Ecoculture is an alternate form of exploring our environment with an ecological, anthropological, and neo-humanist perspective. TOWARDS A NATURE-FRIENDLY TOURISTIC MODEL
• It’s about promoting an “environmentally and socially responsable tourism, that consists in travelling or visiting natural areas and local communities without disturbing, with the aim of enjoying, appreciating, and studying th
e natural attractions – landscape, wild flora and fauna – so as any cultural manifestation – from both present and past – that could be found there. Through a process that promotes the conservation, having a low environmental and cultural impact, and favors an active and socioeconomically involvement of the local communities.”
• We need to consider that the coming of people – even when it’s about conscious visitors, who take care of the conservation of nature and culture – has an impact on the environment and the communities; and as tourists they are influenced by the habits of the hosts, in a way that a cultural exchange exists which can be positive for both sides, transmitting to the visitors attitudes of conservation and respect towards mother nature. ECOTOURISM
• Ecotourism is part of a process that develop a cultural landscape in which there is a wanted balance among the local people’s daily life quality, the aesthetic character of developed and natural environments, the healthy functioning of ecosystems and the sustainability of the services that this ecosystem provides to the human life. CULTURAL TOURISM
• Cultural Tourism is defined as “That touristic travel motivated by knowing, understanding and enjoying the overall features and distinctive elements, material and spiritual, intellectual and affective, which characterize a social group or society of a specific destiny.”
NATURE TOURISM
• From the service provider’s point of view, the ecotourism can potentially implicate a social re-appropriation of the natural resources, so as of the service management and the appropriation of the benefits. It makes also possible a new socially productive organization, that allows improving the quality of life of the population and articulates social relationships of cooperation and human solidarity. It represents a reconceptualization of the surrounding nature and the use of the touristic resources, such as the role that the local population embodies in the model, not only as the operative instrument of the touristic services, but as the ultimate goal for development.
• Passing from a predatory model of development to a sustainable one, which cultivates harmony with nature, has multiple complications. It implies modifying our vision and relation with nature: this is not only a source of raw materials, but also the necessary surroundings for human existence. It implies a rational management of the natural resources and also to modify the productive and socialorganization that produces and re-produces inequality and poverty, as well as the deteriorative productive activities and the creation of new social relationships, in which the central idea wouldn’t be anymore about profit, but about the human wellbeing. Sustainable Development
“Development that satisfies the necessities of the present without compromise the aptitude of the future generations in order to satisfy its own necessities.”
Report Brundtland (United Nations, 1987)
“If our planet has to be saved, this will be achieved not through ideologies or politic programs, but thanks to people, individualities, in businesses and other places – that decide to love and work in harmony with the world we live in.”
--- Sir Laurens Van Der Post
