Tourism & Water: Protecting our common future
This year, on the occasion of the World Tourism Day, United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has selected an apt theme, ‘Tourism & Water: Protecting our Common Future’. While 2013 also happens to be the United Nations year of Water Cooperation.
It does make sense to talk about the responsibility of tourism industry and tourists towards water conservation and tourists’ education in the same regard, but my personal and primary concern this year is more on the depleting rivers in India and of course the river health, that often is ignored. Who better than the inhabitants of Uttarakhand would understand the relevance of my concern. The shadow of the devastation is still lurking in the state and many families in India, have lost their loved once who visited the higher reaches of the Himalayas as religious tourists. In Uttarakhand tourists and the tourism industry both were directly affected, so many are still untraceable and tourism businesses have gone bust with no immediate signs of revival. We all should join hands, not only to offer our condolences and concerns, but to have a more meaningful retrospection what went wrong, where and why it went wrong, specially in the fragile eco-zones of rivers, and when I say river, I include not only the river bed, but its free banks as well, however expansive and useless they might look.
River has been one such essential tourism attraction in east and west, north and south that each city has it as an attraction to pull in tourists. Be it the cruise on Seine in Paris, Thames in London, Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, river rafting in the Ganges at Rishikesh, all are a ‘must do’ on tourist itineraries. More so in India, where rivers might be less revered for touristy reasons but are an essential part of Hindu way of life in all its forms. Can one imagine Hinduism without the mother Ganges? thus giving river a status of no less than a goddess herself, to whom we pray everyday, considering it as our lifeline, from which we source the water for our daily needs and in death a drop of Ganga Jal (water from the Ganges) is sufficient to sends us to heaven.
How rightly did Oscar Wilde once said, “…Man kills the things he loves” and how true is it to our rivers that we love so much that receding waters in droughts leave us gasping, overflowing of rivers make us vary of the destruction it might cause due to floods, yet we ought not to learn a single lesson. Most recent example of the devastating floods of Uttrakahand is a live example of man’s opening of Pandora’s Box by unmindful development, construction, mining et al and finally the river taking its revenge or rather call it the nemesis.
Speaking in touristy terms, rivers are a great product and indeed the best way to see the first hand civilizations that often developed on its banks, and then moved backwards. Rivers do give us a sense of relaxation, An intrinsic rejuvenation too comes from the rivers, while the adrenaline rush of adventure happens here too. The waters are both placid and violent to give an opportunity to both kinds of tourists, the allocentrics and the psychocentrics alike.
Uncontrolled developments and the dumping of city waste all have contributed to the worst times that our rivers ever saw. Cities and urban lands have expanded beyond imagination, reclamation of river lands, forced redirection of rivers all have taken its toll on the quality of water that flows in them, thereby causing a ripple effect to our own life that at many places still depends of rivers for water and food.
Locally and more focally speaking, religious activities that were once restricted to a few pandals of Durga Puja, had limited idol submergence ritual, have multiplied to make rivers bear a much larger burden of the synthetic paints and decorative material on the idol of Goddess Durga (I have used an example of Durga Puja, as this festival is round the corner, though almost all Hindu festivals have the river submerging rituals). Flinging plastic bags full of dried flowers and other puja samagri (ritualistic essentials used in Hindu prayers) from the bridges that cross our rivers, is another big addition to the worst times that our rivers face.
The river front development programme is on the cards for many cities in India but have we done a critical environmental impact study of once again moving into the river banks and sort of reclaiming river’s rightful areas for just a little fun if at all it be ? Will the beautification of river front mean a compromise with river’s very own temperament ? Will it not add to the burden on the shrinking rivers et al.
The questions raised here are definitely not to deter any such drive, but to have a proper ecologically sustainable model that respects the rivers that still are the most loved possession of the mankind.
The writer is the CEO of Tornos - a tour company and a
tourism researcher.