China keen to develop ecotourism despite challenges
By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Tourism in China today is often a messy and unpleasant business. Thousands pack tourist hotspots, development can be poorly planned and service standards are lacking. But one specialist sees a bright spot: ecotourism.

Norbert Trehoux of Marseilles-based TEC, a consulting agency specialising in the tourism, transport and environmental sectors, is convinced this niche sector could attract well-heeled foreign visitors to poor parts of China hoping to leverage their natural beauty to generate much-needed income.

Yet he admits the industry faces some pretty tough obstacles.

"In China there is a national policy -- they want to develop ecotourism. But today, the definition of ecotourism is not the one we have in Western countries," he told the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.

Provinces such as those in the scenic southwest, including Yunnan and Sichuan, are at the forefront of this push.

Still, many supposed ecotourism resorts which have been developed are far from rural idyls, Trehoux said.

"It's more like Disneyland," he added. "You don't go there to be quiet and to relax or to trek. They are more like theme parks. Some have small zoos, and lots of restaurants. This is ecotourism today in China."

Tourism is already big business in China, generating more than 1 trillion yuan ($146.4 billion) in revenues last year, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Though there are no exact figures for the ecotourism segment, a government-sponsored push for rural tourism -- usually involving staying with farmers -- has become popular in China in recent years.

That gives Trehoux hope that in future more and more Chinese will opt for ecotourism, as opposed to the mass tourism in groups generally favoured at present.

"The market is changing. There are Western influences everywhere, and China is going greener," he said. "I met some Chinese people in Shanghai, and they don't want to travel like their parents. They are fed up with the flag, and the microphone. They don't want this any more."

Ecotourism in China is also attracting some well-known international boutique chains. Singapore's Banyan Tree runs an award-winning hotel in a remote, Tibetan part of Yunnan which incorporates many aspects of the local culture.

While the government's aim is currently to attract wealthy Westerners to these types of places, Trehoux said that ultimately Chinese will comprise the majority of customers.

"They want to attract Western tourists, but in 20 years time they won't care about Western tourists. They will have high-end Chinese tourists. They will have people who are prepared to spend thousands to spend a night in a remote place," he said.

China hav an excelent potential in tourism! :yes:

Jiuzaigou

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Source : http://www.pbase.com/cqh/jiuzaigou&page=all

:drool:

Animal attraction
The mainland's diverse ecology has captivated a British nature photographer
31 December 2008
South China Morning Post

When a giant panda fell on its bottom and slid down a snowy slope in Sichuan's Wolong Nature Reserve, British wildlife photographer Heather Angel knew she had the makings of a lucky shot. But then nature photography relies a lot on chance, on being on the spot and with the right gear for a rare picture, she says.

"That moment may not come. You might think you get something but you don't," the feisty 67-year-old says.

The picture of the tottering panda is now included among 360 landscape and wildlife pictures in Angel's new coffee-table book, Green China. Published by Stacey International in July, the book is a celebration of the nation's natural heritage, Angel says.

"Particularly for people in the west," she says. "If you stop anybody on a London street and ask them to name an animal that comes from China, you know what they're going to say - the panda. It's because they can't think of anything else {hellip} and they don't realise there are tigers there and even elephants in the far south."

Angel's passion for wildlife stems from childhood summer holidays on her maternal grandparents' Suffolk farm. She had originally wanted to be a marine biologist and earned a zoology degree from Bristol University, but in 1962 picked up nature photography during an underwater expedition in Norway with a camera that had been a 21st birthday gift from her Royal Air Force officer father. She then pursued marine biology, gave talks on nature photography, turned freelance and then travelled the world.

Angel first studied the mainland's wildlife in 1984, when she photographed wild rhododendrons with a group of New Zealanders. Fascinated by what she saw, she led a lecture and exhibition delegation to Beijing and Shanghai the following year as president of the Royal Photographic Society.

"When I first came to China - it was then very unusual [for a foreigner] to come to China - we had an itinerary and we couldn't deviate from that at all. We had to hand it in to get our visas. Nowadays when I get my visa in London, I still have to say where I am going, but they don't ask me the name of every village I am going to," says Angel.

She presented a TV programme about the British countryside in 1982, photographed the Prince of Wales for the cover of Natural World magazine in 1985 and has published more than 40 books. Married to an oceanographer, Martin, and helped by her 31-year-old son, Giles, she also runs Natural Visions, a photographic agency, which features 35,000 wildlife images by her and 60 other photographers, and has been a special professor at the University of Nottingham since 1994.

