Pair-work

Work with a partner. Take turns to be A and B. Read this conversation aloud. Make up a conversation of your own on the same topic.

A: OK, so tourism can have a beneficial effect by generating income and creating employment, but what about its effect on the environment?

В: Well, if you're not careful it can cause serious problems.

A: You mean allowing tourists to go to Antarctica, then letting them trample all over rare plants?

В: Yes, but it's not only in remote areas where this ecological damage is being done but also in modern, highly technological countries like Britain.

A: What do you mean?

В: In areas of natural beauty such as Snowdonia; first, the footpaths have been eroded away. Secondly, where the tourists have strayed off the paths the vegetation has not only been killed but the soil is now unfit for cultivation.

A: Mm - this is what's happening in mountain areas where there are too many ski slopes, isn't it?

Text 6. Will eco-tourists save the planet? (by Emily Bearn)

Recently I made my maiden voyage as an “eco-tourist”. My destination was the Findhorn Foundation, a community on the north-east coast of Scotland that defines itself as “a centre of spiritual service in co-creation with nature”. It attracts 14,000 visitors a year, who go to embrace its philosophy of “living more lightly on the planet”, achievable by doing things such as sharing cars and building houses with turf roofs. I spent two days experiencing this “light-living” for myself - an excursion for which the environment paid heavily.

My trip began when a friend drove me from Hammersmith to Luton airport in a gas-guzzling Cherokee Jeep. There, holding a ticket issued on non-recycled paper, I boarded a flight to Inverness. While it disgorged carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I lunched on a sandwich that had been wrapped in plastic. On landing in Scotland, I was transported to the commune by the first taxi that became available - a dilapidated people-carrier that blazed across the moors amid a fug of black exhaust fumes. The journey would have seemed marginally less eco-hostile had anyone been sharing the seven spare seats. After a couple of days spent eating lentils and learning how to mix organic compost, I returned to London by the same means of transport.

The International Ecotourism Society (Ties) defines ecotourism as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people”. It’s a heart-warming idea, but one with a major stumbling block. For, as my trip to Scotland showed, when environmental conservation is on the agenda, the words “responsible travel” begin to sound like an oxymoron. Take, for example, flying, which is one of the world’s most polluting means of transport. There are now “earth-kind” hotels and resorts in every corner of the globe - the Bahamas, Kenya, Las Vegas - but even the most dedicated of them rely on the mainstream travel industry to transport their guests. Yet it is a melancholy truth that even the greenest of eco-tourists turns a different shade when he’s at 30,000 feet.

The average jet pumps around a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every passenger it carries from London to New York. With one return visit to, say, an organic banana farm in Peru, you’re responsible for more carbon dioxide production than a year’s motoring. Air transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, but has been relatively slow at igniting concern among world governments. When the Earth Summit’s representatives gathered in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, aviation barely featured on the agenda of those convening to “save the planet”. It was given more mileage at last year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, with the World Tourism Organization remaining predictably strident in its defence of people’s right to jet around the globe.

Yet eco-warriors need not necessarily stay grounded. For if you do fly, there are - theoretically, at least - ways of making amends. Green travellers can now take off with a slightly clearer conscience thanks to Future Forests, an organization working to offset the world’s carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees to reabsorb them. The company’s website includes a “flight calculator”, enabling travellers to estimate how much carbon dioxide their flight will generate, and how many trees they will need to pay for in order to neutralize it. A single tree costs £8.50, and will compensate for a short-haul flight to Europe. Those flying to America will need to buy two trees; a trip to Australia incurs a penalty of five. The company has 80 forests in the UK as well as ones in Mexico, India, Germany and North America. They are managed for a minimum of 99 years, over which period the amount of carbon dioxide they absorb is calculated on factors such as latitude, rainfall, soil type and species mix.

Just how much they actually do give back is a moot point. Aviation is now the world’s fastest-growing source of climate change, and most environmental lobbyists agree that it will take more than trees to counter it. “Planting a tree may well make people feel better about flying but it’s not going to solve the problem of climate change,” says Roger Higman, the senior climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “Such schemes are no alternative to cutting back on emissions. At the moment there is no way of eliminating the pollution from aircraft so we simply need to limit the amount we fly.”

In fact, the main impediment to the Future Forests project is likely to be space. According to recent statistics, if the UK were to offset one year of carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees, it would have to convert the whole of Devon and Cornwall to forestry. Within 10 years, we would all be living in tree houses.

Even those willing to travel at ground-level will invariably find themselves emitting something unpleasant. There are a number of tour operators with whom it is possible to escape Britain overland, the most popular being those offering four-wheel drive excursions that depart from the ferry port at Folkstone and end up somewhere in the African bush. But the eco-plot sickens as soon as the driver turns the key in the ignition. For every 625 miles covered, an average car emits more than 661lbs of carbon dioxide - equivalent to boiling 7,000 kettles simultaneously.

