and Tourism Industry' issued by the WTO, the World Travel & Tourism Council, and the Earth Council three years earlier. This in turn had been a customised document drawing heavily from Agenda 21, the non-binding, voluntarily implemented action plan that resulted from Rio'92.
Still, there was a missing link somewhere. The argument that tourism could benefit wildlife and parks was well taken, as was the idea that the travel-tourism industry needs to abide by elementary ethics that take into account economic, social, cultural and environmental sensibilities. The two needed to be integrated, and this happened with the publication of 'Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas – Guidelines for Planning and Management' by the UNWTO, IUCN and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Yet another document, that.
On paper all these made for great documents and phenomenal concepts, but the binding spirit was still missing. All these taken disparately and maybe even collectively would have been flawed on two counts. First, most of them erroneously projected 'sustainable tourism' as a niche sector within tourism, rather than promote the idea that tourism itself needs to be sustainable. It was a question of changing the very spirit of tourism, instead of limiting oneself to its letter. Second, these top-down approaches underplayed the fact that the success of all these concepts is intrinsically linked to tourist behaviour. In a country like India where you still need to enact laws and impose fines to ensure that people don't spit on roads, tackling unruly tourism is easier said than done.
The question of footprints
The pitfalls of wildlife tourism were documented and warned about starkly in a study titled 'Take only photographs, leave only footprints', published in October 1997 by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The publication itself became popular, and its title has spawned innumerable mottos, codes and guidelines.
- Appreciate the colours and sounds of nature
- Treat the Protected Area/wilderness area with respect
- Dress in colours that blend with the natural environment
- Take pictures, but without disturbing wildlife
- Observe the sanctity of holy sites, respect local customs
- Keep a reasonable distance from wild animals, and do not provoke them
- Dispose waste responsibly: carry back all non-biodegradable litter, and leave campsites litter-free before departing
- When in a vehicle, remember wild animals have right of way
- Keep to the speed limit, don’t use the horn, and do not startle animals
- Do not talk loudly or play loud music
- Do not get out of the vehicle or approach wild animals
- Do not approach animals closer than 15 m or disturb them while they are resting
- Do not take away flora and fauna in the form of cuttings, seeds or roots.
- Do not feed wild animals
- Do not light fires, or smoke inside protected areas. Accidental forest fires cause irreparable damage
- Carrying of guns, fire arms, inflammable materials are strictly prohibited, as per the provisions of the WildLife (Protection) Act, 1972, and is punishable by law
Source: Guidelines for ecotourism in and around protected areas, Ministry of Environment and Forests, June 2011
It has been nearly twenty years since this publication, and almost a quarter of a century since Rio'92. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a thing of the past, having been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were agreed upon last year. More importantly, the word 'footprint' now connotes something else altogether: carbon footprint. And in that, it is no longer fashionable to leave behind even a footprint, and that's more than mere semantics.
What is important to understand is that the world has been changing too fast, and the ideas and visions from Rio'92 have not quite kept pace. The role that tourism needs to play in this different world has changed too. Three of the 17 SDG goals that were identified involve tourism: Goals 8, 12 and 14. Goal 15, on the other hand, is all about life on land and biodiversity (see boxes).
For all this to work to the benefit of conservation in India, the ministry of tourism on one hand and the ministry of environment, forests and climate change on the other need to work together. In a way it is good that the National Tourism Policy, albeit quite sketchy and shallow in its draft form, has been hanging fire for more than a year. This provides with an opportunity to ensure that the ethics and needs of conservation and communities find themselves central to the policy.
The challenges are many. Protected areas remain short-staffed, forest guards are woefully under-paid and over-worked, and biotic pressures on habitats are multiplying by the day. In a country that has over 500 protected areas, not much has changed drastically since Rio'92. Many critics argue that this has been so since parks and sanctuaries are being used to promote tourism, rather than tourism bringing the much-needed finances to cash-starved PAs. Moreover, there is little evidence to show that communities around PAs barring a few exceptions have benefited. And irresponsible tourist behaviour makes it worse for wildlife and conservation.
The unruly and the exploitative
The websites of all organisations mentioned earlier, as also others that are allied, host innumerable documents about the benefits of ecotourism, sustainable tourism, wildlife tourism, and what have you. The content of these documents dominate discussions, and the behaviour of tourists is either grossly undermined or ignored altogether in the discourse that follows. It is important to note and acknowledge how tourism plays on the ground, in habitats. Theories and laws have their own place, but if ground realities are disconcerting, the theories and guidelines need to make course corrections. So, let's take a random sampling of incidents.
- Avoid getting too close
- Finding out about the animal will help you judge an appropriate distance
- If you are too close, the animal's behaviour may tell you so
- Make your observation brief, then move on
- Don't chase an animal
- Move quietly, slowly and in plain view
- Use a blind if one has been provided
- Use calls, tape recordings of calls, or other device sparingly
- Divide large groups of people into small groups
Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
In July this year, it was reported that visitors to the Yeoor section of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) on the outskirts of Mumbai left behind more than 15,000kg of garbage across the forest the previous month. This included contraband, empty liquor bottles, plastic bags and bottles, cigarette packets and food wrappers. It was left to locals and NGO activists to clean up the mess left behind by tourists. That's just one park and one month taken into account.
What had happened at the Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in April was far worse. The incident had happened along a road was about a tigress and her cubs being forced to leave a well-frequented waterhole. When the tigress came to the spot, the tourists went bonkers. They honked away and the children went delirious. Some stepped down their vehicles, while others climbed atop to take selfies. The forest officer present tried his best to control matters, but this only resulted in a spat with the tourists. The tigress left the spot, and now no longer visits the waterhole. The Tipeshwar example is only a case in point; this malaise is rampant and widespread.
None of these were isolated incidents: the problem has been there all along, and the the advent of smartphones have made things worse. These concerns made the Conservation India group release a publication titled 'Stop! Don’t Shoot Like That: A Simple Guide to Ethical Wildlife Photography'. Providing a background to this, co-authors Shekar Dattatri and Ramki Sreenivasan wrote:
“While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy nature and photograph wildlife, how we do it matters. ‘Enjoyment’ must be tempered with responsibility. Unfortunately in India, the two rarely seem to go together. How many times have you sat in a movie hall trying to concentrate on a crucial bit of dialogue, while someone nearby has a loud conversation on their cellphone? It’s more often an ‘educated’ person who’s the culprit rather than some ignorant illiterate. And just as there are millions of ‘educated’ people with fancy cars, but with absolutely no sense of road etiquette, there are thousands of ‘educated’ people with the latest cameras and lenses, but without the least bit of sensitivity towards nature. The sad truth is, today, for every responsible photographer who respects nature and tries to minimize his or her impact, there are hordes of unruly, uncaring shutterbugs who’ve become a menace to wildlife.”
It is unfortunate that in the 21st century, these points need to be asserted at all. While it is true that rowdy tourist behaviour is there everywhere to see: from defaced monuments and infantile graffiti in heritage sites to the sea of garbage that swamps pilgrim centres. In case of wildlife, however, there is one more factor that contributes to irresponsible behaviour: abject disrespect for wildlife.
Till tourists learn to respect wildlife and their habitats, this menace will continue.
