Vitavas Srivihok, the Thai ambassador to Laos, says Thailand will urge Laos and Vietnam to co-operate on eco-tourism. Both Route 8 and Route 12 have good potential for eco-tourism, he adds, given the number of caves, waterfalls and other attractive features along the way.

Goods transported to Vietnam via Laos on Routes 8 and 12 currently face problems because the Laotian Customs Department treats them as imported goods destined for re-export, thereby forcing truckers to pay higher duties, said a transport industry source.

Goods transported via Route 9 are treated differently, as it has a special status in the Cross Border Transport Agreement and is thus eligible for lower duties.

Route 8 links Nakhon Phanom in Thailand with Thakhek and Khammouane in Laos. It thenlinks to Route 12 in Laos which continues to Dong Hoi on the central Vietnam coast.  Route 9, roughly parallel but farther south, links Mukdahan in Thailand via Savannakhet, Laos to Danang.

Vitavas said he hopes that when the third Thai-Lao Bridge across the Mekong River opens in November 2011, linking Nakhon Phanom and Khammouane, it will help facilitate more tourism and trade on this route.

The Thai Ambassador acknowledges that Laos doesn’t want to be treated as a corridor for trade between Vietnam and Thailand, and that’s a good reason for it to develop its potential for tourism on Routes 8 and 12.

The weakness of Vietnam on the two routes is that its tourist spots are not connected to each other, he said.

Laos is the best location for creating a link with four countries: Thailand, Burma, China, and Vietnam. “Travelling through Laos will be the shortest way. If the roads in Laos can be connected, we can easily travel to all five countries in this region,” Vitavas told the Bangkok Post. Of the total 2 million visitors to Laos last year, 1.3 million were Thais.

Vitavas urges the Greater Mekong Subregion members – Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and southern China – to co-operate on tourism more seriously. “Better joint promotion of tourism is a good way to help alleviate poverty and meets foreign tourists wish to visit many Asian countries at one time to save costs,” he adds.

“There are few countries in the world that jointly promote regional tourism, and they are in Europe, the Caribbean countries and Pacific island countries,” says Vitavas. To promote tourism in the region, there should be a single visa and shared infrastructure, he adds.

Vitavas argues that the strategy for tourism promotion should include a common market with three to five countries treated as one destination. As well, it will be important to develop the human resources, encourage cross-border facilitation, private-sector participation and tourism-related infrastructure.

Nowadays, much “adventure travel” is given a deliberately green tinge. Organisations like Earthwatch send young (and increasingly frequently old) people to the four corners of the earth to study and protect endangered wildlife of every sort and, yes, to enjoy themselves in doing so.

But just how realistic is it to imagine that increasing numbers of people can visit the wild places of the earth, and the animals, trees and plants that live there, without destroying them? Oscar Wilde famously wrote that “each man kills the thing he loves”. Have we reached, or are we approaching, the limits of sustainable wildlife tourism? Should there be a strict rationing of visitors in sensitive areas? Should “return visits” be banned? Should there be total no-go zones?

There are no easy answers to such questions, but it is important that they should be asked. Take the Galapagos Islands, for example. Historically, British visitors have formed the second largest group. Even with the recession, there were still 14,000 British visitors last year.

When I first went to the Galapagos, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, in 2006, I did ask myself whether it was altogether appropriate to visit, but the sheer excitement of being offered a bite at this incredible cherry won the day.

During that first trip to the archipelago, I spent 10 days on board a 16-berth schooner, sailing from island to island. For me, as for most visitors, the love affair began as soon as I stepped off the aircraft. The astonishing thing about the Galapagos is that you actually do get to see what you hope to see. If you are lucky, you will come across most of the famous birds that intrigued Charles Darwin when he landed there 175 years ago next month. You will see blue-footed boobies and frigatebirds, Galapagos hawks and flightless cormorants. You may swim and snorkel among huge Pacific Green Turtles and white-tipped reef sharks. You will meet giant tortoises well over 100 years old and still going strong.

