Save Eco Destinations

Photo from prontohotel.com

These islands are a choice destination for nature lovers. It is an area that still retains untainted archipelagos—some of the few left in the globe. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Biosphere Reserve with significant biodiversity of wildlife.

(FYI: The Galapagos is a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific located 972 km west of Ecuador, right on the equator.)

It seems that island officials, businessmen and locals, together with ecologist and Galapagos resident Gunter Reck, are speaking up about the threat inherent to overpopulation on their land, caused in part by tourism.

UNESCO already placed the islands on its World Heritage in Danger list in 2007.

Energy, water, and waste problems have been exacerbated by the escalating amount of tourists, but also the growing population and the consequent agricultural and other practices – which are evidently being practiced irresponsibly. It’s kind of like Twitter—the burgeoning amount of users causes the system to collapse. And this will continue to occur until they upgrade it or lower the amount of users—or tourists, as the case may be.

photo by consumerbrigade.com

97% of the islands constitute a National Park, according to the WWF.

However, there is a conundrum: 80% to 85% of the population relies on the tourism industry to make an income, and many families are large by Western standards, comprising of 4+ kids.

But that’s not all.

A persisting threat is the plants and animals introduced by humans (some of them pirates!). Species such as feral goats, cats, and cattle have become invasive and are destroying the habitats of native animals. And because these native species did not originally have any predators to be wary of, they have no skills to defend themselves of these new bullies. Poor wusses. Just kidding.

Amazingly mild and friendly seals - photo from the bs report

Plant species like guava, avocado, elephant grass, and citrus fruits like oranges and lemons have managed to become invasive as well, obliterating native plant species in the humid areas of San Cristobal, Isabela, and other parts of the islands.

Also, local environmentalists fear the growing poultry industry may spread disease to wild birds, and illegal fishing activities are messing with the marine sanctuary. Especially targeted are sharks – for their delicious fins, I imagine.

And poachers are slaughtering the mild-mannered sea lions. Wikipedia tells us that

On January 28, 2008, Galapagos National Park official Victor Carrion announced the killing of 53 sea lions (13 pups, 25 youngsters, 9 males and 6 females) at Pinta, Galapagos Islands nature reserve with their heads caved in. In 2001 poachers killed 35 male sea lions.

Can you even begin to imagine how a person could bash the head of a sea lion in? Despicable! - photo by naturetrek.co.uk

So heartless.

Read more about the threats to the Galapagos Islands here and here. If that’s not enough for you, be assured that you’ll find tons more info through a simple Google search.

Note: I am currently on vacation. (Yay WordPress magic that allows me to schedule posts for the future!). This will be my last post for the week.  See you soon!

Hoatzins

Tourists’ noise pollution doesn’t only harm endangered sea turtles—it also harms hoatzins. It’s to be expected, right? …Except this noise pollution comes from ecotourists.

Bird watching can have its perils, it seems, since even quiet conversation among bird watchers can cause extreme stress to some species of wild birds. Daniel Karp of Stanford University has researched three species of hoatzins (Opisthocomus hoazin) in areas surrounding various eco lodges within the Peruvian Amazon.

Even library conversation-volume chats induced defense mechanisms in the birds, causing them to cluck and defecate. Wow. The birds were found to climb and fly away as well. The hoatzins’ behavior was contingent on how loudly people spoke.

What’s most troublesome is the fact that stress disturbs these birds’ rearing capabilities, thwarting the chicks’ training to become self-sufficient and leading to “heightened mortality rates.”

To gather information, Karp approached hoatzin habitats by canoe and experimented between being silent and playing recordings of conversations at different volumes from different distances, keeping track of when birds became stressed enough to fly away. Karp first tried playing the conversations at 50 decibels (library conversation volume), then at 60 (actual volume of typical tourists’ chats in bird watching zones), and at 70 (the loudest conversations he was able to record). The study was conducted last year and lasted one month.

While Karp says “ceas[ing] all conversation” and staying far enough away should be sufficient to prevent freaking out hoatzins, behavioral ecologist and conservation biologist at UCLA Dam Blumstein says that, although we think being ecotourists is awesome, we’re being careless and irresponsible anyway.

