If somebody is going to introduce Nuban tribes people to the benefits of Rohan's Dynamic Moisture Control, we should perhaps be grateful that the emissaries supplied by Responsible Travel are likely to be ever so ethical, long accustomed to weighing up the arguments for and against their foreign trips before they decide to go on them anyway.
Since Aung San Suu Kyi declared, in 1996, that to visit Myanmar under the junta was to condone its regime, informed tourists have hardly been able to avoid wondering if the benefits of their own presence, complete with a copy of Ian McEwan's Saturday and lots of money, can really compensate for endorsing tyrants, in Myanmar or anywhere else. For the confused, Lonely Planet's guide to Myanmar still offers a summary of this "debate," along with the conclusion that tourists do the oppressed a favor, by offering "outside contact."
Inevitably, the success of this outreach work is hard to evaluate. Is it even necessary? In North Korea, where Amnesty International reports continued "systematic violations of human rights," a tour operator tells customers: "Far from being downtrodden and disconsolate, you will be welcomed by our guide amongst the merry faces untroubled by worries of money and crime."
Equally, should we introduce Western values to the citizens of Belarus and risk damaging what another operator depicts as perfectly preserved Soviet charm? "If you are interested in experiencing what is one of the last remaining havens of the "good old days" when the Iron Curtain separated Europe into two camps, then Belarus can provide it in spades."
For the truly concerned traveler, interested in experiencing authentic communism, dictatorship or abject poverty, it's clearly far better to emulate a visitor getting close to a turtle in the Galapagos Islands: respectfully approaching the different form of life without upsetting nature's delicate balance in any way. As Krishna Pujari, who first encouraged poorists to view the Mumbai slums, once put it: "We want to show tourists the reality of Dharavi and change any negative ideas they might have about this slum. We respect the privacy of the residents of Dharavi and ensure that the tour does not disturb them in any way."
With human rights out of the way, resourceful tourists are now proving that ecological objections, which had not even surfaced in 1996, are equally unlikely to threaten their right to travel now. Just as arguments about cruel regimes encouraged some tourists to portray themselves as liberators in shorts, complaints about carbon emissions have merely prompted a new generation to reinvent themselves as the most self-righteous trippers in history.
"Does anyone have any ideas about the best way to dispose of recyclables/other rubbish over there?" queries a contributor to Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree travel forum, anxious about garbage arrangements in Dharamsala. Posting on another forum, a traveler offers tips for saving plastic: "When flying, bring an empty plastic bottle."
So perhaps that famous Sierra Leonean optimism is well placed. So long as greener travelers do not boycott its shoddy recycling system, there is no reason why the white sands beyond Freetown should not, as predicted, soon be darkened by tides of ethical sunbathers. Assuming, of course, the beaches can survive the inundation expected from climate change. But even then, all is not lost. As any ethical tour operator can tell you, these days tsunamis and melting icecaps are seen not so much as unalleviated catastrophes as sustainable holidays you haven't yet taken.
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