Linking Green Productivity to Ecotourism.

Linking Green Productivity to Ecotourism : Experiences in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Tourism traditionally has been viewed as largely beneficial to and compatible with the entire process of economic development. Tourism is an industry employing more than 100 million people around the world and provides all governments with over hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues. Tourism is currently one of the fastest growing sectors in the world and many APO member countries, in fact, have given tourism a high priority in their development plans.

As the demand from tourists to visit natural scenic area increases, developers have resorted to developing tourist attractions in and around natural scenic sites, including some in the ecologically sensitive areas. This has, however, resulted in severe environmental degradation, and thereby diminishing the value of the site or feature that attracted the tourists in the first place. The tourism industry is thus also faced with criticisms for the negative impacts on the cultural heritage and the environment of an area. Therefore, there is a need to balance the needs of tourism development with the environmental constraints to ensure both economic and ecological sustainability.

Green Productivity (GP) signifies a new paradigm of socio-economic development aimed at pursuing economic and productivity growth while protecting the environment. Therefore, application of the concept and practices of GP is deemed to be a very appropriate strategy in the context of ecotourism for the socio-economic development.

To commemorate this International Year of Ecotourism, the APO is pleased to present this book “Linking Green Productivity to Ecotourism: Experiences in the Asia–Pacific Region”.

This book is the result of an initiative taken by the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) to promote within its member countries the concepts and principles of ecotourism and link these to the practice of green productivity. Green productivity has been a major thrust of the APO’s environmental program for some years.

Green productivity (alternatively known as cleaner production or eco-efficiency) has become a well-known tool in the Asia–Pacific region as a consequence of the APO promotion. The link between ecotourism and green productivity becomes obvious once both concepts are defined. This was the task undertaken by the APO at a workshop on Ecotourism and Green Productivity, held in Bali 26–30 June, 2000.