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Bacolod City, Philippines Friday, November 23, 2012
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Sustainable tourism
dev’t pushed

BY CHRYSEE SAMILLANO

The president of the Society for Sustainable Tourism and Development Inc., is pushing for a sustainable tourism development for Negros to make it one of the major destinations in the country.

Susan Santos de Cardenas yesterday said they hope to educate the people about sustainable development with focus on tourism because they want to develop Negros and make it stand out since it apparently has been forgotten as a major destination in the Philippines.

De Cardenas, a Negrense, is one of the resource speakers at the 2-day Negros Occidental environment and sustainable tourism forum organized by the SSTDI that started yesterday.

She said the problem is that there is no a specific product for Negros and it cannot compete with other provinces like Ilocos in terms of cultural tourism.

De Cardenas said her advocacy in Negros, which can also include Oriental, should be a sustainable agri-tourism. They want to prepare and train the stakeholders from the biggest down to the smallest for a sustainable tourism development using local resources, she said.

She suggested that Negros should focus on agri-tourism like providing farm tours and showcase at the same time its cuisine and crafts. There should be a local enterpretation what the local community is doing and then bring the tourists to an interactive handicrafts making and let them enjoy the cuisine, she added.

De Cardenas said “What we lack is a ‘Negros experience,’ so when a visitor goes home, he has a piece of Negrense and at the same time the guests leave something behind – their tourism money goes to the community down to the grass roots.

They are also espousing good governance and climate change mitigation, she said.

De Cardenas said she hopes to do some of their programs this year and by next year they will do the full promotion. They will conduct trainings and capacity building and by that they will be able to launch a new product for Negros at the end of 2013 which can be considered “world class,” she said

She also said they have just formed the Society for Sustainable Tourism and Development, Inc. and this is their launch event. They will be doing this as a replicable model all over the Philippines, she said.

They will also sign a memorandum of agreement today that will include the action plan of the stakeholders in Negros where they all have to agree what are their actions from hereon towards sustainability and good governance for Negros, De Cardenas said.

Other resource persons invited are Guilberto Borongan of the Regional Resource Center for Asia and Pacific, Asian Institute of Technology, Carlos Libosada of the “My Travel Asia”, Liza Paguntalan of the Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Foundation Inc., Reinero Medrano, Energy Development Corporation, DENR-Environmental Management Bureau Region 6 director Jonathan Bulos, and Wilfred Ramon Penalosa of the Provincial Environment Management Office.*CGS

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