The outbreak of violence and the burning of 35 Tamil-owned buses in Bengaluru (also known as Bangalore) earlier this month is just the tip of the iceberg in India’s crippling water crisis. A legal dispute over the Cauvery (Kaveri) River in India’s south has suffered from more than a century of bureaucratic corruption, mismanagement and […]
Concerned residents and anti-dolphinarium activists of the Turks and Caicos islands (TCI) are desperate to find a way out of a legal maelstrom which permits the importation and keeping of dolphins for commercial tourism. A biodiversity hotspot with one of the longest coral reefs in the world, the Caribbean archipelago of 30 islands, eight of […]
In May 2014, a letter was written by a group of 38 motivated US Congress members. With Virgin founder Richard Branson’s call for more humane treatment of orcas held in captivity at the notorious SeaWorld marine park chain, this may be the strategic commandment needed to free them. The letter, the latest in a recent […]
Despite an overburdened and under-resourced public healthcare system, South Africa is fast becoming a top medical tourism destination in the private care sector because of the professionalism and polish of its private treatment packages, new research reveals. The Southern African Migration Project, an international network of organizations promoting awareness of migration-development linkages in the Southern […]
While ecotourism and sustainable travel operators are minimizing the damage inflicted on World Heritage Sites, the sheer volume of travelers and irresponsibility on the part of tourists, urban planners and multinational corporations could see some of the world’s most famous wonders being closed to the public. The latest biannual watch list compiled by the World […]
A program called Tourist Assistants, which trains former gang members to become tour guides, is receiving rave reviews in the developing country of Panama. The program was launched in 2004 by Minister of Tourism Ruben Blades, the famous Panamanian musician now turned politician, soon after newly-elected President Martin Torrijos declared war on corruption. The San […]
One of the twenty-first century’s greatest — and most controversial — engineering feats in terms of tourism, the Qinghai Railway from Xining in China to Lhasa in Tibet, faces an added threat because of global warming, which may melt the permafrost on which nearly half the 1,956-kilometer railway is built. The railway, ostensibly built by […]
Long a Shangri-la for freedom-questing European hippies, the sandy white beaches of Goa have gradually attracted a more upmarket clientele — and in the process turned away hordes of Olive Ridley marine turtles, which have used the beaches for nesting purposes for centuries. Marine turtles are among the most threatened species in the world: only […]
With only an estimated 3,500 to 7,000 snow leopards left in the wild, conservation programs are necessarily enlisting the help of local communities to increase the species’ chances of survival. Founded in 1981, the International Snow Leopard Trust, which monitors the movements of the solitary cat in China, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, and Pakistan, […]
