Haste Makes Waste: Learning to Travel

When trying to discourage his nephew from leaving home for an idle trip to Europe, Thomas Jefferson noted that traveling "makes men wiser, but less happy." Certainly, when it comes to tourism, visitors and visited may have widely divergent points of view.

Over the last half century, international tourism has changed from an exclusive pursuit, catering to only 25 million international travelers in 1950, to a massive industry providing for 760 million in 2005, a thirtyfold increase, according to Costas Christ, senior director for ecotourism at Conservation International. Now one of the top five exports for 80 percent of countries, tourism has branched out into adventure and self-proclaimed eco-friendly accommodations and activities.

Truly green eco-tourism is truly needed, as conventional tourism mostly harms the environment and alienates local communities. "The number one threat to tourist treasures, paradoxically, is tourism itself," reported the April 10 edition of Newsweek International, in a special tourism issue that lists the world's most endangered destinations.

According to a 2005 poll of Hawaii residents: 53 percent don't believe that visitor activity should be encouraged in wilderness areas and 40 percent think the tourism industry is doing a fairly poor or very poor job of protecting the environment from overuse and pollution. Still, if done right, tourism can benefit local communities, sustaining indigenous art forms such as weaving on Mayan backstrap looms in Guatamala, Newsweek reported. And the visitor income generated by national parks and conservation areas, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Galapagos to the Serengeti, helps assure their survival.