This relatively benevolent relationship between man and nature didn’t always exist. Vast depredations of Galapagos wildlife occurred in previous centuries. Tortoises were captured in their thousands by passing ships. The surrounding oceans were virtually emptied of whales. It is only really since 1959 when the Galapagos was established as a national park and, subsequently, as a World Heritage Site, that a proper framework has been created for safeguarding this paradise. But since then numbers of human residents and visitors have boomed.

When I first visited, some 500 cruise ships were already offering the Galapagos as a destination and some of those ships would be carrying hundreds of passengers. Nor was the problem confined to people on boats. It might not yet have been a backpacker’s dream, but when I walked through the main town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, with its agencies offering “Galapagos Adventure Tours”, I could see the potential for disaster. An explosion of short-stay visitors might overwhelm the capacity of the authorities to manage. It would also dramatically increase the risk of alien species being introduced.

Even if the authorities had the knowledge and the means to control mass-tourism, would they have the political will? In the early years of the new millennium, the islands had seen a high rate of immigration from the Ecuadorean mainland, and as many as 30,000 people now lived there – most of them involved in the tourist industry. Pressures to increase the ceiling on the number of tourists permitted to visit the islands (then about 120,000) were already being felt.

That initial trip to the Galapagos coincided with the final throes of an Ecuadorian national election campaign. I was in Puerto Ayora, for the eve-of-poll rallies. Pickup trucks, garlanded with slogans, hooted up and down the streets and boats sounded their horns in the marina. The slogans were for jobs, better sewerage, and support for local fishermen. I didn’t hear anyone on the islands calling for the authority of the national park to be strengthened and expanded. Or, if they did, I missed it. Yet, without strong political backing at every level, I had serious doubts whether the Galapagos miracle could long survive.

But the island’s uniqueness draws visitors back again and again, myself included. I returned to the Galapagos this summer, keen to see it with fresh eyes after being asked to join the Galapagos Conservation Trust as chairman and moderator. My wife and I travelled on board the MV Eclipse, which carries a maximum of 48 passengers. Crucially, from our point of view, there were the three Ecuadorian naturalists on board: Javier, Tommy and Daniel. Day after day, they escorted us to the different sites on land. If we were snorkelling, they led the way, using hand gestures to point to giant starfish, slow-cruising sea-turtles, and marine iguanas plucking seaweed from the rocks, or Galapagos penguins flashing past at speed in search of their prey.

In the evening, as we sat in the lecture room, they elaborated on key themes. “The Galapagos” Javier, told us, “is one of the most important nesting areas for the Pacific Green turtle.” As we disembarked, he warned us to stay clear of the areas of the beach above high-water mark where the turtles had already laid their eggs. “There are five important marine turtle nesting sites in the Galapagos,” he explained.

For me, this was a profoundly emotional moment. For the last several years I have served as an ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme’s Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). Within the framework of the CMS, the countries which border the Indian Ocean and the South-east Asia region have already reached an agreement to protect all species of marine turtle. Now the CMS and other bodies are considering what measures can be taken to protect marine turtles in the Eastern Pacific, many of whose populations are under threat. It is clear that the Galapagos, as a key breeding location for marine turtles, will play a vital part in any such agreement. Standing there on the critically important Bachas beach, I truly felt that I was in on the ground floor.

But it’s the giant tortoises that are perhaps the most famous of all the Galapagos wildlife. Today it is estimated that the islands’ giant tortoise population stands at about 15,000 individuals divided into 11 sub-species. The largest population is on the volcano of Alcedo on Isabela Island.

How are the giant tortoises faring after the depredations of earlier centuries, when whalers, pirates and sailors used to take giant tortoises on board to provide fresh meat and oil? Darwin notes that the crew of the HMS Beagle collected between 600 and 800 tortoises in just a few weeks. The introduction of goats and rats hastened the process of decline.

