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Ecotourism (definition)

ECOTOURISM AND ECOTOURIST
National parks, areas of environmental preservation and rural properties as patrimonies should be worked in order to provide financial or qualitative revenues.  Financial revenue is important to motivate owners of natural attractiveness and communities to preserve the nature and beauty of our landscapes. The lack of this work results in those histories of farmers that deforest to get wood and coal and to practice agricultural activity.

Ecotourism is an activity that provides financial and qualitative revenues. It is a business alternative, a lucrative activity capable of substituting  for agriculture and exploitation of wood; the revenue will come with lodging, feeding, services and entrance to natural attractions.

Tourism uses local labor, generates employment and fastens the man to his community. Each direct employment generated by tourism represents another person with revenue to spend in their own community and indirect employment linked to services and other support for products such as lodging, food service, fuel, handicraft, equipment, film and courses.

When a local community acquires conscience that tourism increases the level of employment and quality of life, it starts to preserve nature. The increase of  local economic activity is the best form to preserve nature in a short time. Later on we can work on building conscience to preserve, to understand the environment and interact with it, respecting its fragility and usefulness.

For example, the Intervales State Park, is divided in preserved area (closed to visitation) and conserved area (opened to visitation), where  tourists pay entrance fees, feeding and lodging. The money and employment generated by ecotourism aid in the maintenance of the preserved area. The guides of the Park were hunters and today they feel pleasure and are aware of the importance of their activity.

In the places where ecotourism was well implanted, we can observe a decrease of the rhythm of nature aggression. In some cases, a part of the wild life has been recovered. Ecotourism is a commercial activity that collaborates with environmental preservation. For this function, we can affirm that the ecotourist is everyone that promotes and motivates the preservation and environmental conservation, through his or her tourist activity.

Ecotourists are groups of different preferences such as sportsmen, esoteric, environmentalist, observers and others. They look for integration with  nature to break limits, to live experiences and to enjoy themselves separately or in groups. Sportsmen, for example, are divided in several subgroups such as climbers, canyon and cave exploiters, canoeists and others. Ecotourists are groups that act in different ways and that possess values in common: preservation, environmental conservation and tourism.

Even so, not all activity in nature can be considered ecotouristical. At first, the trekking in the Atlantic Forest is not an ecological activity; it will be only when the guide or the tourism operator  emphasizes  environmental education and contributes for the conservation of that place. The canoeing activity on Itajaí-Açu River (Santa Catarina State) is ecotourism because it motivates the local community to fight against pollution of the rivers and to conserve nature. On the other hand, canoeing championships that agglomerate people in the margins of the rivers and on  vegetation cannot be called ecotourism.

We will only know that a company or a tourist guide is an ecotourist when we observe the way in which they act and the manner in which their customers behave during the tourist activity. When referring ecotourism agencies, we are collaborating for the preservation and the conservation of  nature. For this we need to differentiate the service that is offered us.

Ecotouristical activity should be enough to preserve our ecosystems. Even so there is a lack of information and experience among entrepreneurs, guides and ecotourist operators. Besides, many people receive poor orientation concerning tourism and marketing. The ecotouristical development must be conscious because it is in risk in local communities. The lack of information and of correct orientation  can bring consequences of the failure of an enterprise involved in environmental preservation and the removal of the beginning ecotourist that could still collaborate for preservation.

Items to verify an agency is an ecotourist

• Works with small groups;
• Hires local labor and helps in its recruiting;
• Promotes  environmental education and offers learning trips;
• Pays entrance fees to  natural attractions, when they exist;
• Prohibits its customers from littering and promotes a clean environment;
• Guides its customers so they do not pull up plants;
• Prohibits  its customers from killing or harming animals;
• Uses only authorized trails opened for walks;
• Doesn't offer to its customers meats of wild animals such as caiman, turtles and capybara.

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Grupo de Trabalho Interministerial EMBRATUR / IBAMA

III - DEFINITION

Ecotourism activity should embrace, in its definition, the dimensions of knowledge of nature, interpretative educational experience, validation of local traditional cultures and promotion of the sustainable development.

In this way, for the ends of beginning the execution of  national politics, it is considered, in this document, the ecotourism as " a segment of the tourist activity that uses, in a maintainable way, the natural and cultural patrimony, motivates its conservation and looks for the formation of a environmental conscience through  ecosystem interpretation, promoting the well-being of the involved populations".

The growing societal participation in environmental subjects is pressing governments and institutions more and more for the establishment of requirements  for relationship of the environmental impact in the implantation of enterprises. This links to a growing search of man for a more intimate and frequent relationship with  nature and therefore recommends the non restriction of the ecotourism concept to accompany the dynamics of this segment. Now ecotourism activity is in a transition phase between " tourist product " and " trip concept ", and the definition components can be absorbed integrally by other segments or activities of tourism, that perhaps are not considered ecotourist today, but whose evolution should be motivated.
BARROS, Sílvio Magalhães e LA PENHA, Denise Hamu M. de, coord. Ecoturismo: Diretrizes para uma Política Nacional de Ecoturismo, "Conceituação", p. 19, Brasília, EMBRATUR, 1994.

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IEB - ECOTOURISM INSTITUTE OF BRAZIL

" Ecotourism is the practice of leisure tourism, sporting or educational, in natural areas, that uses in maintainable way the natural and cultural patrimonies, motivates its conservation, promotes the formation of environmental conscience and guarantees the well-being of the involved populations "

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