EQUATIONS in the Media

Protests of inhabitants of the Lakshadweep islands against a proposed tourism project have recently made headlines in India. The protest gained support from the scientific community, warning of the severe impacts of climate change. Protecting the islands rather than exposing them to additional risk is the need of the hour.

Mandarmani is a small village on the coast of West Bengal. The story told is that it got its name from the Mandar, bright red flowers of the coral tree (gen.: erythrina) — the beach, the locals say, was so heavily populated with red crabs that from a distance it looked like a large garden of Mandar. But with the rapid growth of tourism from 2010, the garden of crabs has been replaced by a garden of tourists. The tall and lofty dunes of Mandarmani were flattened to make space for more than seventy-five hotels and resorts in the area.[1] The beach that was once used extensively by fishworker families for fishing, sorting out the day’s catch, docking boats, and drying fish, now has only one small hut and a few boats left for the fishworkers.

As we celebrate World Tourism Day 2020 on the theme of ‘Rural Development’, practitioners of rural tourism are looking for clarity in policies and practices so that they can use rural tourism to empower local communities.

On World Tourism Day, EQUATIONS, urges governments to look at the pandemic as an opportunity to transform tourism to be more sustainable and resilient.