Moral of the study: ecotourism is not as green as we may have thought.

No kidding. (Yes, I am bitter.)

Apparently, even when quietly hiking through undergrowth, [eco]tourists cause wildlife extreme stress. Bird watching, wildlife watching, and hiking are all harmful to carnivores’ survival and/or reproduction rates. The victims are dolphins, dingoes, penguins, and polar bears, among many other species.

Well, crap.

Not only should we keep from being destructive when in natural areas, but we should also not even go there.

Well, at least now I have evidence to back up my theory that ecotourism and eco hotels within fragile natural areas do more harm than good.

Child gathering rubbish from Buriganga River

The city of Dhaka and the Buriganga River that flows through it in Bangladesh used to be ecologically alive—it held oxygen, flowed freely, hosted ecosystems.

Now, people describe it as “a black gel.” Mmm. 

This is a royal catastrophe, as the river supplies 12 million people with drinking, cooking, and washing water, plus serves as a road for people to travel and a source of food—fish, now all dead. The Buriganga River has become so thick with unfiltered human and industrial waste, plus “burnt engine oil from launches, dyes from tanneries and textile mills, unauthorized practice of land filling, to name a few” that traveling on it is  burdensome–plus practically unbearable due to the stench.  In the dry season, oxygen levels can drop to zero.

One of the canals pouring unfiltered toxic waste into the Buriganga River

“Much of the Buriganga is now gone, having fallen to ever insatiable land grabbers and industries dumping untreated effluents into the river,” said Ainun Nishat, a leading environmental expert. “The water of the Buriganga is now so polluted that all fish have died, and increasing filth and human waste have turned it like a black gel. Even rowing across the river is now difficult for it smells so badly.”

Even worse, I think, is that it’s not the only river in the region that is this obscenely polluted. There are about 230 in Bangladesh, and “many of them” are drying up with 1.5 million cubic meters of toxic sludge every day. And yet the pictures in this article show a man submerged in the river.

“Yet, in spite of all this nothing is being done. Buriganga is on the verge of extinction, pollution is choking its life blood and the very city …Today Buriganga has lost its biodiversity and marine life; in place of its once famous fresh water fish now dead animals float in the water that is as dark as pitch and as potently deadly as arsenic. The saddest part is that we the inhabitants of Dhaka who are heavily dependent on this river have so far been passive in the role of savior.” – The New Nation, “Bangladesh’s  independent news source”

Man submerged in the Buriganga River

Maybe once you’ve lived there all your life, you experience the frog effect and it doesn’t repel you as it would an outsider—you know, the experiment in which a frog was placed in a pot of water, and the water was slowly heated until it reached boiling the point. You guessed it: the frog died. It didn’t notice it was getting so hot because it happened gradually. But when a frog was tossed into boiling water, it jumped right out—which is what an outsider may do, someone who hasn’t seen the river gradually turn into sludge. That person would not be as desensitized. That person probably wouldn’t jump into the river. Eeeek.

There also may be no other place from which to get water or bathe.

“Water in the Buriganga and Turag rivers have literally turned into poison” – Dr. MA Taher Khandker, director general of Bangladesh Haor and Wetland Development Board

Health Effects

Surprisingly, no one is talking about the health effects on the young man covered in black waste up to his neck, on the kids stepping into the river to “collect rubbish.” And if the man who is washing his clothes by the river is washing them in the river, his skin will become covered in bacteria, viruses, parasites, and toxic waste. Maybe authorities don’t want to cause panic and incite rebellion.

You can read about crops being watered and later washed with this river water, and the consequential consumption of toxins by humans.

Hope for the future

Reuters says environmentalists are hopeful that if companies stop bribing authorities and filter their waste before dumping it into the Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitalakkhya Rivers, they could recover. The idea would be dredge the rivers and fill them with clean water from the upstream. Let’s hope it works and the water is kept potable.

Md Arifur Rahman, member-secretary of Bapa’s Programme Committee on Finance, Trade and Development, said the 2009-10 fiscal year budget, as well as policies,  should prioritize the cleaning up of these waterways. But will anyone take concrete action?

