Sustainable Saturday: Your Simplest Guide Ever to Sustainable Tourism

Last November I found myself sitting in a small conference room in Sedona, Arizona, having a “pinch me” moment.  

A few feet away stood Ivan Eskildsen, the Minister of Tourism from Panama.  Recently returned from COP26 -otherwise known as the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference- he was giving a presentation on Panama’s path-blazing approach to sustainable tourism.

This approach supports communities economically and preserves and protects the wild spaces that enable Panama to be only 1 of 3 carbon negative countries in the entire world. (Meaning, Panama takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it produces!)

Eskildsen had spoken about this at COP26, and left that distinguished conference with an agreement that Panama would act as the pilot nation for a newly created UN Fund for the Climate Neutrality of Tourism, becoming the model for the rest of the world to look to for sustainable tourism practices,

And now he was explaining it to a rapt group of global tourism professionals and… me, your friendly neighborhood travel agent.

How… did that happen? And what does “sustainable tourism'' really mean?

Let’s break it down! This is your Simple Guide to Sustainable Tourism.

We start with the building blocks... The dictionary definition of sustainable: “able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.”

I thought sustainable meant biodegradable sporks or something?  Where are the sporks?

Ah ha!  “Able to be maintained at a certain rate or level…”  Okay.  Sort of like managing your checking account…   For example, if you spend more money than you make every month, you might say your lifestyle is not sustainable.  Eventually you will run out of money and then you won’t be able to pay for anything.  

So for something to be able to be maintained at a certain rate or level, to be sustainable, it means we have to manage our resources responsibly.

How does this intersect with tourism?  Is this where the sporks come in?

Merriam-Webster defines tourism as: “the practice of traveling for recreation.”  

So.  Travel, for fun, by choice.  Got it.  

We might say then, at its most basic, that sustainable tourism = maintainable for-fun travel.

“I don’t know…. I still haven’t heard a single thing about sporks…”

Which means, for tourism to be sustainable, we must manage our tourism resources responsibly.  

How do we know what our tourism “resources” are?  Is it possible to run out of tourism resources?  

That, class, will be the topic of our next Sustainable Saturday series!  :D (Pop over here to read the next article in the series!)

I’ve really enjoyed breaking down Maintainable For-Fun Travel for you today, and I hope you’ve found it informative!  Feel free to drop me a line anytime with your comments or questions.  

In the meanwhile, I’ve got to get geared up for my next adventure…  There are some cliffs in Central Oregon that I need to prove myself to after another revolution around the sun…

Where’s your next adventure?

Until next time, Happy Trails, Travellers!

Hannah