Top 4 Ecotourism Destinations in the World
Travelling often comes with an environmental cost一but by choosing to travel more responsibly and sustainably, you can help to reduce the negative effects of tourism. Here are four destinations that have already signed up to a more sustainable way of life.
Costa Rica
So, you want to escape? Imagine a country that's one -quarter national park, a place where you could hike in a rainforest in the morning and surf tropical waves in the afternoon. Imagine an adventure Eden where all kinds of unique animals run before your eyes.
That country is Costa Rica Conservation has been developed here since the 1970s, with measures to protect areas, close zooS and reverse deforestation.
About 80% of the Osa Peninsula is protected; much of it is in Corcovado National Park, where visitors can follow guided trips with local groups. Activity options range from rainforest hikes to whale-watching, diving at Isla del Cano and surfing at Cabo Matapalo.
Finland
It's a nation where 80 percent of the territory is covered by forests Meanwhile, Finland's air and water is claimed to be the clearest.
The Finish Tourist Board has launched the Sustainable Finland programme to help visitors plan the most eco-friendly travels and engage with nature and local culture, knowing every step of their trip has been looked at from an economical, ecological, social and cultural perspective.
Bhutan
Until 1974, the Kingdom of Bhutan remained closed to tourism. Then one day, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck declared Bhutan open to visitors. Today, only those who have booked guided tours through approved travel agencies can enter Bhutan. Permits are charged at a peak- season nightly rate of ＄250 per person, which includes a 37 percent tax that goes towards improving infrastructure (基础设施) and strengthening the healthcare and the education systems. This strict policy means tourism is controlled, with local life largely untouched by its impact.
Botswana
As one of the most convenient locations to spot the "Big Five", Botswana's infrastructure has long been under pressure to meet the demands of the world's safari (游猎) market. Thankfully, the team at Great Plains Safari has been taking measures to minimize impact and invest in community-based opportunities to help local villages develop. One such measure is a kids'conservation camp, where children are invited to week-long courses to learn about their surroundings, the value of conservation and the role of environmental tourism.
The Maryland Center for History and Culture(MCHC) is currently hosting "The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited". The exhibition spotlights Henson's unique contributions to children's education, including his creation of the Muppets (布偶).
Born in 1936 in Mississippi, Henson grew up in Maryland. His creative talents were evident when he was a student at high school. He loved cartooning and creating sets for school theater productions. While a freshman at university, Henson made puppets for a local TV station. The station's producers were so impressed that they asked him to produce his own puppet show. Called Sam and Friends, the program started in 1955. Viewers loved Henson's playful characters, including an early version of Kermit the Frog.
While at university, Henson majored in home economics. At the time, it was the only major that offered classes in sewing and textiles (纺织品).Henson not only honed his creative skills at university, but he was also good at marketing and business. "He was an entrepreneur who happened to get into puppetry, " said Deborah Wood, MCHC's learning manager.
In 1959, Henson married Jane Nebel, whom be had met at university. The couple established Muppets Inc. which later became the Jim Henson Company. It was there that Focus Bert, Ernie, Miss Piggy, and other Muppets were created for Sesame Street, a popular children's television program.Generations of children around the world have grown up watching and laming from the Muppets.
Henson, who died in 1990, created not just the Muppets, but also films, TV commercials, variety shows, and more. The exhibition shows every aspect of his career. This includes some lesser-known works, including The Cube, a short experimental film that was nominated (提名) for an Academy Award.
Visitors also get a chance to appreciate Henson's creative process and inventiveness through hands-on displays. They can even make their own Muppets. "For me, I think the really powerful message of this exhibition is the fact that it covers Henson's whole life and his whole career, " said Chloe Green, public programs manager at the MCHC.
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have invented a new way to make electricity. Their method uses super-tiny holes to make electricity from moisture (湿气) in the air. The scientists hope the method will one day lead to cheap clean electricity anywhere at any time.
Moisture in the air is what helps create electricity. Water droplets in the air carry an electric charge (电荷). In clouds, these water droplets build up large charges, which we later see as lightning. One of the researchers, Jun Yao, described the new invention as a "small-scale, man-made cloud". Since the new device generates electricity from the air, the scientists call it "Air-gen".