"The river Turag is getting drastically narrower near Ijtema Maidan in Tongi as land encroachers pile up sands indiscriminately on the riverbank"

Also, the High Court came up with an order to stop encroachment, earth filling and illegal developments on the Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitalakkhya Rivers—which is narrowing the flows and polluting them. The order was obtained thanks to a writ petition filed by Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB). Rock on, HRPB.

The High Court also addressed the federal government, challenging it to explain why the illegal structures aren’t being removed. There will be a hearing on June 1.

I’ve always felt guilty about living in the city (except for the fact that I take public transportation), felt I pollute more here. Although, maybe I just feel that way because the city’s so damn dirty that wearing flip-flops turns my feet black. Eek.

It turns out that, overall, large cities’ greenhouse gas emissions are lower than those of rural areas-much lower. Go figure. Maybe it’s a good idea to vacation in cities, then, and particularly in green ones if you can find them! *Cough* *Cough*

While cities, then, do pollute considerably, rural emissions are more detrimental to the environment because they are largely methane-based rather than carbon dioxide-based, and methane pollutes way more. (Speaking of methane, did you know cattle expel more methane than anything or anyone else on the entire planet? Solution: vegetarianism.)

The way the discrepancy between urban and rural emissions was calculated was through the comparison of 12 large cities around the globe to their respective countries. On average, it was found, cities produce fewer greenhouse gasses than rural areas. It makes sense to me when considering that industrialized countries are loaded with factory farms. Again, cattle emit so much methane it’s obscene. Becoming vegetarian is one of the most efficient ways you can curb your carbon footprint personally and by extension. Not to mention how they pollute soil and water…but I won’t get into that today.

Here’s the list of cities and how badly they’ve scored:

1. Washington, DC, US – 19.7 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent

2. Glasgow, UK – 8.4 tonnes

3. Toronto, Canada – 8.2 tonnes

4. Shanghai, China – 8.1 tonnes

5. New York City, US – 7.1 tonnes

6. Beijing, China – 6.9 tonnes

7. London, UK – 6.2 tonnes

8. Tokyo, Japan – 4.8 tonnes

9. Seoul, South Korea – 3.8 tonnes

10. Barcelona, Spain – 3.4 tonnes

11. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 2.3 tonnes

12. Sao Paulo, Brazil – 1.5 tonnes

Al-Shaybah oil field, southeastern Saudi Arabia. (photo by Encyclopedia Britannica)

Saudi Arabia wants to convince you that the reliance on oil will remain throughout the world and for decades to come. The country has issued a warning, no less, against a so-called “premature shift” to renewable energy.

Wha?

Apparently, SA’s Oil Minister spoke at the Energy Pact Conference and asserted that oil, coal, and natural gas ought to remain the energy “workhorses” for a long time-numerous decades! He also said that investing in alternative energy could result in decreased investment in fossil fuels (duh!) and ruin the global economy (huh?).

Sounds like some greedy folk are trying to take advantage of everyone’s fears about the current economic situation to place themselves somewhere most of us agree they (oil magnates) should not be, if only because our priority is becoming ever more green instead of black (which is also kind of green, but only because of the dollar bills).

While SA’s oil minister claims that the world’s need of oil as a primary source of energy will remain for many decades to come, SA’s oil reserves will only last for another 80 years if current production trends persist. The oil reserves in SA are the largest in the world, by the way.

If SA had 200 years’ worth of oil production left, then okay, your greed makes some sense. But 80?? That’s just plain stupid.

If you’re planning a trip to the Middle East, make sure to skip SA and write the country’s government to tell them why!

At this juncture, SA’s words come as an insult to the rest of the world.

Imagine going on vacation somewhere with azure waters. You decide to go snorkeling, check out the local underwater fauna and flora and head toward the local coral reefs. You wonder if your goggles are dirty-the corals look black! (Who knew they could turn a color different from white?) Very unfortunately, the corals are black, so forget rubbing your goggles clean (if only it were that easy!).

On the (somewhat) bright side, this phenomenon is currently limited to Taiwan’s southeast coast. The corals turned black from disease. The culprit is probably untreated sewage. Can you believe this?

Damn, I can.

