An environmental disaster of yet unknown proportions is unfolding in the Gulf of Athens, known as the Saronic Gulf, following the peculiarly rapid sinking under calm seas, of an ageing, small oil tanker carrying 2,200 tons of fuel oil and 370 metric tons of marine gas oil, near the island of Salamis, on the early hours of October 11th, 2017. Decades of haphazard, boom and bust industrial development and lack of planning has turned a great part of the northern Saronic Gulf into a strange and conflicting mix of heavy industries, refineries shipyards, summer houses, restaurants, beaches, marinas, archaeological sites, and sea-farms. In the past decade, during a huge financial and social crisis, there is an effort supported by powerful private developers to relaunch the area as the Athens Riviera, a new destination with mega-projects including the construction of a coastal casino-leisure-business complex in the sprawling site of Athens Hellinikon, a...

Call it Climatexit? Perhaps, but there is no need to despair at President Trump's 'final decision' to 'withdraw' from the Paris Treaty. For a democracy, it may be scary if one is really able (there are doubts) to take such a decision without having to get approval from Congress. But looking at the bright side, this dev...

 Bashing villains (soft, anonymous, targets not, say, a powerful hotel developer!), real and perceived (all-inclusives, orphanages, slum tourism, voluntourism) is becoming a bit of a tradition these days. A UK-based responsible OTA, a minor player compared to mainstream OTA giants yet a big one on the adjectival tourism scene, has abruptly ann...

The recent passenger-removal-due-to-overbooking incident from a flight operated by a major airline shed light on a common (50,000 annual cases in the US alone) but relatively unknown, dubious commercial practice, and also revealed or confirmed some interesting facts: - the power of direct-democratic, citizens journalism, in the form of ma...

In early versions of Sid Meier's classic strategy game 'Civilisation', the discovery of gunpowder made Walls obsolete. It was far more gradual in reality, but Walls did eventually become obsolete as defensive structures and those that escaped destruction to allow for city expansion during the industrial revolution were later reborn as tourism attra...

Predicting the impact of Donald Trump's win is even more tricky than was predicting the outcome of this extremely tight contest. It depends on whether the new administration really attempts to implement any of Trump's more controversial, and sometimes highly offensive to ethnic groups, campaign promises, which would result in major changes in US po...

Beautiful short film by Andreas Siadimas celebrating local environmental knowledge and genuine hospitality in Crete, Greece.

It was great discussing responsible travel prospects in Greece, Estonia, Malaysia and the United States in a live hangout hosted by Ron Mader and with the participation of Ecoclub Members Natali Dologlou, Aivar Ruukel, Sudipta Kiran Sarkar and Chris Milnes. The event was part of Planeta.com Responsible Tourism Week 2016    

This year there has been a steady stream of self-congratulatory announcements of successes from the bloody "war on poaching" undertaken by security services led by merciful mercenaries, drone fleets etc. But conservation should not be inhumane or trample on human rights. Nor should it be used as a geopolitical pretext to put troops on the ground where there are not enough drugs or religious fanatics. As long as there is demand for ivory and rhino horn and as long as possession of such is legal there is no chance of stopping this trade. Some therefore propose to focus on demand. Tackling demand can involve education and peer pressure but it is very likely that the affluent and powerful buyers of such "works of art" are not so sensitive. Perhaps a global campaign to pressure key and powerful governments to make holding ivory (all ivory, not just "illegal") and rhino horn pieces...

Today another mega-event circus is about to open in Brazil at a USD 11bn cost (mostly at the benefit of monopolies and oligarchs) but there are clear signs that the organisers have forgot about the bread bit of the old appeasement equation ("panem et circenses" in Latin): Rio airport workers are on strike, there are numerous planned marches while 200,000 troops are mobilising across Brazil to prevent(?) rioting. Preparations have also involved the displacement (forced or induced eviction) of many thousands of Brazil's homeless. A good article documenting the injustice and inequality reproduced by the preparations for this mega-event in Brazil is at http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/10/race-class-and-the-world-cup-in-brazil/   There are also big worries about the Qatar World Cup, and a campaign to re-run "the vote" due to serious worker rights abuses. A people's sport has been slowly hi-jacked by a powerful and allegedly corrupt international monopoly and turned into a commercial, consumerist spectacle. Some telling numbers:...