Chowdhury Abdullah: Seminar on Responsible tourism

A seminar on “Responsible Tourism” was organized by Notre Dame Nature Study club (NDNSC), supported by USAID Bangladesh and Nishorgo Network. Having a theme of ‘Viewing nature without disturbing it’, this virtual seminar started at 12:00 PM, 26 September, in Notre Dame College. An enthusiastic learning presentation and video which was highly productive, leaving the students aware of keeping the nature, forests and wetland clean when they travel.

The seminar started with a video showing about the IPAC (Integrated Protected Area Co-management) project. There are 26 reserved areas in Bangladesh. People who live there know that place like none other and Nishorgo is doing a collaborate project named IPAC (Integrated Protected Area Co-management) with Government of Bangladesh, trying to conserve the forests and wet lands. Launched in June 4, 2008[ii], this project has some critical targets and achievements:

Conservation and management
Leaving something for future generation
Implement govt. initiative in 26 Protected Areas (PA) in Bangladesh with co-operation under IPAC project
Co-management, help local communities to let them know how to save the environment by themselves
There are 22000+ people working under Nishorgo Network.

Then the seminar went ahead with a new presenter talking about different types of tourism such as:

Sustainable tourism

Do you really need to travel that many times to the same place?

Eco-Tourism

Travelling and Eco-friendly

Responsible Tourism: Dos/Don’ts

No harm to local sites
Tourist’s responsibility
Learn & Conserve
Try contributing
Don’t disturb wildlife
No littering
No loud speaker
No outside food
Don’t be wasteful
Tour in small groups
Follow rules
Take only pictures; take no leaves, flowers, shells
Don’t disturb wildlife
Enjoy the nature

[iii]

In a nutshell, they elaborated that responsible tourism is about letting travelers and tourist know about how to keep the biological diversity of the natural forests and wetlands by making them more responsible and respectful to the natural environment.

After that, there was a question-answer session and then the seminar came to an end.