1. Project

Tourism involves a lot of money and is now the first industry in the world. Its increase rate is almost 14% each year. Although south countries are more and more visited, there is nearly no benefits for the locals. The richness created is still kept in north countries. In fact, just a few operators have this business in their hand. They built complexes in gorgeous areas buying fields for a couple of bucks and using big amount of water for golf in dry countries... And tourists spend most of their money in activities belonging to the company. North countries benefit mainly to this development, whereas south populations suffer the negative effects.

Ecotourism and sustainable tourism is an alternative way of visiting a country. This kind of tourism is created by locals, managed by the inhabitants, mostly organized in association. These effects and rewards are directly for the population to develop their village, buy a new water pomp, build a school, etc.

The two main problems of Ecotourism are an absence of an international and famous label, and a difficulty of promotion (to be known by the potential north tourists) for these communities.

That’s why we decided to work with Echoway (www.echoway.org) and create our project Agrotour. We are two students in Mater Degree of Agronomy. During our childhood and our studies, we were confronted to several environmental and development issues. Study Ecotourism as a great and promising way of sustainable development for south countries began to interest us a few months ago. In fact, Ecotourism is a tourism which respects the environment, which share the wealth created and which is organized by local communities. Ecotourism takes up the three components of the sustainable development: environmental, social and economics.