Angel says Green China is her most ambitious project, and she hopes the book will help people learn more about the mainland's wildlife and encourage foreign visitors to make the most of their trips there.

"I think it's the vastness of the country that daunts people," she says. "Being such a big country, when somebody comes from the west, they can't see everything within two to three weeks. If they have never been to China before, they want to come to see just the very famous sites such as the Great Wall and the terracotta warriors."

Angel tried to plan her research trips for the book precisely so she could visit different far-flung parts of the country at prime times. Accompanied by a Chinese driver and an English-speaking guide, she took seven month-long trips to 17 mainland regions, braving critters from leeches to bedbugs, and visiting places from Harbin to Sanya, between December 2006 and February 2008.

Aiming to capture aspects of China that are little-known in the west, she researched and photographed the diversity of the nation's mountain, desert, wetland and coastal wildlife, from the giant panda to Eld's deer, the Chinese alligator and the crested ibis. She also wanted to capture the relationship between ethnic minorities and the habitats that led to the development of various art forms, from the production of silk and handmade paper to monks' yak-butter sculptures in Xining.

"So many of these areas are quite remote and people haven't really studied them," Angel says. "Local people know what they are like but scientists haven't been there to research them. We must do something, because it could be an important geological area or biological area, or maybe both."

Her book also counters criticism that the economic boom has made China an ecological disaster, she says.

"A lot of good things have been done" for the mainland's environment, says Angel.

Green China also features developments ranging from coastal wind-power parks to a solar-powered water panel on the roof of a small village house in the ancient tea terraces of southern Yunnan, she says. "Both the local and central governments are working very hard to encourage people to use green energy," Angel says.

She also highlights the increasing popularity of eco-tourism on the mainland as more foreigners seek destinations beyond the most popular landmarks.

In her research for Green China, she joined two British-run tours, a plant-hunting excursion in the Yunnan mountains last summer and a birding tour in Zhejiang and Jiangsu last winter.

Sichuan's leading eco-tourism site, Jiuzhaigou, used to be a 13- or 14-hour drive, but now attracts millions of visitors since Songpan airport was built. And the state works hard to reduce the environmental impact of mass tourism at the resort, she says. When she accidentally dropped a sweet paper on the floor on a recent visit, litter staff picked it up in "less than two seconds", she adds.

China has long been involved in conservation, having set up captive-breeding programmes and protective areas for species that fall prey to poaching and illegal fishing, she says. And with some 2,000 nature reserves having opened since the first one was founded in 1956, "China has made huge advances".

"You can't overnight change a culture which has gone on for many years of feeding on wild food unless the local people and farmers have something else to eat. It is a question of education and of providing alternative sources of food."

Angel is planning to write about more aspects of mainland wildlife.

"It is a continuing task to make sure areas that are very special are conserved," she says.

China economy: Greener options for sightseers
3 February 2009
Economist Intelligence Unit

China has huge potential—and incentive—to develop ecotourism, but it will take off only if more Chinese tourists demand it

Just inside the East Gate of Dali’s Old Town lies the Greenlodge, a vine-draped guesthouse with earthen floors and natural light. Terrance Fang, its Singaporean owner, opened the renovated granary two years ago with an eye towards recycling waste, preserving the flavour of the famed town in Yunnan province and promoting a form of environmentally sustainable travel called “ecotourism”. With the lodge as a launching pad, Mr Fang also leads treks into Yunnan’s vast natural reserves and trains locals to be guides for environmentally low-impact backpacking trips.

Not easy

As he looks out to the picturesque old buildings fringed by green foothills, Mr Fang speaks passionately about the need for more sustainable tourism in China’s biologically rich areas like Yunnan. This south-west province has more than 50% of the country’s plant species, thousands of which are indigenous to the region. But even a small-scale effort to preserve the environment is not easy. Mr Fang still finds it too expensive to install solar panels so that the entire lodge can run on alternative energy. But he is not giving up on his hope to change the nature of tourism in this part of China. “We’re trying to slowly help locals understand ‘eco’ from their perspective,” Mr Fang says. “It will take a while for the idea to set in.”

