At the sev­en­ti­eth ses­sion of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly, it is announced that 2017 should be the “year of sus­tain­able tourism” (sus­tain­able tourism). Dur­ing this year, the World Tourism Orga­ni­za­tion (UNTWO) and the gov­ern­ments of the coun­tries should estab­lish coop­er­a­tion. The pri­or­i­ty is a tourism sys­tem that con­tributes to the con­ser­va­tion of the ecosys­tem, cul­tur­al her­itage and gen­der equal­i­ty.

To put it sim­ply, the coun­try, accord­ing to the wish­es of the UN, should devel­op the regions — at least their pub­lic trans­port and hotel busi­ness. Small towns and rur­al areas should become attrac­tive for tourists, local res­i­dents should get jobs, and, as the finale of the fairy tale, inequal­i­ty between regions of one coun­try should dis­ap­pear and pover­ty should decrease.

The sus­tain­able devel­op­ment trend also exists in fash­ion. The term “sus­tain­able fash­ion” refers to projects with an eth­i­cal approach to the pro­duc­tion of things. Stel­la McCart­ney makes col­lec­tions from ocean debris. Since 2013, H&M has been releas­ing the Con­scious line with cloth­ing made from recy­cled mate­ri­als. Mirosla­va Duma launch­es the Fash­ion Tech Lab foun­da­tion, which sup­ports eco-projects: Orange Fiber, which pro­duces fab­ric from orange peel, and Dia­mond Foundry, lab-grown dia­monds. The direc­tion of “sus­tain­able” is in archi­tec­ture, bank­ing and in the restau­rant busi­ness.

Air and trav­el com­pa­nies are tak­ing the first steps. The Amer­i­can low-cost air­line Jet­Blue made one of the largest bio­fu­el orders in the his­to­ry of avi­a­tion: 125 mil­lion liters of a mix­ture of veg­etable oils is enough to oper­ate in the same mode for 10 years, only reduc­ing harm­ful emis­sions. Tour oper­a­tor Intre­pid offers more than a thou­sand group eco­tours. And the exhaust gas­es of the plane (the one on which you went on an eco­tour) and the spent elec­tric­i­ty (the one that helped you, for exam­ple, charge your phone and dry your hair in a hotel) the com­pa­ny com­pen­sates with its projects in the field of alter­na­tive ener­gy sources (includ­ed in the tour price). Lux­u­ry tour oper­a­tor Aber­crom­bie & Kent offers trips to geot­her­mal pow­er plants: you can, for exam­ple, go to Ice­land’s Hell­ishadey, the world’s largest geo­elec­tric pow­er plant, which gen­er­ates ener­gy from under­ground sources.

Only hotels lag behind in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. A “green” hotel today is any hotel in which tow­els are not changed for five days, because the com­pa­ny cares about the envi­ron­ment. At the same time, there will def­i­nite­ly be a cou­ple of bot­tles of water in the room — of course, made of non-degrad­able plas­tic.

A good exam­ple of the devel­op­ment of unat­trac­tive regions for tourists is the Ger­man indus­tri­al town of Völk­lin­gen. The local met­al­lur­gi­cal plant was not just closed, but turned into a giant indus­tri­al muse­um. Now the city receives 300 thou­sand tourists a year.

From the out­side, the goal of sus­tain­able, or con­scious, tourism is clear. The envi­ron­ment is pol­lut­ed — let’s try to make it clean­er. There is a huge tourist flow in Euro­pean cap­i­tals — let’s lure tourists to the regions and give locals jobs. The mar­ket has been cap­tured by inter­na­tion­al hotel chains — let’s help local busi­ness­es. But what does all this mean for the tourists them­selves? How to change the pro­gram of your tour so that the vaca­tion turns into a “con­scious jour­ney”?

“The rules are sim­ple: do not buy fakes and things that are pro­hib­it­ed in the coun­try, pay atten­tion to what is pro­duced in the region, try local cui­sine and look for guides in local orga­ni­za­tions, not in inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. Use pub­lic trans­port and rent a bike for short dis­tances. It is also impor­tant that by help­ing the region, you expand your hori­zons. Com­pare: a tem­plate pho­to of a sun­set on the palm of your hand or raft­ing on the Mekong Riv­er full of impres­sions? A guide from a trav­el agency who shuf­fles facts, or thoughts under the cen­turies-old walls of Angkor?

The main thing in con­scious tourism is to choose regions instead of hack­neyed cap­i­tals, use pub­lic trans­port and eat local prod­ucts. Trekking, hik­ing, glamp­ing and reste­val, gas­tro­nom­ic and wine tours — all this fits into the cat­e­go­ry of sus­tain­able tourism. In addi­tion, we have com­piled a guide to activ­i­ties that can be prac­ticed wher­ev­er you are, sup­port­ing the trend towards con­scious tourism.

“Bird­watch­ing can be of inter­est to peo­ple who, in prin­ci­ple, love nature. Among bird­watch­ers, of course, there are peo­ple who are far from biol­o­gy and zool­o­gy: screen­writ­ers, engi­neers, mil­i­tary, psy­chol­o­gists, pro­gram­mers, econ­o­mists, and so on. Some peo­ple like to watch the behav­ior of birds in their feed­ers. Oth­ers want to see as many species of birds as pos­si­ble (a kind of col­lect­ing). Bird­watch­ing has become a mass sport in Europe and Amer­i­ca. Peo­ple spend mon­ey, trav­el to find and see new bird species.”

Where to go to watch the birds? Just enough to get out of the city. Already in the Moscow region there will be lap­wings, preda­to­ry kestrels and dozens of oth­er bird species. Then bird­watch­ing can be prac­ticed wher­ev­er you go. In Slo­va­kia, expe­ri­enced bird­watch­ers look at wall climbers, in the French Camar­gue — at flamin­gos, puffins are con­sid­ered to be the trea­sure of Ice­land and the Faroe Islands, and the Ural attracts ama­teur ornithol­o­gists with the steppe eagle and the demoi­selle crane. You can, like the writer Jonathan Franzen, even go to Antarc­ti­ca to look at the emper­or pen­guin and anoth­er 30 species of birds. The most excit­ing thing in such an activ­i­ty is to record what you see. Today, sci­en­tists know more than 10 thou­sand species of birds: the num­ber of birds in the field diary is a kind of indi­ca­tor of knowl­edge of wildlife.

Agri­tourism is the very help of tourists to rur­al res­i­dents, which is men­tioned in the con­cept of sus­tain­able tourism. Imag­ine that instead of a vaca­tion at sea, for exam­ple, you go to work in an olive grove near Lake Gar­da in Italy or in a vine­yard in France for three weeks.

From the first day you delve into the cul­ture of anoth­er coun­try: live accord­ing to the regime of the house that accept­ed you, work with local res­i­dents, dine with them at the same table, try the local cui­sine. The degree of involve­ment in the pro­duc­tion process must be agreed with the own­er in advance. You can just live in an Ital­ian vil­lage by rent­ing a guest house from the own­er, or you can work five or six hours a day (for this you will be pro­vid­ed with a bed and food for free). On Airbnb, there are fun­ny options — for exam­ple, a house in Tus­cany, where you can live for two euros a day on one con­di­tion: feed the chick­ens every day.

The option of rur­al tourism should be con­sid­ered in the case of coun­tries that are expen­sive to live in — for exam­ple, Scan­di­navia. Liv­ing in a fish­ing lodge in a Nor­we­gian or Swedish vil­lage for a week is cheap­er than rent­ing a camp­site.