Some good advice from the people who walk the talk. - JN
SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE 3 August 2009
TOP 3 PLACES NOT TO GO ON HOLIDAY
© Adrian Arbib/Survival
As the holiday season enters full swing, Survival International today names three destinations holidaymakers should avoid:
• Barefoot Resort, South Andaman Island, India
• Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana
• ‘First contact’ expeditions, West Papua
Barefoot India has established a tourist resort near the edge of the reserve created to protect the Jarawa
tribe. The resort puts one of the world’s most recently-contacted
tribes at risk from swine flu and other diseases to which they are
likely to have little immunity.
The Botswana government is
promoting the Central Kalahari Game Reserve as a tourist destination,
and is allowing a safari company to build a lodge that will use large
amounts of water. But it refuses to allow the Bushmen to use a single water borehole inside the reserve.
Treks
to meet isolated tribes in West Papua, Indonesia – including one
offered by American ‘adventurer’ Kelly Woolford to an area where tribes
supposedly ‘have had no contact with the outside world’ – could, if
true, have catastrophic consequences.
Survival’s director
Stephen Corry said today, ‘Responsible tourists should keep well away
from areas where uncontacted or recently-contacted tribes live. There
are numerous cases where at least half of a tribe has died from disease
soon after their first contact with outsiders.
‘Many of the
Kalahari Bushmen would welcome tourism on their own terms. But
promoting tourism while the Bushmen go thirsty is a slap in the face.
Visitors will be sipping cocktails in the bar while the Bushmen living
nearby are forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to access water.
‘There’s
nothing wrong with tourists visiting tribal peoples who have been in
routine contact with outsiders for some time, but only if the tribal
people want them to, have proper control over where they go and what
they do, and get a fair share of the profit. Unfortunately, this hardly
ever happens.’
- Download Survival’s tourism advice leaflet
- Read this story online
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