Indeed, ecotourism is a vague term with myriad interpretations. In China, it is used by guesthouses that run on solar energy to large hotels that simply ask visitors to re-use towels. For its part, the International Ecotourism Society defines the concept as responsible travel to a natural area. It refers to travel that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people. The Nature Conservancy, meanwhile, says the four main principles of ecotourism are nature conservation, community benefits, environmental education and quality visitor experiences.

Efforts incorporating these ideas are steadily spreading across China. In particular, in the south-west, the region’s striking scenery and vast wilderness are driving a vibrant tourism industry—which simultaneously threatens its sustainability. Led by increasingly mobile Chinese tourists, Yunnan’s tourism sector has grown at double-digit rates in recent years. For China as a whole, the tourism industry in 2007 generated more than Rmb1trn (US$146bn) in revenue, up 10% from the previous year, according to Xinhua. By 2020 China will become the world’s top tourist destination, forecasts the UN’s World Tourism Association.

China’s ecotourism niche is rife with potential, says Norbert Trehoux of TEC, a Marseilles-based consulting agency that focuses on tourism. The next five years will see tremendous growth in this sector, especially in the natural landscapes of Yunnan, Tibet and Sichuan. Mr Trehoux predicts that greener approaches to tourism in China will eventually become a viable alternative to mass tourism that prevails today. Individual efforts like Mr Fang’s are part of that nascent but growing transformation away from the flag-and-megaphone group tours.

One of the first examples of ecotourism in China was the Wenhai Lodge in Yunnan, a mountain retreat that opened in 2002. The remote budget lodge uses bio-gas and solar panels. Run by dozens of local families who contribute financing, staff and management, a percent of its profits is returned to the local villages.

At the high end, URBN Hotels and Resorts, a Shanghai-based company with international founders, opened its flagship property in the city in 2008, the first of many carbon-neutral hotels it plans to build in China. The 26-room hotel tracks its energy consumption and offsets the carbon footprint by investing in green-energy development and emissions-reduction projects in China. The converted post office building also uses eco-friendly energy-saving techniques, such as solar shades in the rooms and rain-retention basins.

Over the past several years Singapore-based Banyan Tree, a resort chain with an eco-friendly reputation, also has made inroads throughout China, including properties on Hainan Island and in Yunnan. Its Lijiang spa resort in Yunnan opened in 2006 with villas constructed in traditional materials available locally. The group has since planted hundreds of trees in the area, sponsored local scholarships and AIDS orphans, and collaborated on a film that raises awareness of Yunnan’s traditional cultures. Banyan Tree is planning more than ten new China properties by the end of 2012.

Alongside hotel businesses, non-profit organisations are working to promote ecotourism in China’s most bio-diverse regions and improve conservation efforts. For example, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and The Nature Conservancy have created a partnership to increase sustainable local tourism in five selected sites worldwide, one of which is the Three Parallel Rivers in a mountainous part of Yunnan. The effort includes training locals to provide environmental education to tourists, such as classes on flora and fauna. They are also collaborating with local government agencies and schools to develop information boards and trail signs in both Mandarin and English. Separately, The Nature Conservancy is working with a small village in Yunnan to promote handicrafts, connecting local craftsmen with tourism providers to expand their customer base.

However, to become more than a curiosity, ecotourism boosters must raise people’s awareness of what it entails. Some Chinese enterprises are wising up to the financial benefits of the ecotourism label, but have not really changed their offerings. In Yunnan, for example, posters advertising “Ecotours” are plastered throughout cafés and guesthouses. But any difference with traditional options is hard to discern.

Multiplying rubbish

A common complaint among ecotourism advocates is that local governments prioritise profitability and high rates of return over environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, good relationships with local officials are key to ecotourism’s expansion in China, says Lulu Zhou, an ecotourism fellow with The Nature Conservancy in Yunnan. She says at first, The Nature Conservancy efforts elicited little interest among local cadre. But that began to change when they saw the visual impact of increased tourism—such as multiplying rubbish in pristine areas. At last answering The Nature Conservancy’s repeated invitations at a dialogue, officials are now holding regular meetings and working closely on site-management strategies, such as monitoring tourist figures and their impact. As China’s national park system develops, further standardisation and procedures for ecotourism are likely to develop, Ms Zhou says. But for now, it is important to build a consensus on what constitutes “best practices” in protecting the environment.

