'We Must Build a Holistic Ecotourism System That Includes All Stakeholders'

Nikolay Kurichev spoke at the IV International Conference "Natural Tourism: Global Challenges and Prospects for Russia". Within the framework of the plenary session "Natural tourism - a driver of sustainable development", the participants discussed a model of introducing tourists to nature in accordance with the Strategy for the development of tourism in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2035 (approved by the Order of the Government of the Russian Federation of 20.09.2019 No. 2129-r ).

Nikolay Kurichev suggested talking about sustainable tourism in a broad context, seeing analogies and managerial problems that arise with natural sites, the urban environment, and cultural heritage sites.

“In 90% of cases at this conference, we talked about nature tourism in protected areas, about building infrastructure, but sustainable tourism is more than just nature tourism in protected areas. And the problems that we include in sustainable tourism also face visiting cultural heritage sites and the urban environment. Tourist flows create pressure - not only on the natural landscape but also on the cultural landscape, on the way of life that people used to lead in this historic city. There is a crowd, it is impossible to live in this - there is pressure on property prices and other problems, ” Nikolay Kurichev said.
Speaking about global challenges, Nikolay Kurichev noted the need to adapt activities both globally and locally. New markets, activities, products are emerging in the world. For example, the most important topic in the last one and a half years in Russia was carbon quotas. These are markets for carbon emissions, rights to emissions, and it is clear that this will become a key instrument of global economic regulation in the next 30 years.

Speaking about the prospects for Russia, Nikolay drew attention to the need to think about how to build a dialogue with the local community, non-profit organizations and the local citizens. “Sustainable development is impossible apart from this dialogue, from taking into account the interests of the community. This is one of the important deficits, and one of the important conflicts that exists in our country. This kind of thing is not done from above, we must build an integral system of ecotourism, which includes all stakeholders who work on the land - reserves, local businesses, NGOs will be maximally involved. "

You can watch recording sessions and other conference materials at: https://2021.eco-russia.org/program/