If you want a poignant reminder, go and visit “Lonesome George” in the grounds of the Charles Darwin Research Centre just outside Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. The tortoise given this nickname, who could be more than 80 years old, is the last of his subspecies, the Pinta Tortoise. While his plight is a poignant reminder of what we risk losing, the giant tortoise breeding programme has been very successful in bringing other subspecies back from the brink.

But the “elephant in the living room” – tourism – remains. On my first visit, the idea of huge people-carriers anchoring off the islands and disgorging boat-loads of passengers had sent shivers down the spine of conservationists around the world. Nor was it clear what benefit to the local economy such visitations would bring. One of the great advantages of a small-scale Galapagos cruise is that a well-equipped vessel carries its own expert guides. And a well-arranged itinerary provides plenty of time for those experts to brief interested passengers on the threats and challenges the islands face. On my second visit, it was Tommy who summarised for us the current situation. He gave us the good news first.

Thanks to a moratorium inspired – in part at least – by a campaign led by the Galapagos Conservation Trust, the menace of large cruise ships has, at least for the time being, disappeared. But what about the explosive growth of other kinds of tourism? In 1991 tourists had numbered 41,000. Annual visitors now number around 170,000.

“Shipborne tourists are not a major threat to the visitor sites. These are relatively well managed,” Tommy explained. “The National Park authorities are in strict control of the number of visitors and of their itineraries.”

He went on to point out that new guidelines were being introduced. Whereas, in the past, a seven-day circuit of visitor sites, largely confined to the inner islands, had been the norm, in the future it would become the exception. Instead of returning again and again to the same limited number of sites, the tourist vessels would have to range further afield, calling at sites so far infrequently visited.

“The biggest challenge now” Tommy said “is the rapid increase in the number of people coming to Galapagos for reasons other than a wildlife cruise. Whether they are here for two days to cross it off a list of must-see sites, or simply to sit in the sun, their number and their activity is much harder to control.” He added that the risk of invasive species remains the biggest threat. The Galapagos islands now have 748 species of introduced plants, outnumbering that approximately 500 species of native plant. “However tough your quarantine measures, there is always a danger.”

As Tommy continued his lecture that evening I couldn’t help thinking about those amazing giant tortoises, which so attracted Darwin’s interest when he visited the Galapagos 175 years ago. How ironic, how banal, it would be, I thought, if the rampant spread of blackberry bushes (now considered to be one of the most serious threats as far as invasive species are concerned) finally caused the demise of the giant tortoise! Clearing the invasive plants is one of the Galapagos Conservation Trust’s most important projects. And it wasn’t just a matter of ripping the offending plants out. “Most invasive plant species” explains Toni Darton, the chief executive of the trust, “come via people’s gardens. That’s why we are supporting a project to encourage residents to swap their introduced choices for native Galapagos species.”

If I am lucky enough to make a third visit to the Galapagos before I am borne away on the back of a giant sea-turtle I hope to be able to report more good news. The Galapagos, it seems to me, is a kind of test case for managing other vulnerable sites of natural beauty, though few perhaps will rival the Enchanted Isles in terms of their scientific, natural and environmental interest.

I know that many people have been dismayed that Unesco has recently removed the Galapagos Islands from the “most threatened” list of World Heritage sites (in 2007, Unesco mentioned tourism as one of the main threats to the Galapagos ecosystem); but, looked at another way, this is really good news, not bad. It means that solid progress has been made, and that more progress can be expected in the future. Tourism will be an inevitable part of the Galapagos’s future but, I hope, it can evolve to a point beyond where we are now, and each visitor can nurture the land they love without destroying it.

The lush green Amazon is the world’s largest river basin that contains the most bountiful rain-forest on the planet. Including macaws, toucans, tyrant flycatchers, capybaras, tapir, sloths, squirrel monkeys, red howler monkeys, jaguars, caimans, anacondas, tarantulas, leaf-cutter ants, scarlet ibis and black skimmers, the Amazon rain-forest is home to a bewildering array of wildlife.

