Respect for Wildlife- Need to Shirk Unruly Tourism with Ethics

Tourism and wildlife viewing in protected areas are intricately linked to each other. We in India especially need to understand, as human beings, that there is a need to give proper respect and space to wild animals while we amuse ourselves watching them as tourists in the wild. Subir Ghosh feels that we must learn to observe wildlife through quiet observation so that they are not scared or forced to flee their habitats. He also examines the developments that have taken place in the sphere of ecotourism since the United Nations’ Rio Summit in 1992 and also dwells on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) involving tourism and wildlife protection.

Much has been written about the correlation between conservation and tourism in the last 20 years, or so. There are ideas, and more ideas that build on the earlier ones. But to see how things work out in practice, one might have to go no further than, say, a Facebook group that serves as a platform for those concerned about irresponsible tourism, specifically in protected areas (PAs).

The wall of the group ‘Rowdy Tourism in PAs’ serves as an irksome documentation of what happens on the ground. There are pictures of VIPs rampantly flouting park rules, of people getting off vehicles and taking selfie pictures on roads that pass through sanctuaries, and of illegal safaris that are organized by tour operators by throwing all ethics and rules out of the window. In short, the group's page comes across as a graphic pictorial documentation of all that is wrong with wildlife tourism in India. This is not to say that every tourist is irresponsible, but the more such pictures you see, you will yourself conclude that ‘irresponsible tourism’ is seriously hampering wildlife tourism in India. And all this in spite of the forest-wildlife laws and innumerable ecotourism guidelines being in place.

Somewhere in the years since The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit 1992 (or Rio Summit 1992), when the modern ‘ecotourism’ concept took roots and spread far and wide, things have gone terribly wrong. There may be marginal or even yawning differences of opinion about the extent to which things have worked, but there would certainly be near unanimity among experts on the contention that things are not changing fast enough.

Post-Rio Concepts and Ideas