Alas, many ecotourism efforts in China are largely driven by a desire to attract more Western tourists. The future of ecotourism, however, hinges on attracting more Chinese, especially young tourists, says Mr Trehoux, the French tourism consultant. Younger Chinese are put off by the crowded, high-impact travel of their parents’ generation and better understand the negative effects that tourists can have on the environment. Today, it is not uncommon to find young Chinese backpackers—as well as wealthier domestic tourists—who are seeking a more individual perspective on travel with smaller crowds and closer contact with the locals.

Large-scale implementation of ecotourism, in its strictest definition, is unlikely in China. With its huge, increasingly wealthy and mobile population, low-impact, sustainable travel for everyone is simply impossible. Nevertheless, as more Chinese become aware of the importance of conservation, ecotourism’s prominence should rise. If they demand the services, businesses will follow—naturally.

Great green strides
The mainland is making enormous progress in wildlife conservation
7 January 2009
South China Morning Post

It's not a concept normally associated with the mainland, a wild, green China whose conservation efforts could inspire other developing nations. We tend to think of a China whose breakneck economic development has poisoned rivers, polluted air and turned vast tracts of land into a moonscape. But, increasingly, a wild, green China is being revealed, and hailed internationally.

Among those spreading the word is Gavin Maxwell, producer and director of the BBC's six-part nature documentary series, Wild China, released last spring, shortly before the Beijing Olympics. He admitted that, before embarking on the landmark television project four years ago, his assumption was "Quick, before it all goes", and to query if there was anything worth filming at all.

"My biggest surprise is how much is still there in China," he said while in Hong Kong recently to address the local branch of the Royal Geographical Society. "How many big mammals there are, how many key species and how much habitat is actually protected now."

According to the most recent paper published by the State Council, nature reserves cover some 1.5 million square kilometres - 15 per cent - of China's land territory. A network of national nature reserves is "effectively protecting" 85 per cent of land-based ecosystems, 85 per cent of wildlife species and 65 per cent of China's natural plant community, according to the same document.

Rare species featured in the Wild China series, called Beautiful China in the version shown on the mainland, include Tibet's tiny jumping spiders - the planet's highest permanent-dwelling predators - the giant panda, the golden snub-nosed monkey and the Tibetan antelope (chiru).

Mr Maxwell said Chinese students attending his lectures in London told him they had no idea there was such biodiversity in their country. "That's been extraordinary, how secret China has been even to the Chinese," he said.

The BBC and its CCTV production partners were given unprecedented access during 1,000 filming days across China. They were able to find and film key species and to achieve what they set out to do, Mr Maxwell said.

That was partly because they filmed in areas so remote, mountainous and inaccessible that wildlife had a natural protective barrier. But it was not the only reason. "Some things in terms of conservation seem to be working well and research on the ground seems to be working well," Mr Maxwell said.

He noted that a tenet of Chinese civilisation was the Taoist philosophy of harmony between man and nature.

"I think recently the Chinese government has tried to reinvigorate this concept and return to these values of harmony as a kind of metaphor for their renewed phase in terms of tackling environmental issues," he said.

Mr Maxwell said the series, which has been sold to more than 100 countries, did talk about issues of deforestation, desertification of northern grasslands and pollution of rivers. But its primary focus was "to celebrate what is still there rather than bemoan what's gone".

He is optimistic that China has the political clout, resources and manpower to act on conservation. "If they decide 'we're going to do something about our environment and do it for the better', I feel China is one of the few places that could actually implement that."

Daniel Taylor, president of the US-based non-profit organisation Future Generations, has worked with mainland conservation for decades, starting with Tibet.

In the 1980s he met the autonomous region's then party secretary, Hu Jintao , now China's president, over an idea to preserve the area around Mt Everest. This followed Dr Taylor's personal 25-year Himalayan odyssey to discover the scientific truth behind the legendary "abominable snowman", or yeti, which he found in 1983 to be the Asiatic black bear - and in need of protection.

He said Mr Hu heard the argument for conservation: "He is sufficiently enlightened and enough of an opportunist to know a good idea when he sees it. Let's give him praise. He saw that there was a new way to do conservation. He took the idea that was presented to him. And he said, 'let's do it even better and bigger'."

The outcome was the creation of the Qomolangma (Mt Everest) National Nature Preserve, which is the size of Taiwan, plus other preserves that together now protect more than 40 per cent of Tibet.

"What is truly exciting is to watch how the Tibetan environment has rebounded when people start to respond to it as partners and as stewards, which the Tibetan people have done in the past 20 years," Dr Taylor said.

