WE NEVER thought that we’ll ever experience something like this in our lifetime. A worldwide pandemic that is now said, will crush global economy to a down low. Here in our city, we’re hearing and feeling the crunch already. So, there’s no other way but to heal, rise, recover and become more resilient for the future.
One thing that we’ve noticed during these quarantine days is that nature is also healing itself. As an authorized person outside of residence (APOR), I was able to see this myself, and was delighted to see the fully blossomed flowers and green lush vegetation in all our parks like we’ve never seen before! I can’t help but take photos and share it to the world via social media. It has become one of my popular posts with more than two thousand shares. Amidst the difficulties and burden that this pandemic brought, people saw something beautiful and something to look forward to. After the many positive reactions of my posts, what came to mind is the challenge in keeping it that way.
We’ve had many discussions with CEPMO Asstistan Head lawyer Rhenan Diwas on this matter, and we both agreed that we have to have different and new approaches in parks management. While there was already the proposal to impose environmental fees on tourists, we further discussed other possibilities, and many suggestions came by. These include having a scheduled closure of parks for maintenance, regulated entry of visitors in public parks considering their capacity, rehabilitation of parks focusing on regreening and manicured landscapes, reorganizing ambulant vendors and consignees, deputizing park rangers, and even enlisting in-house The Rose Garden at Burnham Park taken April 22, 2020 resident tour guides within the facility. Basically, we’re discussing some good foundation for responsible and sustainable tourism within the functions of parks management.
In a bigger picture, the entire city, including all who have interests in tourism, will need a lot of rethinking on how to start introducing innovations towards institutionalizing practices advocating and promoting responsible and sustainable tourism. This pandemic gave us a lot of lessons to learn from and we can start from there. There is an upside after all, which we can turn into opportunities.
And one such opportunity is the birth of this column that I’m calling RESTOR, a deconstructed acronym for “responsible and sustainable tourism." It was perhaps a providential coincidence that the acronym sounds like “restore” when read. This column aims to talk about stories, experiences, and lessons that will provide insights in restoring the past glory, highlighting the current beauty, and building the best possible future of the city that we love, by advocating responsible and sustainable tourism.