Don’t think the list gets over here, Amazon is such a large rain-forest and has such profusion of wildlife that it might get difficult for you to explore it and if you’re able to then there is a possibility that you won’t see the same sights twice. I’ll suggest you to take your camera along so that you are able to capture the cherishing moments.

Amazon rainforest is the world’s most beautiful and unspoiled places. It is dense, rich, tropical and brimming with life. It is host to some of the most remarkable and fascinating wildlife on earth. With about thousand species of fish and birds including hundreds of hummingbirds, about sixty reptile species one can easily make out the astounding biodiversity of the place.

Wouldn’t you call Nick Gordon fortunate enough to spend ten years of his life get close encounters with the abundant nature of Amazon rainforest? He came up with the astonishing series of magical images. ‘A photographer’s incredible journey’ will be published next month by Evans Mitchell Books at £25. Here, in the picture gallery below I’m putting few pictures of the exciting species and I’m sure these will help you have the idea of Amazon’s biological richness.

1) possesses a new idea to create and/or improve sustainability initiatives,

2) has a positive impact,

3) takes a unique approach,

4) contributes to progress in sustainable tourism, and

5) provides useful information and examples from which others can learn.

So far, the organization has selected five finalists for the Individual Category—such as Santiago Dunn, Executive President of Ecoventura—and eleven in the Organization Category—including Basecamp Explorer, Intrepid Travel, and Playa Viva. To check out the nominees’ projects, visit the TIES’ Your Travel Choice Blog. Supporters as well as project stakeholders and members are encouraged to comment on the finalists until Monday, August 23, and comments may sway the final decision. The two winners (one individual, one organization) will be announced during the closing ceremony of the Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference on September 10. See who stands out the most when it comes to sustainability.

An environmental audit into palm oil producer PT SMART, paid for by the company, has cleared the company of the destruction of rainforests and orangutan habitats in Indonesia as alleged by a Greenpeace report.

The audit, however, found that a fraction of the company’s plantation areas were located on peatlands — a violation of the law and the company’s own best practices.

Launched Tuesday, the audit report showed that 11 concession areas located in Central and West Kalimantan controlled by the company were degraded land and no longer primary forests prior to the conversion of the areas into palm oil plantations.

The audit was carried out between May and June by the Control Union Certification and BSI Group. Two forestry conservation experts from the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Bambang Hero Saharjo and Yanto Santosa, contributed to the audit. Both audit agencies were commissioned by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), but paid for by SMART.

“The Greenpeace claims are either exaggerated or wrong,” SMART president director Daud Dharsono said at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta.

Daud said all the concession areas in Central and West Kalimantan were affected by earlier activities such as logging and slashing and burning by other parties, before the company won government permits for the areas.

The audit report says SMART had completed all required land development permits, including timber utilization permits (IPK) and the environmental impact assessments (Amdal) before obtaining concessions for five areas in West Kalimantan.

In the case of areas in Central Kalimantan, Daud admitted that the Amdals from the government were issued only after land clearing had been carried out. “Moving forward, the company will ensure that an Amdal will be obtained before land clearing,” Daud said.

He also acknowledged another audit finding, which said that 1.8 percent of plantations areas controlled by the company in Central and West Kalimantan were located on peatlands.

“That was unintentional. We didn’t know about the more-than-3-meter-deep peatlands in our concession areas when we conducted a soil survey before clearing the land,” Daud said, adding that the company would restore the areas back to peatland.

Market analysts said the environmental audit would challenge Greenpeace’s findings on the company’s operations, and thus influence palm oil buyers such as Nestle SA — the world’s largest nutrition and food company, Unilever — the world’s second-largest consumer goods company, and Spanish energy company Abengoa SA to resume their contracts with SMART.

All three companies stopped buying palm oil from SMART after launching a verification report into another report by Greenpeace, which stated that the company was contributing to climate change and destroying the habitat of orangutans and Sumatran tigers.