For a long time, people had suspected this would be a problem-black corals-that more reefs were turning black, and so on. People only suspected because there was no available information to look at on this situation, no research had been done on it, and nobody knew enough about it to speak up or call for action.

Finally, Chen Chao-Iun, a researcher from Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, said that the problem is worst in areas of waters up to 5 m. (16.4 ft.) deep and 300 m. offshore from a couple of Taiwan’s outlying islands.

Chao-Iun seems mostly concerned about the effects this will have on tourism: “If you snorkel, you’ll see it’s black. If it’s all black, there won’t be too many tourists,” he told Reuters.

The Taiwanese researchers have communicated their findings to the government. Next, they will check other offshore areas where coral reefs are found for damage.

Map of where the plant will be, in Nayachar island (photo by New Scientist)

If you thought all the news about Xcacel-Xcacelito’s protected mangroves being torn down to make room for the Grupo Posadas’s swank and greedy hotel development are depressing, wait until you read what’s going on in West Bengal.

Exactly one month ago, the state government of West Bengal and an Indian government committee met to approve plans for the building of a petrochemicals plant on the Nayachar island. This plant will-unless somebody kidnaps everyone involved and makes them read Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Jane Goodall, and many other theorists until they turn into Earth-loving vegans-refine crude oil and make petroleum by-products. Within weeks.

Somebody make the remaining endangered royal Bengal tigers some martinis before they wig out, stat!

Indian environmental groups, by the way, need some stiff drinks too. Nayachar island is only 10 km. from the Sunderbans, a UNESCO World Heritage site and biodiversity hotspot (see photo above).

The New Scientist quoted Santanu Chacraverti of the Society for Direct Initiative for Social and Health Action, a Kolkata-based NGO: “Setting up a petrochemical cluster in that region is tantamount to ecocide. … Noxious effluents will flow into the coastal waters and spread into the vast network of rivers and creeks. Sunderban, the nursery of a range of marine, coastal, and estuarine lifeforms, will be subjected to pollution.”

This might prove the sequel to the Narmada River incident in the late ’90s, when India built over 3000 dams across the river and destroyed both its ecosystem and the habitat of hundreds of thousands of humans (as well as, of course, millions of animals).

Honestly, I feel like tossing bricks at these idiots’ heads. I mean, SERIOUSLY? Where are their brains and why aren’t they functioning? These people need to be sterilized and used in scientific experiments to help the rest of the world survive the ecological disasters taking place and those just starting to brew. Really. I really don’t get it. I do not get it. How can these idiots spend their murderous money if they help speed up their planet’s death? Somebody shoot some sense into their heads, please…

Although I was unable to find any petitions to sign or information for letters to write and where to send them, I did find an article arguing that the building of this petrochemicals plant in Nayachar will not cause problems. It’s in the Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) . Too bad they don’t have a place to leave comments… Oh, but you can do so in this blog here.

I am really sorry I haven’t found anything for us to do to help stop this ecocide. If anyone has a lead, please please share it with us.

While air, water, and soil pollution poison the ecosystem and the region’s inhabitants, thousands of square miles of (previously) pristine Northern Canadian forests in Alberta are being killed for oil. Watch a video here.

Gigantic digging machines are tearing into the soil and harming the forests’ topsoil to the extent that the land becomes sterile. This is going on daily, hourly, constantly, like it previously did in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And it’s been going on for years. (I’m surprised, Canada!)

What’s great is that the Canadian Government is using several billions of its people’s tax money to go about this destruction of “Canada’s Amazon of the North.” Even in Brazil–in South America, where corruption tops North America’s by a landslide-the government is doing something proactive, taking a responsible ecological stance to help protect its natural habitats (whether the Brazilian Government is achieving its goals is certainly another matter). Evidently, this isn’t even your everyday forest, it’s a vast stretch of dense, rich land-which, as it rots courtesy of the aforementioned digging machines, produces obscene amounts of CO2. And don’t forget the water pollution (and marine wildlife pollution, and the pollution ingested by humans when they consume said wildlife). AND THE OIL.

Well, I guess this are will no longer be an eco destination!

Maybe I don’t know anything and I’m talking out of my —, but I thought Canada was more progressive than the States about things like this. Well, obviously I was wrong: the CO2 emissions originating from the Tar Sands, which Canada is ruining on purpose, puts the country way up there with the U.S. in terms of pollution.

