What is the Ecological Impact of an Exploration Seminar?

Background and Philosophy:  One of the key topics of our seminar, From the Andes to the Amazon: Biodiversity, conservation, and sustainability in Peru, was obviously conservation and sustainability issues.  To this end, we decided to monitor the ecological impact of our own activities as a large group of Americans traveling in Peru.  We were conscious of the fact that in many cases we were accustomed to consuming resources at a much greater rate than the people in the communities we came to study.  Furthermore, we were accustomed to consuming resources that were not indigenous to the region we came to study, and therefore were contributing to waste associated with the needless importation of goods.  Thus, we were particularly interested in minimizing our contribution to some of the very problems we had come to study.  Peru has a booming tourist industry (e.g., >1500 tourists/day visit the mountain town of Aguas Calientes, pop. 2000, until recently without garbage facility), but lacks the means to deal appropriately with the waste produced by the consumptive habits of these tourists.  When tourism is left unchecked, tourists who are unconscious of the consequences of simply living the life they are accustomed to at home have an enormous, and generally negative, ecological impact on the very environment that drew them to that country.  Short-term visitors are often totally unaware of the impact they leave behind them, although sometimes the impact of those that went before them is very obvious (e.g. open landfills, polluted rivers, etc.) —but a short-term visitor can become a victim of the system, even if they want to change.  To not become a victim of the system requires prior knowledge and planning.  (Please skip to the last section to for our practical tips and examples for achieving ecologically responsible travel).

            We brought these issues to our students and put together a "Conservation Committee" made up of a subgroup of interested students on our course, to develop a monitoring plan and a strategy for reducing our collective ecological footprint.  After much deliberation, the committee came up with the following goals: 

1) For each individual to focus on gradually reducing his/her own personal resource use in a variety of categories. 

2) For each individual to monitor his/her own resource use (excluding some items of a personal nature) using a standardized chart, focusing on resources that were wasted or could have been used more responsibly. 

3) To keep the focus positive, rewarding good behavior, rather than punishing bad behavior, recognizing that for the survival of any animal, consumption is a necessary part of life.  We did not want to encourage extreme behavior, or going without items that are needed to stay healthy. 

4)  To plan ahead in order to avoid being trapped into consuming non-sustainable items.

5)  To come up with an overall assessment of the ecological footprint of the course, based on anonymous reporting of individual resource use at the end of the course, along with estimation of consumption of group resources, such as gasoline, electricity, and food.

6)  Come up with a point system and reward those with the lowest impact. 

7)  Try to restrict certain consumptive practices, and allow for trading if needed.

            Committing ourselves to living more consciously and ultimately more lightly, in some cases in a manner more consistent with some existing locally sustainable practices, became one of the central learning elements of the course.  Our students agreed that one of the most important lessons learned from the course was that they could comfortably live more lightly, and there was unanimous consent among all of the students to make conscious lifestyle changes upon return to the U.S.

How we measured our ecological impact during the 2008 Peru Exploration Seminar: 

Each course participant used the following simple chart to keep track of their day to day consumption during the course. 

The conservation committee kept track of group consumption, such as oil and gasoline used in transportation, and came up with a way to sum up everyone's individual consumption at the end of the course.  Whenever possible, group meals were based on locally available ingredients with the lowest environmental impact possible, e.g. limited meat, and no beef, and sampling many of the delicious local varieties of vegetables, such as corn and potatoes.  We decided it would be impossible to quantify how much energy was expended to produce and deliver every individual ingredient, but we tried to be conscious about what we were consuming. 

Table 1.  Group Consumption in Peru*, 25 people, 21 days

*(a seminar which consciously tried to reduce its impact):

Keys to Ecologically Responsible Travel (or what you should be thinking about as a seminar leader) wherever you are in the world:

1)  Think ahead…if taking food on the road, don't get "to go" containers.  Either eat "in" or require your students to bring Tupperware from the U.S. that can be reused for "to go" meals throughout the course.  Think re-usable for any items you purchase.

2)  Reduce unnecessary trips.  Use one large vehicle instead of many small.  Walk when possible—walking is a great way to explore a new place.  Use public transport when possible.

3)  Buy in bulk.  Eschew items with unnecessary, excessive, or non-reusable packaging.  Refuse plastic bags even when vendors insist on placing your purchase in a plastic bag.  Supply your own reusable packaging.  Examples from our trip include, buying unwrapped cookies and candies in bulk from local vendors and bakers, and placing them in our own large Tupperware containers for transport out of the store.   We also bought 20 L returnable and reusable water bottles which we always had on hand for general drinking purposes so that no one had to buy small disposable bottles of water during the course.  Note, that in areas where we couldn't exchange and refill these bottles, we simply added purification tablets to available tap water and well water. 

4)  Don't consume items that create garbage.  If you do, make sure the place you are in has adequate means to dispose of garbage.  Plan ahead for this.  If it doesn't, then pack your garbage out with you until you find a proper place to dispose of it (all the way back to the U.S. if necessary).  This is especially true with plastic containers and chemical items like batteries.  The best option for batteries is to buy the rechargeable kind with the small chargers that are available (requires that you plan ahead with your charging too). 

5)  Work with vendors to buy locally, to limit energy costs of transport and to ensure that local, sustainable agriculture, small-scale industry, and local economy are supported (we acknowledge that sometimes the choices are complex and not obvious).  Also work with vendors to use the lowest ecological impact ingredients (think about how food is grown and where—e.g., if you are in the rainforest, don't buy beef, that was raised on ranches on clear-cut forest.  This requires talking to restaurant owners ahead of time.  It can result in much better and more culturally authentic meals too.  Many restaurant owners think American students want American or European style food, but this would defeat the whole purpose of the Exploration Seminar.  Generally working with vendors also provides education for the local community and may facilitate change in the standards they provide for future tourists.

6)  Use the internet or a course website to post rules, regulations, handouts, readings etc.  rather than printing all of this material.  Or share a limited number of handouts during the course.  They can be posted in a common area.