At the beginning of 2018, CBCGDF issued an analysis of some of the Russian people petition for the government to prohibit the Chinese people from buying land for construction projects and water abstraction in the Lake Baikal region, and once again aroused people’s concern and reflection on tourism, investment, and development. Someone who worked in the tourism industry in Lake Baikal said the influx of tourists caused some chaos in tourism on Lake Baikal and caused discontent among locals.
This is just one of the cases. With the increasing demand for people to enter nature and become closer to nature, the impact of tourism and travel on the environment and ecology has become increasingly prominent.
The Secretary-General of CBCGDF said that tourism and travel have a huge environmental and ecological cost, and we should promote sustainable tourism. Hotel disposable supplies, excessive use of the natural environment, the closure of certain tourist attractions, local demonstrations, will also gradually cause public concern. The Sustainable Tourism Index (STI) is a tool to be concerned about. CBCGDF pays close attention to the green index and the Sustainable Site Index (SSI) of the tourism industry in its green development and tourist attractions. 2017 is the year of International Tourism for Sustainable Development, and the theme of the International Day of Biodiversity is aligned with it.
Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. According to the UN World Tourism Organization, tourism increased by 3.9 percentage points in 2016. It is estimated that by 2020, China will become the world’s largest tourist destination country and the fourth largest tourist source country. It should not be overlooked that attractive landscapes and rich biodiversity play an important role in the tourism industry. Biodiversity in species and ecosystems is an important foundation for tourism. It is only with this in mind that it is politically and financially able to support the biodiversity conservation that can be protected and that the well-development tourism industry can reduce the potential threats through tourism’s profitability, protecting or increasing the value of important wildlife and biodiversity.
CBCGDF has been helping to increase the awareness of the importance of sustainable tourism to economic growth and biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in a variety of ways and to act. On May 22, 2017, the International Biodiversity Day, CBCGDF organized thematic activities in conjunction with “Biodiversity and Sustainable Tourism” and focused on the theme of “United Nations Sustainable Tourism Development in China – Sustainable Tourism Green Standards”. The implementation of sustainable tourism requires that tourism be integrated with nature, culture and mankind. With an endless stream of tourists visiting, it will also bring long-term positive impact on the environment so that tourism will enjoy a healthy development. At the same time, CBCGDF actively promote the Gross Ecosystem Production (GEP) project throughout the country. Based on the successful pilot project of Xing’an League, CBCGDF focuses its project promotion in Pu’er City in 2018 to help the local government to conduct more systematic projects including sustainable tourism. In addition, CBCGDF also encourages the reduction and limitation of the provision and use of hotel disposables in large-scale events, meetings and other public occasions, advocates a low-carbon and sustainable lifestyle, focuses and promotes the solution of the excessive packaging and take-away issues by holding seminars, launched a long-distance running event about abandoning disposable supplies, and launched other sustainable projects’ public donations such as “Walk Your Chopsticks”.
At the same time, CBCGDF also noted that many items of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are related with tourism. Some of the Targets (e.g. items 5, 8, 9, 10 and 12) are mainly about strengthening monitoring and management and reducing the potential damage that tourism can cause to biodiversity. Another part of the Targets (items 1, 11, 15, 18 and 20) are related to further developing tourism’s positive role in areas such as biodiversity awareness, protected areas, habitat restoration, public participation and resource utilization. A more desirable dimension is to better integrate biodiversity and sustainability into tourism policy and business models in support of Aichi Biodiversity Targets’ items 2 and 4. Target 2 said: “By 2020, at the latest, biodiversity values have been integrated into national and local development and poverty reduction strategies and planning processes and are being incorporated into national accounting, as appropriate, and reporting systems.” And Target 4 said: “By 2020, at the latest, Governments, business and stakeholders at all levels have taken steps to achieve or have implemented plans for sustainable production and consumption and have kept the impacts of use of natural resources well within safe ecological limits.”
Next, CBCGDF will further increase STI and SSI, and other related research to further promote the sustainable development of tourism and biodiversity conservation’s mutual promotion.
by/ Niu Jingmei, Harry