Hello again! Welcome back to the last post of week 5 and week 6’s theme of Trashy Travelling! This last post will be different from the previous posts as it provides an alternative, more sustainable look to tourism compared to the impacts of tourism that we have seen so far through the lens of Boracay and Mount Everest. The Feynan Ecolodge is an award-winning lodge based in the Wadi Araba area of Dana Biosphere Reserve in Jordan and it was built by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (Namrouqa, 2014). The lodge operates on a model of ecotourism, where the focus of their operations lies in generating revenue to fund conservation and provide sustainable income for the locals in the area, all while ensuring that their environmental footprint is minimised.

A characteristic of the lodge that can be often overlooked but plays a significant role in the lodge’s sustainability is its architecture. Feynan Ecolodge was constructed using earthen materials such as sand and cement as the base and straw bales to ensure low thermal bridging as a form of temperature regulation (Atiyat, 2017). The use of these materials indirectly preserves trees and protects the environment as it reduces the demand for wood and coal to make bricks, of which processing these raw materials releases a significant amount of carbon emissions (Guttikunda, 2015). Furthermore, the cutting down of trees for wood also reduces the amount of carbon sinks in the environment, aggravating the environment even more. Additionally, with the usage of ferro-cement sandwiching straw bales to form the roof to regulate temperature, additional carbon emitting heaters or air-conditioners are not needed, minimising their carbon footprint (Atiyat, 2017). As such, it is evident that the earthen architecture used to construct the lodge plays a significant role in the sustainability of the ecolodge.

Besides the earthen architecture, Feynan Ecolodge does not connect itself to the electricity grid. Rather, the lodge generates 100% of their electricity through solar panels mounted on their roof top. The electricity is then used limitedly for activities deemed necessary such as for lighting or for refrigeration, of which these electrical appliances are certified as greener alternatives. There are no dryers available as the laundry is air dried to reduce electricity consumption. In total, the daily electricity consumption for the lodge is restricted to 16-18 KWhr, less than a typical two bedroom apartment in Amman, Jordan (‘Sustainability’, 2013). The stringent usage of electricity for the lodge illustrates the extent to which the lodge operates to save energy and reduce their environmental footprint.

Definitely, there are many more aspects of the ecolodge that contribute to their sustainable ecotourism that I have not touched on. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the idea of sustainable tourism as not just a dream but rather a feasible and attainable goal with the right steps in place, where the Feynan Ecolodge is a prime example of such an operating model. Linking back to the wider theme of my blog about consumption behaviour on environmental pollution, I believe that besides blaming big operators for the environmental damage of tourism, it is essential for consumers like ourselves to do our parts as well. To encourage more operators to convert their tourism destinations into sites of ecotourism, there needs to be more demand from tourists. In essence, there should be a responsibility placed on travellers and consumers to engage in sustainable tourism practices and engage with operators that follow such a model.

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Hello and welcome back to the 2nd part of Boracay, Boranotokay! This blog post will continue the exploration of Boracay’s  tourism impacts on environmental pollution through the focus on the government measures implemented, and more specifically, the island closure in 2018.

With the aggravation of the island’s environmental condition, President Rodrigo Duterte enacted a 6 month islandwide closure in 2018 in efforts to rehabilitate the environment of Boracay (Reyes et al., 2018). During this period, no tourists were allowed to enter the island and an extensive clean up was initiated by the government. Furthermore, more regulations were for enforced to mitigate the reoccurrence of such devastating environmental pollution on the island. One major source of the marine pollution that occurred in Boracay was the lack of sewage infrastructure which resulted in a direct dumping of sewage water into the ocean. To tackle this, Boracay establishments that have over 50 rooms have been mandated by the government to have their own sewage treatment plans before the re-opening, as well as an accreditation of a tourism facility before they can operate (Cable News Network, 2018). In a study done about the detection of algal bloom in the coastal waters of Boracay, it was subsequently found that there was a reported decrease in the amount of coliform bacteria after rehabilitation (Visitacion, 2019) (figure 1.). This suggests an improvement in the water quality after the rehabilitation process, illustrating the effectiveness of the island closure.

Figure 1.

However, the island closure has significant socioeconomic repercussions on the islanders living in Boracay. For one, the locals who count on tourism to generate their income suffer greatly economically. The abrupt announcement of closure by President Duterte shocked many businesses on the island, leaving these locals to have to scramble to find alternative sources of income. The shock was so significant that a lawsuit was filed against the closure to the Philippines Supreme Court, expressing that the island closure was more like a “death sentence” to the locals (Haynes, 2018). Furthermore, in the midst of restoring the forests and wetlands of the area, many locals have been evicted from their houses due to the ambivalent legality of their tenure (Board, n.d.). Though the island closure provides time and opportunity for the environment in Boracay to heal, the implicated socioeconomic effects on the locals have been severe.

To end off this post, I would like to once again encourage you as a reader to reflect on the substantial effects of such a remedy to environmental pollution: Do you think that it is possible for us to regularly close off an entire tourist destination to rehabilitate the environment and what are the ramifications for those decisions?

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Travelling around the world is a dream for many, including myself! On the list of places that I would love to travel to, Boracay, Philippines stands near the top of the list because of their insanely beautiful beaches.