Unilever said Tuesday the company would consult with the RSPO on the environmental audit prior to making any final decision on whether to resume buying palm oil from SMART.

Responding to the audit, Greenpeace said it confirmed the group’s findings that SMART had been clearing forests and peatlands and operating without necessary permits.

“The SMART spin is a poor attempt at brand protection that does nothing to challenge Greenpeace findings. We’ve repeatedly shown that SMART says one thing and does another,” Greenpeace Southeast Asia forest team leader Bustar Maitar said.

This week climbers from the environmental group scaled the Benelux headquarters of the Korean multinational Samsung, sticking the message “Samsung = Broken Promises” in giant letters onto the front of the building.

In June 2004, Samsung was the first company to publicly commit to eliminate PVC – a well-established cause of occupational cancers – and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from new models of all its products.

In 2006 Samsung committed to phasing out BFRs from its products by the start of 2010 and in 2007 it committed to a deadline of end 2010 for the phase out of PVC. Both moves saw the company gain points and position on Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics.

Greenpeace says Samsung is now “betraying its customers trust” in only admitted weeks before it was due to deliver new greener products that it would fail and break its promise. The latest version of the Guide penalises Samsung for this delay. Unless the company takes urgent action to meet its commitments, says Greenpeace, it will suffer a further penalty in the next edition – the first company ever to do so.

“Samsung’s promises are proving to be as thin as its TVs, as it loses face and ground to competitors such as Apple, HP, Nokia and Sony Ericsson who have long delivered products free of these hazardous substances, proving that this can be done,” said Greenpeace International Electronics campaigner Iza Kruszewska.

“If Samsung is serious about its green intentions, it needs to play catch up with competitors like Nokia and Sony Ericsson and Apple. People are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental impact of what they buy; Samsung needs to understand, what is good for human health, and for the environment is also good for the company’s bottom line.”

A report last month from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that unless urgent action is taken, the e-waste crisis is set to worsen dramatically in developing countries.

Union and safety campaigners this year warned a cancer cluster is affecting young workers exposed to toxic chemicals at Samsung in Korea. A petition calling for Samsung to accept responsibility, compensate victims and remedy the health and safety problems is being circulated worldwide.

Supporters for the Health And Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry (SHARPs), the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU), Asian Network for the Rights Of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV) and International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT) say: “Samsung denies all responsibility, and the Korean government has taken its side by denying compensation and even arresting and detaining the victims’ lawyer!”

In addition to the demands for justice for cancer victims and improvements in safety standards, the campaigners say Samsung Electronics “must disclose to the workers and the public the truth about the hazards of working in the semiconductor industry” and “must stop suppressing workers in their struggles for a safe and fair workplace.”

Sign the SHARPs petition urging Samsung to act on occupational cancer risks. Global Unions cancer campaign.

An important element has been public statements from respected third-party advocates for nuclear, many of whom were previously either strongly opposed or seen as agnostic. Some of these come from the environmental movement, notably Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, but the support of James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Theory of the Earth as a self-regulating organism, has been particularly important.

There has been a clear shift of public opinion in favour of nuclear energy in key countries, with public consent now unlikely to be withheld from new reactor plans in many countries of the world. Public opposition to nuclear, however, remains an important issue in some European countries, notably in Germany, but the new government there and reversal of nuclear phase-out policies in Sweden and Belgium indicate that things are generally improving. The industry has recognised that securing public buy-in is critical and conditional upon in-depth dialogue. It accepts that concerns over safety, waste and non-proliferation will continue to impose a strict regulatory regime on the industry and that this is necessary, despite it costing a great deal of valuable time and money.

One possible barrier to renewed industry growth is the 20-year mummification of the industry’s supply sector. However, this is changing, with membership of the UK Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) booming as companies realise that there will be many new opportunities in this sector as the UK returns to building reactors. Another possible negative, namely the need to ensure a strict world non-proliferation regime, has been reinforced by the North Korean and Iranian cases, to which endless column inches and analyses have been devoted.  On the other hand, three highly important factors have moved very strongly in the industry’s favour: the industry’s own operating performance, the greenhouse gas emissions debate and concerns over energy security of supply.

