The latest green travel guides

First there was exploration and colonisation, then there were package holidays to Spain, then there were package holidays to Bangkok. Some time in between, Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler published his first book, “Across Asia on the Cheap”, and a subsequent army of his books inspired a generation of backpackers to see the world. Three decades on, he writes in his foreword to the publisher’s new responsible travel guide, Code Green, “We scratch our heads and wonder just when Bali’s Kuta or India’s Goa morphed from a quiet surfer’s escape or a laid-back hippy hangout into international resorts of wall to wall shops, restaurants and package hotels.”

Also just out is The Ethical Travel Guide, which tells us there are more than 700 million tourist trips each year, and by 2010 this is due to rise to 1 billion. The common theme in both these books is that the time has now come (if it didn’t long ago) when you should no longer travel without due consideration for the impact of your holiday – both on local people and on the environment.

Both books urge you to think twice about how you holiday and list the kind of trips that help you put something back onto local communities or do your bit for the planet, either in terms of conservation work or in minimising the impact of your holiday on the environment.

The Ethical Travel Guide focuses on the social impact of travel and provides over 300 listings of community-based holidays in over 60 countries where your money will directly benefit local people. Each listing has been vetted by Tourism Concern – the charity that has campaigned for ethical and fairly traded tourism over the last 15 years. The Ethical Travel Guide is actually the “successor” to Tourism Concern’s Alternative Travel Guide. The entries include places to stay, organisations, projects and tours, from horse-riding in Kyrgyzstan to luxury breaks in the Indian Ocean. There is also a well-researched and hard-hitting 50-page introduction by Polly Pattullo, who highlights many of the issues that often go unnoticed to the casual eye of the holidaymaker.

Most of the listings are in developing countries. As the cost of flying has decreased substantially over the last fifty years, Pattullo says nowadays “you don’t have to be a hairy-chested, adventurer anorak to have a holiday in a remote part of the world. ‘Ordinary people’, who only a generation ago would have spent two weeks enjoying tea and egg sandwiches in their own backyard, are now white-water rafting in the Rockies, birdwatching in the Arctic or trekking in Laos.”

According to Pattullo, world tourism generated around £265 billion in 2002, yet, she says, often precious little of the income gained from tourism actually reaches local people, especially in the all-inclusive package holiday market. Fourteen of the top 20 long-haul destinations are now in developing countries, yet, according to Pattullo, vertical integration – where tourism multinationals own almost the entire chain of businesses from travel agent to tour operator, airline and hotel – means that local people don’t see much, if any, of the tourism pound. She cites an example of a holiday in Kenya which costs £1,500. Of that, she says, forty percent goes to the airline, twenty percent to the tour operator, and most of the rest either goes on imports or is used to service Kenya’s debts. Just £225 is left for Kenya itself.

Likewise, Pattullo says that one of the most alarming negative effects of tourism is the displacement of peoples from their homes to make way for tourism developments. “These are often multi-million dollar projects backed by powerful investors and local governments. Local people have little to say in what happens.”

As well as social concerns, Pattullo draws attention to the environmental damage caused by the travel industry. She describes how badly managed costal tourism causes damage to mangrove swamps, coral reefs, erosion of beaches, while “land-guzzling” golf courses are criticised not just for using up and polluting land, but for consuming vast quantities of water, one of the most precious commodities in developing countries. Pattullo cites a United Nations which reports that “The average tourist uses as much water in 24 hours as a third-world villager would use to produce rice for 100 days.”

The heaviest criticism though is levied on the “gigantic cruise-ship industry” for its waste-dumping practices on both beaches in small countries with limited refuge sites and on the sea. Citing the Bluewater network, Pattullo says “a typical one-week cruise generates 50 tons of garbage, one million tonnes of graywater (waste from sinks and showers and so on), 210,000 gallons of sewage, 35,000 gallons of oil-contamination and unknown amounts of hazardous water.” While the powerful cruise companies claim they have done much to reduce pollution, she says “the laws are lax, regulations often ignored and records show that the majority of the big companies have convictions for dumping even as they claim to be addressing the problem”.

Though Pattullo is highly critical of the tourism industry, there is, she says, some cause for optimism. Smaller operators, she writes, are leading the way in more ethical tourism. The Association of Independent Operators (AITO), which represents many specialist holiday companies, has drawn up a series of “responsible tourism guidelines” for its members, which govern good practice and are now a precondition of membership. Some of the larger operators are also developing, albeit slowly, programmes towards sustainable tourism. Pattullo also points to the rise of ethical consumerism as being a driver for a new kind of tourism. She writes “the ideas behind ethical tourism are also part of something broader – a global consumer movement, which is strengthening as people begin to flex their muscles and make thoughtful choices about what they spend their money on and why”.

Code Green adopts a lighter green tone; it’s a lavish, wide-format, full-colour celebration of over eighty “experiences of a lifetime” that give something back to holiday destinations – through minimizing the impact on the environment, contributing to conservation or providing economic benefits for local communities.

For Tony Wheeler, it’s all about making a connection with the people and places you visit: “Cities everywhere worry about how they’re going to cope with ever-increasing flows of tourists”, yet, he writes: “In recent year’s it’s been underlined again and again that it’s only through travelling, thorough meeting people, that we begin to understand that we’re all sharing this world and all coming along for the ride”. The solution, he says, is to “make that ride not just a quick fairground twirl, but something that’s going to last for the long run, something we can enjoy for our travelling lives and pass on to our children”.

Code Green shows you how gorilla-watching holidays in Rwanda can help ensure their survival, how you can travel to the Bahamas and protect the marine life, and how you can explore some of the world’s “most magnificent wilderness” through the eyes of local people, such as the Maasai of Kenya and the Australian Aborigines, while contributing directly to their livelihood. There are useful tips on volunteering, how to cope with begging and to travel more responsibly, and distinguish good travel operators from those that practise “greenwashing”. There’s also a section on “Climate Change, CO2 and You”, which recommends the “responsible traveller” uses alternative methods of transport - trains, buses, boats, kayaks and bicycles.

“It’s not all hardship and hairshirts” says Code Green. Eco-friendly holidays range from “basic budget backpacking through to the most sumptuous luxury.” For if you want your holiday to make a difference and “give something back”, both books do a thorough job in showing you the benefits of adapting your travelling habits, and that there is plenty of choice out there for a better kind of holiday.

Need to know

The Ethical Travel Guide by Polly Pattullo and Orely Minelli for Tourism Concern is published by Earthscan, price £12.99. www.earthscan.co.uk

Code Green is published by Lonely Planet, price £14.99. www.lonelyplanet.com