Hello everyone!
Welcome to our blog, Paradise (Not Yet) Lost. This blog is run by two of us – Emily and Joanna – and we’re going to be touching on the issue of pollution due to tourism.
But why tourism?
“Dolphins in Venice”
“News” about dolphins in Venice’s canals (CGTN, 2020)
Amidst the doom and gloom brought about by COVID-19, we’re sure that some of you might recall the viral tweet about dolphins spotted swimming in Venice’s canals, which were much cleaner and clearer due to the lack of tourists in the past few months.
This piece of “good news” made its rounds at various media outlets before people started wondering if it was too good to be true. A round of investigations proved it to be fake news, in which the clearer waters in the canals were true, but the dolphins were not.
However, irregardless of the click bait-worthy dolphins, the truth stands that a drastic drop in tourism has brought Venetian canals back into a pristine state hardly heard of.
About this blog…
For the two of us, reports about “nature’s recovery” due to COVID-19 made us wonder – in satisfying our wish to travel in a pre-COVID-19 world, what have we done to our planet? Without COVID-19, would we have been given such a poignant comparison?
COVID-19 has given us a chance to reflect on the impacts of tourism as whole, and this blog seeks to do just that. In the weeks to come, we’ll be covering a variety of types of pollution associated with tourism – aquatic, air, soil/land, unconventional forms like light and noise – before wrapping up the blog by looking towards the future of tourism.
This week, though, we’ll be laying the groundwork for our topic – the next post will talk a little more about pollution and tourism (using COVID-19 as a connector), while the following post will emphasise how big of an industry tourism is. Cue the popular phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” from Spiderman…
Perhaps many pollution-related blogs have focused on painting a bleak picture of the world, but we’re determined to eventually show that Mother Earth is still a Paradise (Not Yet) Lost.
After all, if the case of Venice is anything to go by, it’s ample proof that we can still turn things around.
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References
CGTN 2020, Coronavirus upside? Fish and dolphins seen in Venice canals during coronavirus lockdown, online image, viewed 24 August 2020, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-19/Fish-and-dolphins-seen-in-Venice-canals-during-coronavirus-lockdown-OZfq1wRAC4/index.html
Christian, B 2020, ‘Dolphins and swans appear in Venice canals a week after city locks down to prevent coronavirus spread’, Evening Standard, viewed 24 August 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/coronavirus/dolphins-and-swans-appear-in-venice-canals-a-week-after-city-locks-down-to-prevent-coronavirus-spread/ar-BB11oWGo
Daly, N 2020, ‘Fake Animal News Abounds On Social Media As Coronavirus Upends Life’, National Geographic, viewed 24 August 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-fake-animal-viral-social-media-posts
De Santis, G 2020, Twitter update, 17 March, viewed 24 August 2020, https://twitter.com/imGianluca/status/1239863383354224641?s=20