"The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are a new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that UN member states will be expected to use to frame their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years."
"The place to be
Local Alike is using tourism to boost the profiles of struggling communities
15 Jun 2016 at 04:00 1,021 viewed0 comments
NEWSPAPER SECTION: LIFE | WRITER: KANIN SRIMANEEKULROJ
Somsak Boonkam observing a forest hiking trail in Chiang Rai. Photos: Sayan Chuenudomsavad
With their focus on introducing sustainable tourism practices to local rural communities in order to improve quality of life, local-tourism website Local Alike has recently been chosen to represent Thailand in Chivas' The Venture campaign, a competition among the world's social-enterprise start-ups, with the winner receiving a US$1 million prize. Now in its second year, The Venture's final round of judging will occur sometime next month.
"We actually competed in the Thailand preliminaries last year, though we didn't make the cut," said Local Alike's founder and CEO Somsak Boonkam.
"The judges last year were concerned about our ability to scale up, as we had only 18 partner communities offered. This year, we've grown to include over 50 member communities, all of whom were working very closely with to introduce and develop sustainable tourism in their communities. It goes together nicely with the campaign's slogan of 'Win the right way', as we are helping these local communities grow by their own strength instead of just giving them money."
Unlike many other tourism-related businesses, Local Alike puts a significant emphasis on collaborating with locals in improving their community's quality of living. Furthermore, they also work closely with these communities to develop unique tourism experiences based on the community's cultural heritage. Once they're ready, Local Alike puts the community on their online platform, where tourists can go and enjoy the activities and facilities prepared and overseen by the locals themselves.
Somsak Boonkam meeting with representatives from a partner community.
To demonstrate his point, Somsak recalled his experiences working with the Baan Suan Pa com
"Floods and drought highlight summer of climate truth
Published: 31/07/2012 at 01:46 AMNewspaper section: News
For years, climate scientists have been warning the world that the heavy use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) threatens the world with human-induced climate change. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, would warm the planet and change rainfall and storm patterns and raise sea levels. Now those changes are hitting in every direction, even as powerful corporate lobbies and media propagandists like Rupert Murdoch try to deny the truth.
In recent weeks, the United States has entered its worst drought in modern times. The Midwest and the Plains states, the country's breadbasket, are baking under a massive heat wave, with more than half of the country under a drought emergency and little relief in sight.
Halfway around the world, Beijing has been hit by the worst rains on record, with floods killing many people. Japan is similarly facing record-breaking torrential rains. Two of Africa's impoverished drylands _ the Horn of Africa in the East and the Sahel in the West _ have experienced devastating droughts and famines in the past two years: the rains never came, causing many thousands to perish, while millions face life-threatening hunger.
Scientists have given a name to our era, the Anthropocene, a term built on ancient Greek roots to mean "the Human-dominated epoch" _ a new period of earth's history in which humanity has become the cause of global-scale environmental change. Humanity affects not only the earth's climate, but also ocean chemistry, the land and marine habitats of millions of species, the quality of air and water, and the cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential components that underpin life on the planet.
For many years, the risk of climate change was widely regarded as something far in the future, a risk perhaps facing our children or their children. That