Burren Perfumery
Ecotourism and the Burren
Ecotourism means different things to different people; I think of it as basically tourism with a conscience. Widespread tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon and I believe that until very recently (in this country at least) there was little, if any, awareness that the mere presence of tourists in an environment could damage or destroy the very thing that they were coming to experience.
Tourists need to be transported to and from their destinations; fed and watered along the way; housed and pampered at night. So, for example, in wild, empty, rainy Connemara big hotels were built so that visitors could enjoy the play of light and shadow across the mountains from behind the double-glazed windows (and those on the mountains in the rain could enjoy looking at the big concrete hotels). On the Aran Islands, where fresh water supplies were a problem when the islands were just small fishing and farming communities, now the yearly influx of visitors is straining water reserves to breaking point.
However, tourism has a place. It is a major part of Ireland’s economy and this is especially true west of the Shannon where much of the land is agriculturally marginal. Small farms are disappearing as the minimal viable size of farms increases; secondary and tertiary industry is concentrated around cities. In the absence of tourism there would be far fewer jobs in rural areas and an increasing likelihood that many small villages and communities would disappear. Without those communities, the living human element that enriches a region, the music, the songs, the conversations and quiet humour, all that would be gone.
Ecotourism embodies concepts such as protecting the environment in which it occurs; minimizing the environmental impact of tourism; sharing the economic benefits with the local communities; and promoting understanding of the environment and our relationship to it. From another standpoint it is an oxymoron: if you really like your nature unspoilt: stay away from it. But I think as humans, we are particularly bad at being content where we are. We are drawn to mountain and ocean, to the waters and the wild as Yeats put it. As more of us live in cities and urban environments, spending much of our lives removed from the pleasure of walking on grass or sand, or beneath trees, or in the dark, it is simply impractical to think that tourism is going to diminish or cease. Instead, as tourists, we need to take personal responsibility for our traveling, and as tourism-related businesses (like the Perfumery) we need to operate with a conscience, and not solely with our eyes on the bottom line.
It is my belief that we must accept tourism (as it is inevitable) and see it as a position on a scale that has zero-impact tourism at one end and totally-irresponsible tourism at the other. Various businesses and activities exist at different positions on that scale and I picture ecotourism as a pressure to move towards the good end. We may not get all the way there, or move as quickly as we’d like in the right direction, but along the way we continue to create jobs in a rural area and we have the possibility of educating our visitors by example, as we try to improve.
My colleague Nic Slocum of Whale Watch West Cork puts it very well:
We all have to ask ourselves "how can we make a difference". Be it in climate change or in other environmentally sound activities. In reality it is very difficult to make a serious difference at the individual level. We should all continue however. BUT it is my personal view that we make the greatest difference by spreading the word to other receptive individuals who then go on to spread the word to 2 more and so on. Education is in my view, the key. In our business we strive to be carbon neutral and fail. We cannot get away from the fact that we burn 20,000 euro worth of diesel a season. However, by telling our customers that we fund the planting of trees, we are working to get biodiesel adopted in the Irish marine industry, we have special engines that consume half the normal amount of fuel, that our research show a 2 degree rise in coastal water temperatures during the last 5 years over the previous 5, that we are facing the greatest environmental threat to mankind in climate change that will make Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and deforestation look like a girl guides picnic... if we don’t do something about it...we create awareness in our already sensitised customer base.
What are we doing as a business? Not much. Not doing much is, I think, one of the best things a business can do these days. The traditional business battle anthem is that more is better, growth is good. Why? To enrich the owners and share-holders mainly. Okay, it is not quite as simple as that: growth creates employment, and the generated wealth (theoretically at least!) gradually distributes itself to improve the living conditions of everyone. However we think that it might be time to start asking ourselves (as business owners): what is enough? We would like our business to be able to sustain it’s employment all year around (tricky in tourism), to pay its way without borrowing money to expand, and naturally to provide an income for us. But we don't need to make millions. I feel that there is little evidence today that bigger is actually better. There are many environmental projects that we would like to start immediately to make the Perfumery ’greener’. But if this means get a big loan from the bank, paying interest on the loan, and being under pressure to expand our business in order to cover the investment – is that a good thing? If we were to undertake a huge advertising campaign and magically double the number of visitors in the Burren – would that be good for the region?
We live within complex systems; socially, economically and environmentally. These systems are intrinsically difficult to understand and, as we are seeing all too clearly with global warming, there are a myriad of factors that interplay in ways we are only just beginning to understand, over timescales that humans are terribly bad at appreciating, and with a subtlety that makes it very hard to predict the outcome of even well intentioned interference.
At the Perfumery, we are trying to do what we can, as we can. With very little investment, we have managed to cut our energy consumption by a third. Installing energy efficient lighting made a surprisingly large difference. We bought a great gadget that allows one to measure the running cost of electrical devices, and this has been an eye opener too. We’ve installed a water metre on our water supply (we pump our own water) and that is allowing us to track usage and reduce our consumption. The next project we plan is to install dry, composting toilets for our visitors, something we believe will dramatically reduce the amount of water we contaminate in sewage treatment.
For me what has been most interesting is the changes that result from just being actively aware of these issues. When you measure your water usage, it makes you think before flushing the toilet. You stop running taps without the plug in. We bring baskets when we go shopping and re-use our egg boxes. Simple things. Cardboard from the business is shredded for the compost heaps. Olive oil barrels get a new life as water butts for the garden.
It would be nice to tear down the old, cold, drafty buildings and build something ultra-energy efficient. But there is an environmental impact to that re-build, the old material has to go somewhere – would the energy saved outweigh these costs? I don’t know, but until I am better informed I think we will move slowly and fix all that is easily fixable first. We are learning as we go. This year I’ve read three books about sewage treatment (something I really could not have foreseen myself doing!) and now know more about urine and excrement that I ever wished to. Being better informed makes us aware, and I hope, will help us, as a business, to make better decisions with respect to our social, environment and economic responsibilities.
I don’t think, at the present time at least, it is possible to run a business without having some negative impact, no more than it is possible for humans to live on this planet without consuming its resources and impacting its other denizens. However I do think it is possible for us to begin to move towards the good end of the scale, and it is my hope, that as our awareness grows and we all make more informed and responsible choices, that our progress towards that end might accelerate.
Our friend and colleague Jim Kelly at TourClare is working to bring together a network of gardens, attractions and travel sites in Ireland who are promoting Irish Ecotourism. We are pleased to be part of this and strongly support his efforts. You can find more information by going to Irish Nature Tours.
Ralph Doyle
