In April, I left my Program Development Internship at Profugo to embark on a wild, wonderful, and transformative summer journey: working in Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve. Denali is a rugged land, and without a doubt the truest wild I’ve ever experienced. The park consists of six million acres of rolling tundra, craggly peaks, and nameless rivers. It is home to moose, caribou, foxes, lynx, arctic ground squirrels, grizzly bears, and dall sheep. Denali
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The idea that human pollution is damaging the Earth has lost all novelty. Since the advent of the First Industrial Revolution almost three centuries ago, smog and waste have slowly but surely begun to deteriorate our planet. Among those areas affected are our oceans, home to some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. Recent research has linked an increase in ocean debris with declining tourism among tropical beach destinations. Marine debris includes any
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On October 20, 2017, Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan launched the Responsible Tourism initiative, a statewide program aimed at “making better places for people to visit and better places for people to live in” (Naguran, 2017). The Responsible Tourism initiative operates within the “triple bottom line” model often utilized by companies pursuing sustainability. The triple bottom line refers to responsibility and conservation in the economic, social, and environmental spheres. The project has existed on
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According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), there will be 1.6 billion tourists worldwide by 2020. Tourism on such a mass scale does not necessarily spell out economic prosperity for the destinations affected by it. In fact, overtourism can lead to cultural deterioration and environmental degradation. In many developing areas, mass tourism is largely shaped and operated by foreign companies. This foreign ownership of tourism organizations has led to the leakage of tourism
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One of the most prevalent myths about tourism is that where there is tourism, there is economic progress. Tourism, like any other global industry, affects each destination differently. There are the winners, such as Cyprus, an island destination that has reaped the economic benefits of tourism to the tune of $2.4 billion euros annually (Lemesios et al., 2016). Tourism has invigorated the Cypriot economy and provided an invaluable source of income to locals. Very few
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