The TravelMole Interview: Oliver Hillel, UNEP

At the first World Ecotourism Summit, Quebec, Canada, Oliver Hillel (left), tourism programme coordinator, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) told TravelMole that a broad basis of consensus had been reached over the definition of the term ‘ecotourism’.

At the opening of the Summit, Francesco Frangialli, secretary general of the WTO, said he expected a definition of the content and limits of the term ecotourism to come out of the proceedings. Although ‘ecotourism’ is a term that has been used for over 20 years, many feel that the absence of any clear definition of what it should represent has led to ‘greenwashing’ and a devaluation of the whole concept.

At the end of the summit, a ‘Quebec Declaration on Ecotourism’ was issued to “set a preliminary agenda and a set of recommendations for the development of ecotourism activities in the context of sustainable development.”

Although a strict definition of ecotourism was not included in the Quebec Declaration, Mr Hillel told TravelMole that the main message to come out of the summit was that it had been acknowledged that while the phrase ‘sustainable tourism’ covered a wide range of issues for the whole tourism industry, ‘ecotourism’ should be used to address specifically three aspects of tourism:

The Quebec Summit represented the culmination of 18 preparatory meetings held in 2001 and 2002, involving over 3,000 representatives from national and local governments, private ecotourism businesses and their trade associations, NGOs, academic institutions and consultants, intergovernmental organisations, and indigenous and local communities.

Mr Hillel said that although the Quebec Declaration was not a legally binding document, it can be used by all those involved in ecotourism as a platform from which to refer and as a “blueprint for action”.

Mr Hillel added that it was clear from the proceedings of the International Year of Ecotourism that both sustainable tourism and ecotourism are tools for alleviating poverty and saving biodiversity. He said that it is with that in mind that the Quebec Declaration included a recommendation that “the sustainability of tourism should be a priority at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, August/September 2002, due to its potential contribution to poverty alleviation and environmental protection in critically endangered ecosystems.”

Mr Hillel said that ecotourism is a set of principles that can, and should, be applied to all forms of tourism, and lessons learned can be shared with mainstream tourism. However, he said that he didn’t believe ecotourism is of much interest to the large operators, rather it provides opportunities for small and medium-sized operators to develop sustainable tourism businesses at a local level. He pointed out that UNEP and the International Ecotourism Society have recently published an Ecotourism Guide (Ecotourism: Practices, and Policies for Sustainability), and that IUCN and WTO have published a manual on “Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas”, which should assist SMEs in this process.

Read our previous stories:
16-May-02 1,000 delegates to attend first World Ecotourism Summit
29-May-02 Travel and tourism on UN agenda for sustainability and poverty alleviation
5-Feb-02 UNEP tackles tourist threat to coral reefs
29-Jan-02 Tourism Concern cautious about International Year of Ecotourism
20-Feb-00 Tour Operators’ Initiative for Sustainable Tourism

See previous TravelMole interviews:
20-May-02: Keith Webber, Telewest
07-May-02: Mark O’Brien, Rosenbluth International
07-May-02: Alicia Gardner, Sabre
29-Apr-02: Carolyn Ezzell, Delta Air Lines
23-Apr-02: John Davis, Pegasus Solutions
15-Apr-02: Gregory Hunt, ABTA Arbitration Scheme
09-Apr-02: Stuart Winter, Atinera
03-Apr-02: Roberto Da Re, Dolphin Dynamics
26-Mar-02: Arnaud Debuchy, Amadeus
19-Mar-02: Helen Baker, Lastminute.com
12-Mar-02: Pat Minogue, Galileo
07-Mar-02: Jon Hart, MyTravel
28-Feb-02: Lawrence Hunt, Rapid Travel Solutions