Currently, the device only makes a small amount of electricity- enough to power a small sensor. But in lab tests, the Air gen, which is a little bigger than a fingernail, produced electricity all day and all night for a week, powered by nothing but the air.
The scientists have tried to make electricity from humidity before, but those methods didn't work for long, or were expensive to make. But in 2020, Dr Yao and his team found a way of getting electricity from humidity using special "nanowires" made from bacteria. That research led the scientists to the key discovery of the Air-gen: almost any material can create electricity in this way as long as it has nanopores (纳米孔) of the right size. This is important because it means in the future, the devices can be made very cheaply. The researchers hope that the Air-gen will become an important green energy source.
Many scientists are impressed with the ideas behind the Air-gen. But some scientists have suggested that it might be hard for the Air-gen to create enough electricity to really make a difference especially compared to power sources like solar energy. But Dr Yao and his team are working on ways to make the Air-gen technology more powerful. Because the device is s0 thin, the scientists believe that many Air-gen layers could be piled on top of each other to create more electricity without taking up more space.
Flash droughts develop fast, and when they hit at the wrong time, they can ruin a region's agriculture. They're also becoming increasingly common as the planet warms. In a study published in the journal Communications Earth& Environment, we found that the risk of flash droughts, which can develop in just a few weeks, is on the rise in every major agricultural region around the world in the coming decades.
In North America and Europe, cropland that had a 32% annual chance of a flash drought a few years ago could have a greater chance of a flash drought by the final decades of this century. That result would put food production, energy, and water supplies under increasing pressure. The cost of change will also rise. A flash drought in the Dakotas and Montana 2017 caused $2.6 billion in agricultural damage in America alone.
All droughts begin when rainfall stops. What's interesting about flash droughts is how fast they strengthen themselves, with some help from the warming climate. When the weather is hot and dry, soil loses moisture rapidly. Dry air extracts moisture from the land, and rising temperatures can increase this evaporative (蒸发的) demand. The lack of rain during a flash drought can further contribute to the feedback processes. Under these conditions, crops and vegetation begin to die much more quickly than they do during typical long-term droughts.
In our study, we used climate models and data from the past 170 years to assess the drought risks ahead under three conditions for how quickly the world takes action to slow the pace of global warming. If greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other human sources continue at a high rate, we found that cropland in much of North America and Europe would have a 53% annual chance of flash droughts, by the final decades of this century. Globally, the largest increases in flash droughts would be in Europe and the Amazon. Slowing emissions can reduce the risk significantly, but we found flash droughts would still increase by about 6% worldwide under low emission conditions.
Parkour Around a City
There are many ways to travel within a city. But no matter which way we travel, we have to follow the route the city planners laid down for us.
To them, there are no designed routes. There are no walls and no stairs they jump, climb and crawl to move across, through, over and under anything they find in their path.
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has noticed that this activity is drawing more and more people to it—there are 100,000 people taking part in parkour (跑酷) today in the UK alone, according to The Guardian and how it is helpful for people to be much stronger: It trains coordination and balance.
But parkour enthusiasts themselves don't seem to be happy with the idea. They see parkour as "a lifestyle". Indeed, many do parkour just to escape the daily routine and experience the city in different ways. They see parkour as a way to express themselves through relaxing moves and creative routes while freeing themselves from the pressure.
It's great that the FIG wants to develop a new sport and stay close to a new cultural form. But it would be greater if they knew that not everything in life is a competition.
A. The city is their playground.
B. We can walk, cycle, or take a bus.
C. Parkour is more interesting than you ever know.
D. Parkour began in France, back in 1988, in the suburbs of Paris.
E. However, Parkour enthusiasts sce the city in a completely different way.
F. For them, it is a competition against the conditions rather than just a sport,
G. So the FIG is thinking about recognizing parkour as a new sport and adding it to the Olympics by 2024.
My son just turned 14 and does not have a smartphone. When he graduated from Grade 8 he was the only kid in his class without one. He asks for a phone1 he's going to high school. I say no, he asks why, I explain ( yet again ), and he pushes back.