He estimates that deforestation in Tibet is down by more than 80 per cent and the forests "are coming back very nicely". He attributed this to ecological protection by the government in partnership with the people, without any wardens.

"Across Tibet today every species of wildlife population has its population on the increase with, as yet not fully documented, musk deer, Tibetan antelope, the Asiatic bear, snow leopard, wild ass, black-necked crane, Tibetan wolf, Tibetan fox. All the predators are coming back because the ungulate [hoofed animal] population number is up.

"This is China we're talking about. And you're seeing a regeneration of a whole ecosystem in the context of some of the most difficult habitat on the planet", he said, referring to oxygen-starved, arid, cold Tibet, ravaged by five centuries of human population growth and domestic grazing.

Dr Taylor said that, for an ecosystem to flourish, people should be engaged as part of the solution, not the problem. "We myopically saw conservation as saving pandas without realising that it was saving people. Yes, let's please protect the panda; we all want the panda to be protected. But the agenda is a lot bigger." He said it involved changing people's appetites and behaviour.

"China, wonderfully, is leading the world in this understanding," Dr Taylor said, adding that Mr Hu had "a phenomenal opportunity" to reshape the global conservation dialogue.

In 2007, with official blessing, Future Generations China and Beijing Forestry University jointly launched the Green Long March, China's "largest youth conservation awareness movement". So far, more than 5,000 students and young environmentalists have marched through 26 provinces and 22 nature preserves, and visited 700 communities, spreading awareness of conservation and sharing environmental best practices. Organisers estimate they have spread their message to more than 20 million people across the nation.

The Green Long March focuses on finding successes across China where the people and government are doing something right, Dr Taylor said. "The most critical resource of all is the energy of the people," he said. "If you can show that they're making progress, then you can encourage them to do more."

He said Hong Kong-based sponsors of the march - among them Swire, Goldman Sachs, the Zeshan Foundation, Li & Fung and Adrian H.C. Fu - played a key role in raising awareness on the mainland about the need for long-term thinking to create lasting prosperity.

WWF China's country representative Dermot O'Gorman, who is based in Beijing, said the importance China attached to the environment had risen markedly in the past few years as the State Council placed greater emphasis on environmental targets to be met.

"The speed of change to really protect the environment has been perhaps faster than many people would have anticipated," he said. "Perception has yet to catch up with some of the rapid changes that are happening in China in terms of protecting the environment."

He said that the most common image, particularly of eastern China, was of industrialisation that caused pollution and damage to the natural environment. "But I think there are still a lot of wilderness areas where there are conservation efforts under way that continue to try and protect these areas for the future."

Academic training for conservation professionals was now "top quality", and universities were producing well qualified, experienced graduates and postgraduates, Mr O'Gorman said. "In Beijing, they are equal to any other country in terms of their experience and management of very complex environmental issues and technical understanding of what's going on in China and the rest of the world. "Of course, the level of experience and the abilities varies across the country." He said that WWF had worked over the past two decades at the provincial level to ensure that officials had the skills to put into action conservation measures on the ground.

There had been huge forest planting efforts across China. "We've also seen China adopt new international mechanisms to preserve forests. There are more than 900,000 hectares of Forest Stewardship Council-certified forest, which is the most in Asia." Forested nature reserves now covered 71 per cent of the giant panda population and more than half its habitat, he said. Domestic tourists were increasingly interested in interacting with nature, Mr O'Gorman observed. Though some of that "may not be what the west would see as ecotourism", visitor numbers to scenic areas in Yunnan , Sichuan , Qinghai and Tibet were on the rise. "More and more Chinese want to go and see the places that they see on television and in photographs."

Mr O'Gorman said his organisation had started an education programme in the 1990s that got the environment into the mainland school curriculum: "Now 200 million students receive environmental education as part of their normal schooling system in primary and junior secondary." Many innovative environmental ideas were coming out of China, he said.

"Other developing countries can learn much from China's experience and also from some of the solutions that China is putting in place, with such a large population and a real pressure cooker of a problem."

He foresaw opportunities for China to link up with the US and Europe to promote sustainable development and tackle environmental problems at a regional or global level.

China's position was unique, he said. Because of the financial reserves it had built up over the past decade, it could invest not only in environmental protection but in promoting positive opportunities that arose from it.