|
|
|
eBulletin
"Latin Trails"
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Date:
May / 2005
|
|||
|
The Photo of the Month
|
Environmental Education & Ecotourism Content This issue of Latin Trails is dedicated to understanding the relationship between environmental education and ecotourism. To understand this relationship we discuss briefly some of the possible connections in the ecotourism section of this eBulletin, we invite you to visit some Latin American-based websites dedicated to the areas of environmental education, and we recommend you three interesting books to buy through Amazon.com. We also recommend you to visit our growing eLibrary on Ecotourism and Protected Areas, which contains links to theses, articles and websites (mostly in Spanish, but some in English) where we have included a section on environmental education. If you have any suggestions of websites, articles and ideas about environmental education please get in contact and let us know. Keep in touch Allan R. Rhodes Espinoza - Editor Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) At this moment we are starting to increase our content on the Parks and Protected Areas, the information is mostly in Spanish (a good opportunity to polish your Spanish!), but will be translated shortly. Here are the national parks that are new in our website. Every month we will be including new parks, so keep in touch for further information.
Ecoturismolatino through the last several months has created links and supporting relations with websites and organisations promoting responsible tourism in Latin America. You can visit our Responsible Tourism section for more details. Some of the websites up to now are ResponsibleTravel.com, Sustainable Travel International, Ethical Traveler and Inka Porter Project. Ecotourism is a responsible way of travel in which we want to enjoy the natural areas visited, but also learn about them. Therefore, the concept of ecotourism includes the educational component. It can even be said that ecotourism is a practice or a specialty of environmental education (Pacheco Muñoz, 2004). Ecotourism is not only an opportunity to learn about the natural contexts of the destination we visit (environmental interpretation), but also a chance to educate the tourist about how to interact sustainably with the environment (environmental education). Including the educational component into ecotourism imposes interesting challenges to operators who want to offer genuine ecotourism. The challenge is not only to inform the tourist about the natural surroundings, but also to environmentally educate the tourist. In other words, raising their environmental awareness which will bring long term changes in attitude and conduct (Black, 2004). To succeed in this the operator needs:
We must remember that the tourist is on holidays! The last thing people want is to be "educated" in a formal, rigid, dogmatic way. We must make sure that ecotourism is an enjoyable, recreational, and entertaining experience which shares a view of a sustainable way of life. We must take advantage of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development as well as the lessons learned in the International Year of Ecotourism (2002) to propose a new way of tourism, a new way to travel. Ecoturismolatino through its EcoEntrepreneur's Program has joined efforts with ecotour operators and ecolodges in Latin America to offer 5% discounts to all members of Ecoturismolatino which have a valid Discount Card. Get to know all the companies that are part of this program and get your discounts! The following companies now offer such discounts to all EcoTravellers members of Ecoturismolatino:
Your company can be included in this section contact us! Ecoturismolatino hosts three eGroups: EcoTravellers, EcoEntrepreneurs and Latin Natural Protected Areas (NPAs). Join an be part of the on going debates, exchange of experiences and finding travel mates among other things:
This month we recommend you several books related to environmental education: "Fostering Sustainable Behavior" by Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith: "Environmental Interpretation" by Sam H. Ham: An eBook (PDF format to download) "Environmental Education in the 21st Century" by Joy Palmer:
|
||
| Editor: Allan R. Rhodes Espinoza | |||