The 435 reactors around the world generate electricity very cheaply and earns significant profits for their owners, irrespective of the power market, whether it is liberalised or regulated. The challenge for the industry is to cut the capital investment costs of new reactors to enable many new reactor projects to go forward. Concerns over climate change and the perceived need to moderate greenhouse gas emissions has worked strongly in the industry’s favour and, at the very least, have opened an opportunity for the industry as a viable mitigation technology. The argument for more nuclear power as a means of securing additional energy security of supply has also become increasingly important, particularly in those countries who perceive themselves as becoming increasingly reliant on supplies from geopolitically unstable or otherwise unattractive countries. It is important to recall that this was the main argument that prompted both France and Japan, now numbers two and three in world nuclear generation, to go down this path in the 1970s in the aftermath of two “oil shocks”.

Proof of whether the mooted nuclear renaissance is merely “industry hype” as some commentators suggest or reality will come over the next decade. Before many new countries can take on the challenge of running large nuclear reactors, the established players need to start building reactors again, and now is as good a time as any.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The violent threats are not what bother Michael Mann the most. He's used to them.

Instead, it's the fact that his life's work — the effort to stop global warming — has been under siege since last fall. That's when Mann suddenly found himself in the middle of the so-called "climategate" scandal, in which more than 1,000 e-mails among top climate scientists — including Mann — were obtained illegally by hackers and published on the Internet.

The e-mails showed some of the scientists sharing doubts about just how fast the Earth's temperature is rising, questioning the work of other researchers and refusing to share data with the public. Critics, including Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., have seized on the e-mails as proof that Mann and his colleagues deliberately exaggerated the scientific case behind global warming.

In a rare extended interview, Mann acknowledges "minor" errors but says he has been bewildered by the criticism — including a deluge of correspondence sent to his Pennsylvania State University office that, he says, occasionally has turned ugly.

"I've developed a thick skin," Mann says. "Frankly, I'm more worried that these people are succeeding in creating doubt in the minds of the public, when there really shouldn't be any."

MORE: Climate research e-mail controversy simmers CLIMATE DEBATE: Religious groups get involved CHICKEN MANURE: Could it help curb climate change?

Indeed, the controversy has contributed to a fundamental shift in efforts to stop global warming, forcing environmentalists to scale down long-held ambitions and try to win back an increasingly skeptical American public. Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, says recent events may be causing "the death of the global warming movement as we know it."

Others don't go quite that far, but there have been setbacks:

• Citing doubts raised by the "climategate" e-mails, state governments in Texas, Virginia and Alabama filed legal challenges last month to stop the federal government from regulating carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. The challenges could force the Obama administration to modify or abandon its plans to regulate carbon emissions from factories and vehicles.

• Senate Democrats including John Kerry of Massachusetts have set aside House legislation that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from factories and other businesses nationwide. They are pursuing a new bill that may instead focus on utility companies, Kerry says.

• After more than a decade of fruitless efforts to negotiate a binding global treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions, culminating in last December's summit in Copenhagen, the USA may now pursue a more narrow strategy, State Department climate change envoy Todd Stern said last month. He said future talks might be limited to a smaller group of major polluters such as the USA and China — and leave out small countries that blocked a deal at Copenhagen, such as Sudan.

• The United Nations announced Wednesday that it would bring in an outside panel of scientists to help review an occasional study put together by a U.N. body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The study was regarded as the gold standard of climate science until several errors came to light this year.

…Our new data center will be receiving our power through PacifiCorp, which like most utilities has a diverse generation portfolio including hyrdo, geothermal, wind and coal… When it comes online in early 2011, the new Facebook data center will also be one of the most energy efficient in the world, featuring an innovative cooling system created for the unique climate characteristics in Prineville, Oregon.”