Education and Ecotourism

Girls in Shangri-La
© Sandy Chen-Kluth/TNC

Education for Sustainability
The Nature Conservancy recognizes that environmental education is an important component of working closely with local communities to achieve sustainable conservation results. In response, the Conservancy launched a new program called Education for Sustainability which tests approaches to teaching and learning that integrate conservation goals, social justice, and appropriate development and participation in a vision and mission for personal and social change.

In 2003, The Conservancy implemented the Student Earth Helpers training course at five primary schools in Lashihai and Meili. We held four community exhibitions on conservation showcasing students’ photographs and stories. In addition, we conducted seven teacher training courses in Lashihai and Meili.

Bringing in the RARE Pride Campaign
In partnership with the Rare, the Conservancy brought the “Promoting Protection through Pride” campaign to China. To build community support for conservation, the Pride campaign uses an endemic species as a symbol of local or national pride to teach about conservation. Based on stakeholder meetings and resource questionnaires, the project team chose the Yunnan golden monkey as the flagship species for the campaign in the Conservancy’s Laojun Mountain project area. The Pride campaigns' messages are widely broadcast through an intensive series of activities including: posters, billboards, bumper stickers, puppet shows, popular songs, music videos, and contests.
Read A Day in the Life on the RARE Pride Campaign Coordinator: Angela Cun

Promoting Green Tourism
Tourism is both an environmental threat and an economic opportunity, with the potential to provide desperately needed income to northwest Yunnan. The Conservancy is working with local communities, government agencies, and tourism enterprises to develop strategies for “green” tourism which will limit the footprint of mass tourism while generating income for local people. In addition to integrating tourism development and management at our five action sites, we assisted with regional marketing efforts to promote ecotourism opportunities.

Northwest Yunnan on the Web
A year after the Conservancy developed and launched the English version of www.northwestyunnan.com, the Chinese version went live in 2003. The website is designed to facilitate communications and marketing between ecotourism service providers and clients. The Conservancy is currently helping local government agencies with site selection and design of the Northwest Yunnan Visitor Center, a resource center for northwest Yunnan’s ecotourism industry. It will serve as an education and exhibition center to disseminate information, facilitate ecotourism services, raise public awareness of ecotourism and conservation activities, and showcase conservation efforts.