Just as eco-travellers must spend extra in compensating for their carbon dioxide emissions, they may find the rest of their holidays are fairly pricey as well. “Eco-resorts” now constitute some of the most opulent retreats on the planet, as grander tour operators become more eager to promote their environmental awareness. With Worldwide Journeys and Expeditions, for example, a 12-day trip to an environmentally friendly “eco-lodge” in Kenya starts at £3,195, for which customers are fed organic meat and housed in thatched huts furnished with olive-wood beds and down mattresses. The catering stretches to malt whisky, but visitors are also given the opportunity to visit a local Massai village and drink cow’s blood.

Unfortunately, the negative effects are the ones most likely to tip the scales. Besides pollution, tourism’s main impact is on natural resources. Water is the most ruthlessly exploited, with the average tourist using 97 gallons per day - almost double what they would use at home. The figure is due in part to domestic incidentals, such as hotel laundries, as well as recreational ones: the average golf course in Thailand, for example, uses as much water per year as 60,000 rural villagers.

Noise is another of tourism’s insalubrious side effects, albeit a less-debated one. In the United States, the Idaho News recently published a melancholy report on the impact that snowmobile noise made on natural sounds in Yellowstone National Park. It found that snowmobile noise could be heard 70 per cent of the time at 11 out of 13 sample sites, and 90 per cent of the time at eight sites. At the Old Faithful geyser, snowmobiles could be heard 100 per cent of the time during the daytime period studied, drowning out even the sound of the geyser erupting.

As Friends of the Earth points out, tourist money almost always bears a hefty environmental penalty. “However green your destination, the damage to the environment is likely to outweigh the benefits,” says Roger Higman. “You cause damage travelling there, and on arrival it’s almost impossible to avoid doing more. Emissions are the main problem and even the greenest resort will generate them if they use oil, gas or coal. Even the water purification system emits carbon dioxide.”

So what are eco warriors to do? Stay at home and insulate their lofts (which saves under half a tone of carbon dioxide a year)? Or assuage their guilt with an eco-friendly-ish holiday? The Responsible Travel website, for example, lists 120 different companies offering possibilities for relatively responsible travel, either on overland trips or to ecologically run resorts. Now let me see - how many trees equals a trip to Barbados?

Aware of what you wear

Whatever the means of transport, eco-warriors should never neglect their armour. Saving the planet is a fashionable business, and it pays to look convincing. Environmentalism has still to shake off the New-Age look of the early 1990s, characterized by natural hemp and wooden love beads, but some sartorial advances have been made. Leather sandals, once a staple part of the eco-rucksack, are passé. The eco-traveller might now shop at Vegetarian Shoes, which was founded in Brighton in 1990 by Robin Webb, an ex-art student seeking a non-plastic alternative to leather.

The collection is manufactured out of recycled materials such as tyre rubber and wet-suit cast-offs, the most popular model being the £84 Veggie Trekker hiking boot. “Eco travellers don’t just want to be comfortable; they want to be chic,” says Webb, who recently trekked across the Western Sahara in vegetarian footwear. “The image of the environmentalist with long hair and hippy clothes is history. My collection even includes a pair of vegetarian stilettos.” Obviously, for those aspiring to live especially lightly on the planet, bare feet are preferable.

As far as the rest of the wardrobe goes, any natural linen clothing will do. Wooden buttons are preferable to metal zips and, while organic denim is acceptable, anoraks are not. This season, the fiercest eco-warriors will be wearing environmentally friendly fleeces, composed, in part, out of recycled Coca-Cola bottles. A selection can be found at Patagonia (available from branches of Snow+Rock), a company founded in the late 1960s by a group of surfers in California.

In the case of the more glamorous eco-resorts, you won’t need to pack much more than a bikini. But for those contemplating overland travel, the right kit is essential. Mosquito repellent should be made from natural plant extract, such as citronella, and if you intend to wash in a river, soap must be 100 percent biodegradable. Torches should be fitted with light-emitting diodes, allowing an extra 140 hours of battery power, and plastic packaging should be avoided wherever possible.

The Nomad Travel Store, which has branches in Bloomsbury and Bristol, stocks eco-friendly first-aid kits in nylon pouches with minimum packaging. But don’t, whatever you do, pack a case of Evian water. To avoid discarding empty bottles, all eco-travellers should take only one flask, in which they can purify local water with iodine drops. “If you want to travel responsibly you have to take some trouble,” explains Paul Goodyear, who founded the Nomad Travel Store 12 years ago. “The priority of today’s travellers is to make as little impact on the planet as possible.”

That may be, but it’s worth remembering that the most foolproof way of doing so is by staying at home.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-21