Akita International Symposium on Sustainable Tourism 13th to 18th February, 2008, Akita, Japan

An International Symposium on "Searching for Sustainable Tourism" was held in Akita International University, Akita, Japan, from 15-16th February, 2008. The symposium was organized by the Centre for Regional Sustainability Initiatives (CRESI) of AIU. There were more than 250 international and Japanese participants attended the symposium representing the tourism industry, government authorities, academics, national park authorities etc. The symposium was ceremonially opened by Prof. Mineo Nakajima, President, Akita International University, Japan and facilitated by Prof. Yoshitaka Kumagai, Director, CRESI. The Conference Secretariat has invited many eminent scholars from all over the world, including Prof.Stephen F. McCool, Professor Emeritus, University of Montana, Ulrike Pröbstl, Professor, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Seong-il Kim,Professor, Seoul National University, Korea, Rui Yang, Professor, Director, Institute of Resource Protection and Tourism, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China, Dr. Masaru Takayama, Board of Directors, The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) and the Executive Director, Japan Ecolodge Association (ECOLA) many Japanese academics and tourism industry segments also invited to make presentations.

Palitha Gurusinghe, President, Sri Lanka Ecotourism Foundation has been invited to represent Sri Lanka. He has made a presentation on "Searching for Sustainable Tourism: What Can Sustainable Tourism brings to the local Communities in Sri Lanka?

In his presentation, he mainly focused on what Sustainable/Ecotourism could bring to the local areas and local communities and shared his experience in Ecotourism in Sri Lanka and other parts of the world, emphasizing on heritage, cultural, and community links to conservation efforts, manufacturing, circulation and marketing of local handicrafts as income generating activities etc. He emphasized that Ecotourism seems to be the famous and also debatable subject of the day, not only in Sri Lanka but also on global level. Those who are occupied in travel and tourism business, academics, intellectuals and even politicians want to be part of ecotourism. However, he cautioned, poorly planned ecotourism programs provide local populations with little besides social tension and environmental degradation, while leaving the tourist dissatisfied and cheated.
Without careful planning, guidance and management, ecotourism will not stop tourisms' current environmental and socio-economic impacts and it will create new ones, such as environmental destruction, pollution and, increase the gap between rich and poor. He further went on to say, that the developing countries should map out their own 'genuine ecotourism' plans in elimination of poverty to assure economic and social justification to the host communities. Therefore, ecotourism fabric in Asia-Pacific Region should address the burning issues of socioeconomic and sociocultural issues confronted by the communities. He also stressed that participation by local communities in ecotourism must not be limited simply to employment opportunities. It will be very important that ecotourism benefits the local population rather than taking them from a position where they are the users of the resources to a position where they become mere employees or indeed are dispossessed.

Local communities must be involved in the complete tourism development process, from the planning stage to the implementation and management of ecotourism projects, through avenue of consultation and partnership. Palitha remarked, that Ecotourism is often seen by poor communities as one of the few livelihoods which are open to them. Communities whose people are living in poverty invariably find their young people migrate to urban centres because of the decline in traditional industries such as agriculture and fishing. 'Ecotourism' can prevent this urban drift and provide an essential alternative income. Therefore, Ecotourism could act as a catalyst to mitigate the community setbacks and to assure economic justification to the communities living around protected and natural areas and cultural sites in Sri Lanka and other parts of the developing world…."

On the first day of the symposium, the participants focused on the roles of tourism in community revitalization and examined the alternative meanings of sustainable tourism. The participants were able to study various case studies conducted by researches from USA, Austria, Korea, China and Sri Lanka. On the second day, there were four Japanese researchers presented the current situation of local areas and tourism policies in Japan and shared their research experience related to sustainable tourism. In the final session, the Symposium focused on the role to be played on promoting sustainable tourism and what sort of approaches should be and should not be taken.

The symposium was successfully concluded with a positive note of enlightening and deepening the understanding of sustainable tourism.After the symposium, a poster competition was held, organized by the AIU for the under graduates of Japanese universities, to promote sustainable tourism.

A post-symposium tour to Akita-Ani Region has also been organized for the Presenters of the symposium. It was a very interesting field tour which the foreign visitors and presenters were provided very important and interesting information on how the communities were living in mountainous regions in Japan and their life styles.