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ECOCLUB® |
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ISSN 1108-8931 |
International Ecotourism Monthly |
Year 4, Issue 44, Jan. 2003 |
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Did you spot a
good ecotourism story? Or are you part of the story? Send
it in and win! Best submission every month will receive a USD 5
coupon at Amazon.com ! |
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Marcos Veron, one of the most important leaders of the Guarani-Kaiowá tribe in Brazil, has been killed by gunmen. Veron, aged approximately 70, is the third Brazilian Indian to be murdered since the New Year. He was the head of a community who had been trying for fifty years to recover their land after it was seized by cattle ranchers. In recent months the community had been living by the side of a highway, having tried to re-occupy some of their land and been forced out by armed police and soldiers. (Source: Survival International) China's
State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) announced it will designate 120 "model ecological regions" in
the next three years to set precedents for balancing economic growth and
ecological conservation amid the country's rapid industrialization. The model regions will be chosen from four or five Chinese
provinces, as well as 300 to 400 middle-sized cities and counties,
which are carrying out their specific plans to develop an
environmentally-friendly economy by 2005.The SEPA has been promoting the eco-friendly region concept in
China since 1995. The process of setting up these regions is underway The EU is to invest 19m euros in the
Chapare region through different projects for the development of ecotourism and the improvement of this region in Cochabamba.
The investment is the result of an agreement between national
officials and representatives of the EU. In this context, they presented a tourism guide for a visit to the region in the Cochabamba
tropics. Rudiger Gumz, co-director of the Chapare Alternative Development
Strategy Support Programme (Pradec), explained that the financial aid would not only be directed towards
ecotourism but also towards
the development of other areas, such as cleaning land, strengthening municipalities and the protection of natural resources. Research finds that
half of all U.S. Internet users - roughly 59 million individuals — have made a travel purchase
online. The "Pew Internet and American Life Project" measured a significant
increase in the amount of online travel buyers in 2002, up from 31 million Internet
users in 2000 - representing a
90 percent growth rate. The Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD),
the technical cooperation arm of the Organisation of American States,
through funding of nearly half a million dollars will
assist in four programmes focused on regional ecotourism development
in Latin American and the Caribbean. The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) is hiring an
Administrative Assistant/Office Manager for its main office, which is
being relocated from Vermont to Washington, In its new Washington location, TIES will be housed within a new
policy research centre, the Center for Ecotourism and Sustainable Development (CESD) which is jointly sponsored by the Institute for
Policy Studies and Stanford University. The Administrative Assistant/Office Manager will work for both TIES and CESD. Happy 20th to "The
Internet". On 1 January 1983 the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
(Arpanet) of the US Department of Defence - the forerunner of the
Internet - was switched to the TCP/IP protocol. This enabled millions of computers to go online instead of the
Network Control Protocol (NCP) which limited it to just 1,000 machines.
The TCP/IP protocol was designed by Vinton Cerf and Robert
Kahn, the fathers of the Internet. A resort development project that descended on a
sacred beach
on Iriomotejima island aka "The Galapagos of Asia", is a
blessing to the town mayor but could cause a "divine wrath"
according to Kinsei Ishigaki, who heads the Iriomote Island Ecotourism
Association. "The site used to be considered a sacred place
where a
god was to descend. If the project is forced upon us, it would not
only be reproached by the world, it would invite a divine wrath.''
The center of the controversy is a
four-story hotel that would be built on a pristine 800-meter stretch of white sand on Tsukigahama (moon beach), at
the mouth of the Urauchigawa river, lined with evergreen Australian pine trees. Yellow-margined box turtles, an endangered
species, also inhabit the area. The project by the Unimat group, known for its consumer credit
business and office coffee vending machine services, is the first resort development on the island.
Located 400 kilometres southwest of Okinawa's main island,
Iriomotejima is dubbed the "Galapagos of Asia'' for its rich wild
life. Ninety percent of the island area is covered with primitive forests
of tropical and subtropical trees. Half of the island is designated a national park. It is also home to the indigenous Iriomote
wild cat, under special government protection. The Deputy Prime Minister
of Thailand, Korn Dabbaransi, told local officials of Phuket that Backpackers should be discouraged from visiting Phuket
because they bring problems such as drugs.In a wide-ranging meeting with local leaders at Provincial Hall on
Wednesday, he also mentioned that employers in Phuket should take responsiblity for controlling levels of Burmese laborers and that the
runway at Phuket Airport needed to be lengthened so that Nowhere is southern
Africa's food crisis more acute than in Malawi where out of a total
population of 11 million, more than three million run the risk of
starvation due to a combination of flooding and drought. Now, The
Malawi Director of Tourism Services announced a strategic plan of
action created within the Ministry of Tourism, Parks and Wildlife with
funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). After a
feasibility study was conducted, officials decided on an
"up-market tourism development". Five places are identified
as "ripe for ecotourism development": the Nkhota-kota
Wildlife Reserve, Mount Mulanje, Kapichira Falls on the Shire River in
southern Malawi, the lakeshore district of Mangoche between Lake
Malawi and Lake Malombe, straddling the Shire River and Cape Maclear
on the Nankumbe Peninsula jutting out into Lake Malawi. |
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