Celebration of Cultures Party, ESTC 2012
by Marcela Torres
Last week I had the opportunity of
participating for the first time in the International Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference, held in Monterey, California and organized by
the International Ecotourism Society (TIES).
It was a great honor for me to be able to
deliver, precisely on the day of Chile’s Independence, a presentation on the experience of contributing to developing ecotourism at the Chaxa Lagoon, in Los Flamencos National Reserve in the Atacama Salt Flat. The project, which we
developed for CONAF Antofagasta and the Lickan-Antay Indigenous Community of
Toconao with the Torres Asociados Limitada consultancy firm, consisted of
building the first sustainable Visitor Center in a protected area in Chile and
implementing a set of bilingual materials to interpret the natural and cultural
values of the area.
The interest of attendees in learning about
this experience gave me great satisfaction because it was that project which
made me realize that I wanted to dedicate my life to ecotourism and motivated
me to study a masters in the topic.
The International Ecotourism Society has been
promoting ecotourism for over a decade and working to ensure that tourism
activity generates benefits for both the host communities and the environment
of the destinations where it operates. This version of the Conference was
attended by representatives from such diverse countries as Argentina, Botswana,
Canada, Ecuador, Guyana, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya and the United States, to
name a few. All of us analyzed issues such as how to fund sustainability
initiatives, development and empowerment of local communities, the role of
ecotourism in promoting the conservation of endangered species and the unique
opportunity of the travel industry to contribute to eradicate poverty.
During the meeting, the International
Ecotourism Society also launched the guidelines to regulate “voluntourism”(volunteer tourism), which it developed together with the Planeterra
Foundation. The document can be downloaded from the TIES website.
The Celebration of Cultures party, the closing
event of the Conference, was the highlight since it allowed attendees to share
with the rest some aspects of their culture, such as music and typical outfits,
and it emphasized the importance and the great potential of tourism to unite
people from so many different countries around a common goal: A better quality
of life for all.
This entry was originally posted by the author on September 23, 2012.
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