Ecotourism May Damage Environment, Experts Say

Ecotourism may be just as environmentally damaging as traditional travel due to the greenhouse gases vacationers are burning to reach remote and pristine areas, industry experts warned Tuesday.

That dilemma was the focus of the Global Ecotourism Conference in Oslo, a three-day gathering of ecotourism officials struggling to chart the future of an industry whose success threatens to become its own undoing.

“There is no other industry that has more to gain or to lose from climate change,” said Alexis Huntley, whose tiny Costa Rican airline Nature Air claims to be the first with zero net carbon dioxide emissions.

Ecotourism –a form of travel to pristine areas like natural parks or exotic islands meant to avoid the damaging impact of traditional tourism- is growing at around three times the rate of the tourism industry as a whole, according to The International Ecotourism Society, one of the sponsors of the conference.

Yet the extensive travel often required to reach untouched natural wonders produces climate-damaging greenhouses gases and other environmental damage. That, in turn, could potentially dry out the lush national parks and flood the small, exotic islands that are drawing the environmentally minded.

According to The International Ecotourism Society, nature-based tourism has been growing at a rate of more than 20 percent a year since the early 1990s, and is probably growing at three times the rate of the tourism industry as a whole.

Tourism to exotic destinations requires extensive travel, such as long flights and long drives that scientists say emit climate-warming gases.