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And in those years, a survey of attitudes shows a growing
cynicism about ‘greenwashing’ – where the ecological, educative
and sustainability tenets of the industry are little more than a
facade to draw in the customers rather than a philosophy
underpinning the entire show.
There is virtually no regulation of the segment here, meaning
there is nothing to stop anyone in New Zealand tourism industry
adding ‘eco’ to their name in a cynical bid to tap into the
market, raising the prospect of eco-four-wheel-drive tours
churning up the tracks of the back country and eco-hunting tours
shooting their way through the Southern Alps.
As the New Zealand ecotourism conference in Greymouth was told
last year, people here can’t even agree on a definition.
It’s a far cry from the situation across the Tasman, where
Australia is seen as the world leader in verifiable and robust
processes so eco-tourists can distinguish the genuine operators
from the green-washers.
The irony is that one of the main players who guided that
transformation is an expatriate Kiwi. Ross Dowling was a
founding staff member of the New Zealand Ministry for the
Environment but crossed the ditch to become a co-founder of
Ecotourism Australia, which tackled the issues which are still
unresolved here.
It was, he explained, no accident. The Australian industry got
together to create a national strategy and developed the Green
Globe International Ecotourism Standard, backed by research
involving 16 universities. The ecotourists, already more
educated and discerning than the average globetrotter, have
become familiar with the Australian standards and sought out
operators that met them.
Dowling provided a roadmap for New Zealand so his homeland could
match his adopted home, including creating an ecotourism
development plan and creating environmental standards for
operators. Some progress has already been made, with the
conference hosted at Tai Poutini Polytechnic, which since 2003
has run a oneyear ecotourism guiding certificate that educates
aspiring leaders in New Zealand’s cultural and biological
history.
The government is now in catch-up mode, releasing the New
Zealand Tourism Strategy 2015 with the bold aim to leapfrog the
Australians by becoming the first fully sustainable tourism
industry in the world. Tourism Minister Damien O’Connor cited
the accelerating change – both of climate and politics – that
has occurred in the last few years and said credible
sustainability will define the way New Zealand is marketed in
the future.
The true potential of the tourism industry, he said, will be
realised only if we can represent a country with unique
credentials in the sustainability of our environment, industry,
culture, and society, and if we can execute a clear plan for
continual improvement.
Cynics say that, like the woolly and ill-defined aims announced
for the nation to become fully carbon neutral, beginning with
key departments by 2012, the vow is long on rhetoric and short
on detail. But progress has been made steadily. The Green Globe
system, on which the Australian standard was partly based, has
already been in operation in New Zealand. Kaikoura became the
first district council in the world to get Green Globe
accreditation for sustainability.
Another of New Zealand’s
landmark ecotourism operations, the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony,
adopted the standard to assess how well it was doing in
protecting the penguin population. The trust which runs the
colony said it proved valuable to create a benchmark to ensure
it was making progress across a range of indicators.
At the
heart of it was a philosophy that their role was to safeguard
the penguins and the tourism was a secondary consideration.
Thanks to the presence of a second undisturbed colony nearby,
they were able to see if the visitors’ presence was impacting on
the penguins’ lives and discovered they were making no
appreciable difference.
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