My very first post to this blog mentioned the this was coming. Now it is a reality.

Apolinari Tairo, from eTN Africa, reports that “Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda have launched a common marketing strategy at big international tourism fairs.” This is part of their effort to ” to market East Africa as a single package but with different and unique tourist heritages in each member state.”

The official start of this new campaign will coincide with the International Tourism Exhibition (ITB) in Berlin to be held in March of next year. There, East African tourist boards will present leaflets and banners featuring the regional tourist attractions and inter-state heritages.

In addition to this marketing campaign, the three countries have “also agreed on a common tourist visa and standardization of hotels and other tourist facilities in the region.”

According to Tairo, representatives from the regional tourist boards met at the recently-ended World Travel Market (WTM) in London, and “agreed to harmonize policies and strategies in the tourist sector in the East African Community (EAC) states to involve a broad spectrum of stakeholders.”

The managing director of the Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) Peter Mwenguo told eTN Thursday, that they intend to “chat out plans to work out implementation of the EAC council of ministers directive requiring us to foster regional cooperation in tourism.”

Tairo adds, “Wildlife is the leading tourist attraction in East Africa, but each state has its own unique attractions including Mount Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro Crater and Chimpanzee parks (Tanzania), the Maasai-Mara Game Reserve and the Indian Ocean beaches (Kenya) and gorilla heritage and natural scenery (Uganda).”

“Let no one say we cannot afford to act,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared today at the second meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, in conjunction with the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention, held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Kenya has already suffered the evidence of global warming, as I mentioned in my August 30 post. And yet, there are those who doubt that worldwide climate change is upon us. Alas, I live in one of the countries that have rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which requires 35 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent of 1990 levels by 2012.

The Associate Press reported today that Annan criticized the naysayers and slow actors, saying they are “out of step” and “out of time.”

After his speech, he told reporters, “I would want leaders around the world to really show courage and to know that if they do, their people and the voters will be with them.” To some degree, I’d have to agree. However, even if Bush changed his mind, I still wouldn’t vote for him. He has caused too much damage already.

Although the chief U.S. delegate responded to Annan’s comments, at a later news conference, that Washington has been a leader with “groundbreaking initiatives” on clean-energy technology, I believe it is too little, too late. The U.S. argues that reducing global-warming gases would set back the economy too much. However, at some point, we need to realize that our pocket books are not more important than the millions of lives, present and future, human and otherwise, that our actions will affect.

Annan contended that climate change “is not science fiction.” According to the Associate Press, he referred to a recent British government report that projects the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels, droughts and other climatic disturbances, could cost up to 20 percent of the global gross domestic product each year.

“It is increasingly clear it will cost far less to cut emissions now than to deal with the consequences later,” Annan said.

There is hope for the U.S.’s involvement in the future, however. According to Philip Clapp, president of the U.S. group National Environmental Trust, both Democratic and Republican hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election favor putting a cap on U.S. emissions.

For more information on this issue, check out these resources:

United Nations Climate Change Conference - Nairobi 2006
unfccc.int/meetings/cop_12/items/3754.php

Earth Share
www.earthshare.org/index.html

Climate Change information from the Council on Foreign Relations
www.cfr.org/issue/20/climate_change.html

Pew Center on Global Climate Change
www.pewclimate.org

An Inconvenient Truth (on DVD Nov. 21)
www.climatecrisis.net

I’m moving to California at the end of the month, so I will be unable to update this blog for a few weeks. But never fear! I’ll be back and posting before the year is out!

Thursday, Oct. 26, is World Tourism Day, and to celebrate Tanzania is opening a new tourist region of Kagera on the shores of Lake Victoria.

The Kagera region lies close to the equator (1 degree south) and has been rising as a tourist destination in Tanzania. The region includes diverse cultural and historical attractions and rich wildlife resources.

Kagera also shares territorial borders with Rwanda and Uganda, with a large part of its area sharing Lake Victoria water resources, which, in turn, shares borders with Kenya and Uganda. Lake Victoria is the largest tropical lake in the world and the second largest freshwater lake on Earth.

The opening is part of a week-long tourism promotion, the inauguration of Kagera Annual Cultural Festival and the World Tourism Day. Activities will focus on poverty reduction strategies, contribution to reconciliation of people’s culture, economic benefits of tourism and environmental protection.

For more information, visit www.kagera.org/worldtourismday.htm.

The Tanzania government have given Maasai communities living inside Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) until the end of this year to vacate the premises, reports Apolinari Tairo of eTN.

Often called the “Last Garden of Eden,” the NCA is located in Tanzania’s tourist circuit and is a World Heritage Site. The nomads moved there, looking for greener pastures for their cattle.

Increasing human activities in the area have worried wildlife conservationists. Approximately 60,000 people, primarily Maasai, are currently living in NCA, disrupting both tourism and conservation efforts.

For more information about the NCA, the Maasai and this long-time cultural issue, visit these resources:

Ngorongoro Conservation Area
www.ngorongoro-crater-africa.org

Maasai Wildlife Conservation and Human Need
www.ogiek.org/faq/article-ndasoki-mas.htm

Legitimizing Dispossession: The Tanzanian High Court’s Decision on the Eviction of Maasai Pastoralists from Mkomazi Game Reserve
www.cs.org/publications/csq/csq-article.cfm?id=503