Colliding Continents

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Chop em' Down! Use it Once!

Wandoor, in the Andaman Islands, is home to one of the most environmentally protected areas in

India

, so why not build a helipad on it? At least 60 trees have been chopped down in order to accommodate President Patil’s helicopter, transporting the president and 10 family members during their tour of the islands. The helipad was built to cut down travel time by forty minutes, reasonable? Not so much.

The irony is that she toured the islands in order to hand off 200 eco-friendly homes to victims of the 2004 tsunami. It would seem a bit counter intuitive to cut down trees in an environmentally protected area for a helipad in order to facilitate giving away eco-friendly housing.

With many tourism officials of the world promoting eco-tourism it seems as if President Patil decided not to join in. In addition to creating a helipad, two tourist resorts have issued cancellation notices to tourists in order to accommodate the President and her family members.

If you take a look at this from a pure tourism revenue perspective, it does not make sense, from an environmental/sustainability perspective it does not either, and even from a public relations standpoint it has little value. Perhaps this is why when asked, the construction company contracted denied damage to the environment and why spokespersons from the two resorts were “not aware” that cancellation notices were sent out.

Written at 10:40 AM by Sebastien.

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