In the World Tourism Organization session 2, delegates from all around the world were debating on how we can improve the biodiversity of the biosphere through the tourism industry.
The delegate of Honduras said countries should “create action plans that are continually revised to allow for a growth of the biodiversity of the tourism industry.” This means that this delegate wants to use a more hands-on action based plan to promote biodiversity. He believes that countries should “promote local projects that deal with the preservation of biodiversity.” Utilizing local projects makes it easier to make action plans that deal with environments and biomes that are unique to certain places.
The delegate of Honduras also said that they should “spread awareness and educate tourists about biodiversity.” He believes that educating tourists will prevent any further harm to biodiversity through the tourism industry. This is due to the fact that now tourists will know how to treat the land and the local ecosystem and this will prevent any further damage from the tourism industry.
“Our resolution is an international regulation concerning the protection of biodiversity and tourism,” said the delegate of Russia. The delegate of Russia took a more international stance on the topic rather than a local-based one like the delegate of Honduras. One of these international regulations that the delegate of Russia said is “the establishment of an international code of symbols establishing where tourists can and cannot go.” This makes sure that tourists stay away from preservation sites, precious environments, and fragile ecosystems.
In order to ensure that countries abide by these international regulations, the delegate of Russia suggested “the imposing of trade sanctions if countries won’t abide by the regulations.” Trade sanctions can detrimentally harm the economy of nations, and this fear would make sure that countries abide by the international regulations. The one caveat of this policy is that international cooperation isn’t in the tourism industry.
“Our first part of the resolution calls upon the necessities to raise public awareness to tourists, native inhabitants, and younger generations,” said the Delegate of Bhutan. The first part of the delegate of Bhutan’s policy is heavily similar to the other two policies regarding education and awareness.
The delegate of Bhutan’s policy separated from the other two when he said, “we advocate for increased utilizations of the World Conservation Monitoring Centers (WCMC) and increased cooperation between countries, universities and NGOs. ”
The utilization of World Conservation Monitoring Centers is something that the other two policies didn’t mention. The utilization of WCMCs could further boost international cooperation by providing a hub of data and information that nations all around the world could use to improve the condition of biodiversity in their nation. Similar to the delegate of Russia’s policy, the utilization of WCMC doesn’t exactly have much correlation to the tourism industry.
“We urge member states to eradicate poaching,” said the delegate of Belgium. Here,the delegate of Bhutan also took on a problem that the other two policies didn’t tackle: poaching. But, Bhutan didn’t really give much of a structure as to how exactly they plan on stopping poaching.
While there are many differences, all of these policies have one thing in common: they all want to increase awareness and education. They all believe that people knowing more about the environment and what to do when visiting new places is the best way to prevent any further detriment to the biosphere and biodiversity.