Travel local

Masa Takei | Image: Kevin J. Smith/Maple Leaf Adventures | Published: June 03, 2008

My officemate waited until he’d tucked into his sandwich before he brought the topic up. That ingrate. I was buying lunch to celebrate an assignment to go trekking in Nepal, and he chose that moment to share his opinion that by encouraging people to go places, particularly far away places requiring a long-haul flight, I was contributing to the impending global climate-change disaster.

I decided I’d better educate myself, and unfortunately, the research bore my lunch companion out. According to a United Nations World Tourism Organization report released last year, 75 per cent of CO2 emissions created by global tourism in 2005 came from transport, and 40 per cent of that from air transport alone.

Like most travellers, I’d heard of carbon offsetting as an option to compensate for the evils of flying, but that’s a second-best option; it’s much better not to create the emissions in the first place. So if I wanted to make sure I was encouraging responsible tourism, restraining my air travel to within B.C. seemed like a start.

But I was also curious about a term I’d encountered many times before and had tended to gloss over: “ecotourism.” It sounded promising, but I was already jaded about the “eco” prefix. I couldn’t help but wonder whether “eco” is to today’s “carbon economy” what “dot-com” was to the “Internet economy” a decade ago – just an embellishment you slap onto your name to align it with the cause of the day.

I call Chris Battrill, chair of the Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Management Program at Capilano College, and he tells me the term has actually been around sine 1983, when it was coined by environmentalist Hector Ceballos-Lascurain. It “lost credibility during the early ’90s because it was used so liberally, but it’s had a resurgence,” he tells me, propelled by climate change and a renewed interest in all things environmental.

For a definition, Battrill points to The International Ecotourism Society, which defines it as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.”

An independent assessment of a tourism operator’s performance would simplify my quest, but there is no such third-party certification available in B.C.

Some countries, including Australia and Costa Rica, have ecotourism certification programs vouching for the authenticity of an operator’s eco-cred. However, there is neither a Canada-wide certification program nor even one in B.C.

For another perspective on what to look for in local adventures, I check in with David Butler, director of land resources at heli-ski operator Canadian Mountain Holidays and Chair of the B.C. Sustainable Tourism Collective (BCSTC). The association comprises six companies: Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Canadian Mountain Holidays, Clayoquot Wilderness Resort & Spa, Whistler/ Blackcomb, the Armstrong Group/Rocky Mountaineer Vacations and Nimmo Bay Resort. The group came together two years ago and made a public commitment to work toward sustainability.

Butler is careful to make the distinction between what he terms “sustainable tourism,” which is what the BCSTC group seeks, and ecotourism. He prefers not to use the term “ecotourism,” he explains, because it is regarded by most mainstream operators as an “exclusive club,” and many will shy away from such a goal. But when sustainability is proposed, almost everyone in the industry is ready to get involved.

Whereas ecotourism is associated with nature-based, small-group outings, according to the World Tourism Organization, “sustainable tourism development guidelines and management practices are applicable to all forms of tourism in all types of destinations, including mass tourism.”

In my own quest to for responsible tourism options in B.C., I decide to settle on the “ecotourism” ethic to guide my choices. I already have a bias against mass tourism, which holds little appeal for me even if done in a way that strives to be sustainable. I’ve also found that travel experiences with a strong learning component have a far more lasting impact; they’re enriching rather than just entertaining.

I begin my quest for ecotourism options in B.C. by asking SFU’s Peter Williams which B.C. operators he would view as running ecotours. He tells me he would send his children on a trip with Maple Leaf Adventures, cruising aboard a 92-foot schooner through the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, viewing wildlife and learning from naturalists, listening to a master storyteller from the Killer Whale clan of the Henaaksiala people.

Williams tells me his wife, on the other hand, would probably enjoy something more like Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, which is by the operator’s own description, “an ultra-luxurious eco-resort.”

But perhaps no resort operator has done more to associate the term “ecotourism” with B.C. than Nimmo Bay Resort, on the B.C. coast about an hour’s float plane ride north of Vancouver. It has gained international acclaim for its dedication to sustainability. Not only did the hit television series Boston Legal film an entire episode there (titled Finding Nimmo), but Forbes Traveler named Nimmo Bay one of the 10 Best Luxury Eco-resorts.