Boracay is a small tropical island located in the Aklan province in the Western Visayas Region, most renowned by tourists for its ‘powdery’ white beaches, attracting over 600,000 tourists in 2008 alone (Ong et al., 2011). Due to its popularity amongst travellers and the income that is subsequently generated through these tourists, the Philippine government has designated Boracay as the country’s number one beach (Ong et al., 2011).

However, with the amount of attention garnered over the past few years, Boracay has come into serious trouble with the problem of pollution. In 2017, 2 million tourists paid a visit to Boracay, of which the island generated 90 to 115 tonnes of trash every day, causing the island’s dumping sites to be strained due to the high influx of waste generated every day (Board, n.d.). As such, these trash that are undisposed off properly create issues of health and sanitation to the locals in the area, where bacteria and pests thrive off the presence of undisposed garbage, breeding disease vectors (Ayilara, 2020).

Furthermore, wastewater has been pumped directly into the sea due to the lack of wastewater management. In 2018, an abundance of green algae was detected along the coastal waters of the island, indicating a high nutrient discharge, leading to concerns about the water quality by scientists (Visitacion et al., 2019). The polluted waters not only disrupt the marine and aquatic ecosystem due to the process of eutrophication (Wilkinson, 2017), but it threatens the health of those who take a swim in the waters along the coast as they get exposed to the toxins of harmful algal blooms (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 2021).

As such, due to the devastating environmental pollution caused by the tourists, the island closed its borders in 2018 for environmental rehabilitation, of which we will be visiting in the next post. To end off this post and as a lead up to the next, I would like to leave a question for you as a reader to reflect upon: have you ever thought about how much waste you produce when you travel overseas and the implications that it has on the local environment and community? Definitely, it is something scary yet necessary to think about.

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In the previous post, Mount Everest was introduced as an area of tourist-induced environmental pollution. To further delve into the subject matter, this blog post will bring in the solutions and responses of the Nepalese government, evaluating their effectiveness in curbing the negative environmental impacts of climbing Mount Everest.

With reference to the previous post, the government has stepped up by implementing initiatives to combat the problem of waste and contaminants being discarded through banning single-use plastics in the region and asking for a 4000 dollar deposit, which would be returned if the climbers brought their waste back down with them (Napper et al., 2020). With these regulations implemented, the production and consumption of single-use plastics is curbed almost entirely, where the carbon emissions released to manufacture these single-use plastics are essentially curbed as well. Statistically, the plastic production to carbon dioxide release ratio is 1:5 , which essentially means that for every ton of single-use plastic produced, 5 tons of carbon emissions is released into the atmosphere (Ramsden, 2020). Furthermore, trekkers are deterred from leaving their waste on the mountain as well due to the financial costs of doing so. This illustrates a significant step towards sustainability in carbon emissions and discarded waste in Nepal by the Nepalese government.

However, one problem that was brought up in the previous post was the issue of microplastics. Though the above-mentioned regulations have tackled a bulk of the environmental pollution issues on Mount Everest, it does not overcome the problem of microplastics. Firstly, as microplastics particles are smaller than 5mm in size (Wu et al., 2016), they are too minute to be picked up and discarded by hand. Additionally, the microplastics discarded on the mountain also derive from the synthetic fibres of the equipment of the trekkers (Napper et al., 2020). Realistically, it is not feasible for the Nepalese government to place a ban on the climbers equipment nor would it be realistic for all trekkers to change their gear to made out of non-synthetic fibres due to the economical costs of these changes.

Ultimately, it does seem that the Nepalese government are ensuring environmental sustainability for the future of Mount Everest and the local community residing there. Nonetheless, it is evident that there are certain elements of pollutants that are not as easily dealt with, of which the onus should be handed to the direct consumers themselves, the climbers to make that change.

References

For the next two weeks, this blog will explore popular and niche tourist destinations and how the influx of tourists in these areas have cataclysmic effects on the environment and the people living in it.

Every year, more and more trekkers climb Mount Everest, which results in an accumulating amount of trash and pollution in the area. Due to the time-intensive nature of the climb, trekkers spend weeks on the mountain, generating an estimate of around 8 kilograms of waste, of which majority is discarded on the mountain (National Geographic, 2019). The waste found on the mountain range from empty oxygen canisters to food containers to even human faeces. Furthermore, with global warming causing the snow and ice to melt, garbage that has been buried under the snow would resurface, polluting and posing a serious health risk to the local community who live in the Everest watershed. When the watershed becomes contaminated, the local community’s health is threatened as faeces-contaminated water is known to have caused the spread of waterborne diseases such as Cholera (Oguttu et al., 2017).

Additionally, In 2020, researchers from the University of Plymouth collected eight 900 millilitre samples of stream water and eleven 300 millilitre samples of snow from different points of Mount Everest, discovering the presence of microplastics on all of the snow samples and three of the stream water samples (Charles, 2020). These microplastics are thought to have come from synthetic fibres of which are used to make the clothes and the equipment that the Mount Everest trekkers use (Napper et al., 2020). These microplastics found in stream water samples and snow samples would eventually be directly consumed by the local community, causing dire health issues.

Upon evaluation, there is a sort of environmental injustice played out here, where trekkers who climb Mount Everest are the ones polluting the area, while the local, less represented community living in the Everest Watershed have to bear the consequences. In this regard, we will explore what he Nepalese government have done to combat this environmental injustice and create a discourse to analyse whether the initiatives implemented are sufficient in protecting the health and safety of their people while protecting the environment of the area?

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