ECOCLUB, Issue 92
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Venezuela's Chavez, while UNESCO has just added the Galapagos Islands, which was the world's first officially designated
World Heritage site, to its "List of World Heritage in Danger".
sented the island of Maui at the annual Association Meeting of the 16 Conservation Districts of Hawaii. There are four
Individual Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Maui, and all directors and associated on their boards are volunteers. They
conduct soil and water conservation activities within their respective boundaries. The districts have been able to accomplish
much on a meagre budget although the financial situation has gotten critical, as the USDA Natural Resources Conservation
Service is now prioritising on Farm Bill Programs. Nevertheless the Island of Maui was able to hire a Conservation Specialist to
meet increased needs, and oversee programs, including conservation education and contests,
trail building, career days,
watershed restoration, organic agriculture and invasive species control.
In recent years Maui is experiencing rapid population
and tourism growth and this puts extra pressures on soil and water.
Asia & Pacific
Australia: Whale-shark black-market threatens Ningaloo reef ecotourism. Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS)
and Charles Darwin University researchers studying 12 years of photographs from Western Australia's Ningaloo Reef in an
attempt to predict whale-shark population size have discovered a steady decline, particularly in the bigger sharks. Although
countries such as India, the Philippines, Maldives and Taiwan have banned whale shark fishing, a black market for the shark's
meat is thriving. The report's co-author, Dr Mark Meekan, called on the Australian Government to work with its northern
neighbours to promote ecotourism and help stem the predation of the endangered species. In Western Australia, whale shark
tourism brings in over AUD 6 m. each year.
Bahrain: New arab sustainable tourism society to encourage women to enter tourism. A new 'Sustainable Tourism Society
of Bahrain' aims to encourage more women to take up tourism jobs and promote responsible tourism among visitors and
residents. Founder Abdulla Abdulaziz, a Labour Ministry official, told Gulf Daily News:"I do not want tourism if our identity is
going to vanish". The new society appears to have the support of Gulf Air.
China:
Beijing hotels told to go easy on the aircon. With one year left for the Olympics, and in an effort to curb energy
consumption, Beijing vice-mayor has ordered city hotels to adjust their airconditioning units so that temperature varies only
within specific bounds: from 20 degrees Celsius in winter to 26 C in the summer. The order is not voluntary with police
expected to engage in spot checks. Hotels use up around 20% of electricity consumption in Beijing. In addition, all hotels with
Olympic Games contracts were urged to meet national green hotel standards before the end of 2007, installing water-saving
equipment, power-saving light bulbs and linen wash-saving programs. By the end of 2006, only 192 hotels out of 700 starred
hotels and a few unstarred ones, had been officially approved as "eco-friendly" according to the national standard for green
hotels. The standard was drafted and put in effect in June 2002 by The China Hotels Association and has five grades, the lowest
being A and the highest AAAAA.
Oman: Unesco deletes world heritage site for failing to conserve wildlife. For the first time in its history, UNESCO deleted a
property, the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman, from the list of World Heritage sites, due to the local government's decision to
hand over part of the area to an oil company for exploration and downsizing the area by 90% from 28,000 square kilometres to
2,824 square kilometres. The number of the Arabian Oryx, a white antelope (Oryx leucoryx), had already come down from 450
to 65 in the last ten years due to poaching. The Arabian Oryx had become extinct in the wild in 1972, but was reintroduced in
January 1982 in the desert of Oman, in what came to symbolise a 'new approach' to species conservation. However in early
1996 poaching resumed and by September 1998 had reduced the wild population to just 138 animals of which just 28 were
females - no longer a viable wild population. Meanwhile, UNESCO removed four sites from the List of World Heritage in
Danger, recognizing improvements in their conservation: Everglades National Park (USA), Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve
(Honduras), Royal Palaces of Abomey (Benin) and Kathmandu Valley (Nepal), and inscribed three new endangered sites:
Galapagos (Ecuador), Niokolo-Koba National Park (Senegal) and Samarra (Iraq).
India: New village tourism scheme launched in Kerala, India
Kerala's Chief Minister, Mr V.S. Achuthanandan, launched a new Kerala Tourism Authority's village tourism development
scheme called `My Village, A Tourism Friendly Village', aiming to decentralise tourism development in the State, with the
creation of 140 'tourism-friendly villages'. These villages are planned to be self-sufficient by sourcing their daily food
requirements locally. Mr Achuthanandan also urged villagers to protect their natural environment, which was the main attraction
for foreign tourists in his view. Famous for its backwater houseboat cruises and the Periyar Tiger Sanctuary, Kerala has one of
the highest literacy rates in India.