"You can choose to do things2 when you're a parent，"I told him. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm being too stubborn or unfair. However, the more researches I do, the more3 I feel in my decision. Many studies4 the current mental health crisis among adolescents to fundamental changes in the5 from in-person to online interaction.
But other parents6 my idea. "He must feel so left out !" Then there are the parents who tell me with7 that they wish they had put off their teenager's phone ownership longer than they did. They urge me to8 .
If teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 are truly spending an average of 8 hours 39 minutes per day on their devices, then what are they not doing? Kids9 in their devices are missing out on real life, and that strikes me as really sad. I want my son to have a childhood he feels10 with and proud of. I want it to be full of11 ，imaginative play and physical challenges which he must sort out himself without asking for me at the push of a button. The easiest and simplest way to achieve these goals is to12 giving him a smartphone.
Some think my son is missing out or falling behind, but he is not. He does well in school, hangs out with his friends in person, and moves around our small town13 .
He swears he'll give his own 14-year old a phone someday, and I tell him that's fine. But recently, he14 that he missed the beautiful scenery on a drive to a nearby mountain because he had been so abandoned to his friend's iPad. If that is his version of admitting I'm15 I'll take it.
Fairy-tale ice sculptures attract hundreds of thousands of tourists into China's Harbin.China's annual Ice and Snow Festival, with (it) fairy-tale ice sculptures, opened on Friday, drawing large crowds of tourists who walked carefully over the (slip) ice and snow. This year the ice park covers 810, 000 square meters with 250, 000 cubic meters of sculptured ice (harvest) from the nearby frozen Songhua River, and lit up at night with colourful lights.
The sculptures, some of were a-few-storey-high, featured Chinese style buildings and bridges, fairy-tale castles, towers and one modeled after Beijing's Temple of Heaven. All of them left a deep (impress) on the visitors.
The festival's marketing vice director Sun Zemin told Reuters the average number of people visiting the park daily has increased (significant) to around 30,000 this year. Over the past few days, the festival park (receive) more than 163, 200 people, (generate) 46. 18 million yuan ($6 45 million) in income, nearly six times higher a year ago. That helped draw some 3.05 million tourists to the city during the same period, and Heilongjiang's Culture and Tourism Department called the tourist boom "ice and snow miracle" in Harbin this winter.
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短文。Meagan and her close friend Samantha, both school teachers, lived together in an apartment in Denver. On mornings when Samantha had class, Meagan would help to watch her 2-year-old daughter, Hannah. Also part of the household was Meagan's pet, Willie, a particularly intelligent and chatty parrot.
Willie was indeed funny and a good talker. In addition to some vocabulary learned from Meagan, he became a great mimic (会模仿的动物) of cats, dogs, and chickens. Plus, he could sing along to the radio. The bird was a nice playmate for the little girl, and he always knew how to lift her spirits. The bird was more than just a pet; he was a member of the family.
One day, with Samantha at school, Hannah had comfortably positioned herself in front of morning cartoons while Meagan was busy cooking in the kitchen, preparing the little girl her favorite breakfast treat, an apple pie. When Meagan was done baking the apple pie, she placed it at the center of the kitchen table to cool. She looked at Hannah and, confident the child was fully engaged with the TV, walked out of the kitchen quickly to use the bathroom.
Meagan was gone maybe 30 seconds. And suddenly, she heard the bird going crazy, screaming loudly. She heard two very distinct words from the parrot's mouth. "Mama! Baby!" Repeated over and over again. "Mama! Baby! Mama! Baby!"
Meagan ran out of the bathroom to find Hannah in the kitchen, holding the partly eaten apple pie, fighting for breath, her face and lips a terrifying shade of blue. And Willie was still screaming loudly.Hannah had climbed up on a chair, gotten the apple pie from the kitchen table and was clearly choking on it.
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With a pounding heart, Meagan grabbed Hannah immediately.
Around lunchtime, Samantha came back from school.
