IGCSE Travel & Tourism · Sustainable tourism

ECO
INSPECTOR

Define it: responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, benefits local people and involves education.
Successes, with evidence: $1,500 permits fund rangers and anti-poaching patrols. Mountain gorillas recovered from fewer than 250 in the 1980s to over 1,000. At least 10% of park revenue goes to communities, and gorilla tourism earned about $200m in 2024.
Limitations: gorillas can catch human diseases, long-haul flights create a big carbon footprint, the high price makes it exclusive, and COVID-19 showed the risk of over-reliance.
Conclusion: largely successful, because strict limits and local benefit sharing have reversed the gorillas' decline, but it must keep managing disease risk, access and dependence on visitors.

Rangers needed! Test which trips are real ecotourism, catch greenwashing lodges red-handed, then run a gorilla park without harming the gorillas.

BEST 00000

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ECOINSPECTOR