Agreeing to go green

BY SHIRENE CHEN

Last year, environmentalists and local tourism authorities clashed when a barge laden with construction equipment scraped off 372.94sq m of coral reef at Sipadan Island, Sabah, while in Tioman, Johor, protest over a new airport on the island intensified when studies revealed that the stretch of sea where the airport was to be built was richer in coral diversity than first reported.
Can the contradicting agendas of tourism and environmental preservation be reconciled?

The Conference on Environmental Management Practices in the Hospitality Industry, jointly presented by the Nilai International University College (NIUC) and Oxford Brookes University, UK, at the Equatorial Hotel in Kuala Lumpur recently, explored this relevant question. Oxford Brooke University’s research team from its Centre for Environmental Studies (CESHI) pointed out that in Europe, environmental legislation is aimed at preventing pollution rather than penalising polluters after the fact.

In the UK, the government charges Landfill Tax on landfill operators for every tonne of waste disposed. This helps to reduce the amount of waste dumped in landfills, promote re-use and recycling, and provide funding for research into more sustainable ways of managing waste.
The Climate Change Levy, on the other hand, taxes energy consumption in the non-domestic sector (industry, commerce and the public sector) and encourages these sectors to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

In comparison, environmental legislation is lacking in Malaysia. This sentiment was surprisingly shared by the local hospitality industry – in a survey conducted by the Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) on 100 four- and five-star hotels in Malaysia, 82% agree that legal restrictions are the only way to control damage to the environment. Herbert Laubichler-Pichler, who presented the results of the survey, believes lax legislation in developing countries encourages foreign corporations to exploit the legal loopholes even as they meet the stringent environmental standards in their home countries. This practice of double standards is exemplified by news reports last year that exposed how companies in Europe and America were dumping their wastes in Africa.

Last year, the Hilton Hotels Corporation and Hilton International was accused by UK-based tourism watchdog, Tourism Concern, of short-changing local communities and contributing to habitat destruction in Bimini in the Bahamas and Mandhoo Island in the Maldives. Closer to home, we hear disturbing news that more than two years after the tsunami, local communities in Sri Lanka, Thailand and India remain displaced because they are not allowed to rebuild their homes in coastal land now earmarked for high-end tourism development projects. But legislation is not the only operative word when it comes to tourism and the environment...