Know this, Canada: all the polar bears drowning in the Arctic because of accelerated glacial melting are cursing you with their last breaths.

So now what? Just like we ought to call Argentina’s president and demand she stop Tartagal’s deforestation, we ought to give Canada’s politicians a beating. Wait. I mean, we should demand a law against ecocide. All of us, around the world. The more the merrier.

Check out comments on this issue here.

GVI volunteers carrying out the weekly plankton sampling at L’ilot for Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS). Photo by Jon Bilbrough

Have you heard of Global Vision International? GVI’s been around since 1998 and works to develop sustainable development through research, conservation, and education. It provides services to charities, NGOs, and governmental agencies around the globe through promotion, donations, and volunteering.

GVI is neither a political nor a religious organization. It sends 2,000 volunteers out per year to aid-reliant projects in over 30 countries.

If you’re not looking to go tan on yet another beach and take more of the same pictures, check out the conservation and humanitarian projects at GVI. You can browse through GVI’s volunteer options, destinations, and more to find something that suits you.

I know that even when I am exhausted and think “I need a vacation!!” more than two days doing nothing will jar me. If I can go somewhere beautiful, enjoy a radical change of scenery, meet new people, and do something that will help others, I feel more rewarded than if I had just spent a week getting sunburned on some beach.

Don’t get me wrong-I love the beach. But after a few hours kayaking and swimming and reading, don’t you get bored? It’d be cool to go somewhere on vacation and know that whenever you got bored or tired of it, you could go on to volunteer somewhere in the area.

GVI even offers responsible holidays of one week or more. For example, the Mexican Marine Expedition in the Caribbean Sea, where they teach you diving to contribute toward coral reef research in the area. (Remember that green sunscreen!) Or you can teach English to Buddhist monks in Laos! There are some awesome options in there, stuff I wouldn’t have thought of.

With GVI, you get training and career development opportunities through the trips and volunteering, so you could even view your time with them as an investment, depending on your future goals.

I think within the next several years, I will go volunteer somewhere for several weeks. Build homes for the homeless, teach English to people in secluded areas, help research for nature conservation. It’s scary–what will happen to your job when you get back, right? True. But when there’s a will, there’s a way.

LIVING MACHINES: Clean, Green Waste-Water Recycling

Here’s a topic I haven’t read much about at all: how to gauge your own eco comfort level.

It’s true: you may be okay walking around naked, consuming a vegan diet, and living electricity-free, while I might be cool with that as long as I can also have wi-fi access and an outlet for my laptop. Or maybe you feel strongly about showering with hot water when vacationing in Alaska. Hey-to each her or his own.

Here’s an article I came across in which the author brings one’s own personal comfort level into play. Turns out he needs iPhone access everywhere he goes, which he didn’t realize until the first day of two-week-long trip! Oops.

Say you’re going on a trip.

The most overwhelming part of taking an eco vacation may just be the planning! It can be tough just gauging your personal eco comfort level. Sure, it’s easy to say certain things, like that you’d only stay at a 100% sustainable hotel, or that you want your vacation to be completely relaxing and you promise to leave your laptop behind.

But will these statements hold up as truths once it’s time to take action?

Or will you refuse purchasing biodegradable sunscreen to take on your snorkeling trip on the grounds that, well, you know, you’re too busy? If you plan ahead, you can take care of all those little things. Buying biodegradable sunblock is a piece of cake compared to staying somewhere with no electricity!

Ecotourism is a burgeoning field, and most people are still only learning about it, they’re still new at the whole “ecotourism thing.”

In a few months, I will be taking a vacation with a couple of people who have never gone on an eco vacation. Now, while one of them, my mother, is enthusiastic about renewable energy sources, turning off the lights when leaving a room, and not littering, she is fanatical about drying her hair post-shower and taking her Blackberry everywhere.

Let the negotiations begin!

She will probably be surprised, if not shocked, when I suggest a lodge with a sustainable wastewater management system and no air conditioning. A lot of people just don’t know how deep green living can take you!

I wonder how far I’ll be able to take her. I’ll keep you updated.