Tourism may represent a great development opportunity for a country, but it can also easily and quickly turn into a calamity.

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Sustainable travel means being aware of this and therefore adopting good practices to reduce or reverse the negative effects of the movement of people within sensitive ecosystems that need to be preserved or visiting growing systems of economies at risk of development that is harmful to the environment and to those among the locals who will fail to fit in and participate in what many of us call "progress." Paying the highest price in our destinations are especially the local indigenous cultures, those who still survive in the forests of Costa Rica on the border with Panama, in southern Mexico, in the jungles of Belize or in the thick of the Nicaraguan rainforest. Besides being the true and only guardians of many territories, Indigenous people are also custodians of ancestral knowledge that we must not lose. 

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Since I was born in 1970, the world's population has more than doubled and we have lost more than 60 percent of the world's wildlife (Living Planet Report figure by WWF). The more humans crowd the planet, the more forests disappear, wildlife becomes extinct and the atmosphere warms. Tourism has a major responsibility in this self-destructive process. But we are convinced that making people aware of the wonderful places in our destinations can make a concrete contribution to their protection and conservation. In a number of countries around the world, it is being shown that conscious tourism can actually generate more revenue than the short-sighted fishing and agricultural exploitation of the land, which always and inevitably also involves the exploitation of local workers. This has been demonstrated with whale watching in Scandinavian countries, with safaris in various places around the world, but there is still much, much to be done to protect the world's great Forests and Oceans, of which to date only 1 percent is formally protected. 

 

We at INDIGO Escapes prefer, for example, small, quaint hotels run by locals with the same vision and sensitivity to the land as we do. We never use middlemen, and for our Partners we select only deserving small eco-sustainable businesses capable of healthy development.

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While organizing your trips we do not employ paper and use only digital formats, which even so still entail their own small environmental impact.

 

The activity of INDIGO Escapes has as a strict goal the lowest possible environmental impact before and during your trip, respecting places, cultures, people and animals, an indispensable value of ours.

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Since 2011 then, the year of its formation, the INDIGO Team has been engaged in nonprofit activities that exclusively benefit Nature and Ethnicities at risk around the world. Part of our proceeds are donated monthly to environmental protection and preservation campaigns. 

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Here are some simple tips we suggest to all travelers before embarking on a trip to reduce consumption and waste and limit risks to the environment and local economies:

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• Avoid buying many small plastic bottles. It is better to refill a personal water bottle or a smaller bottle several times with a 4-liter bottle. When throwing away empty bottles, it is necessary to crush them completely without closing the cap to minimize the volume of waste: the smaller their volume, the fewer trips needed to transport them to the landfill, and the less pollution indirectly caused;

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• Never buy souvenirs made from shells, animal parts or particular botanical species because you encourage their indiscriminate collection thus becoming conducive to destructive effects, as well as risking serious penalties once at the airport;

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• Always carry a bag where you can collect personal or environmentally dispersed waste;

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• Conserve Water, always and everywhere. Water is a scarce and expensive resource; every effort should be made to consume as little of it as possible. In a tented camp a bucket of water with a jug is enough to wash completely. If you are in a hotel, the faucet should be turned off when brushing your teeth or when soaping yourself in the shower;

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• Do not pick up bones, shells or flowers in the environment: let others like us enjoy the same beauty. We should never touch fish, turtles and other organisms in the water: the difference between our Ph and that of the mucous membrane covering their bodies can irreparably affect the layer and thus encourage the establishment of fungi that could even kill the animal;

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• Never give money away, but rather buy exclusively local handicrafts or agricultural products to support native traditions and crops; 

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• Do not be too critical of other peoples: travel is an opportunity for enrichment, not confrontation.

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