Home News & Features IRHA Announces Lifetime Award for Ecotourism Pioneer

IRHA Announces Lifetime Award for Ecotourism Pioneer

1381
0
SHARE

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.—Héctor Ceballos-Lascuráin is to be awarded the International Restaurant and Hotel Awards (IRHA) Lifetime Achievement award. Previously winner of Planeta’s Colibri Ecotourism Lifetime Achievement Award, Hector Ceballos-Lascurain is a Mexican architect, environmentalist and international ecotourism consultant. He is Director General of the Program of International Consultancy on Ecotourism (PICE), based in Mexico City, and also a Special Advisor on Ecotourism to IUCN (The World Conservation Union), The International Ecotourism Society and the World Tourism Organization. The award is to be presented by Mark DeCarlo from Taste of America on the Travel Channel USA at the gala ceremony at the home of the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills, Calif., on November 16.

Héctor Ceballos-Lascuráin has been an “ecotourist” since his early childhood in Mexico. In the 1950s and 1960s he began traveling all around his home country, in the company of his parents and his sister, getting to know and admiring the many natural and cultural heritage features of Mexico. At the same time he developed his lifelong interest in nature, beginning to watch birds at the age of seven. By the 1970s and 1980s his travels had already taken him to five continents.

His interest in architecture, art and design also developed early and he graduated as an architect from Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico in 1967, having carried out graduate studies in Paris, Rotterdam, London and Mexico City, in the fields of regional planning, architectural design and construction.

In early July 1983, when he was performing the dual role of Director General of Standards and Technology of SEDUE (the Mexican Ministry of Urban Development and Ecology) and founding president of PRONATURA (an influential Mexican conservationist NGO), he was lobbying for the conservation of the wetlands in northern Yucatan as breeding and feeding habitats of the American Flamingo.

Ecotourism Visionary

Among the arguments that he used to dissuade the building of marinas in the Celestún estuary area was the presence of an ever growing number of tourists, especially from the United States, that came to watch the flamingos. Back in those days Hector was already convinced that such people could play an important role in boosting the local rural economy, creating new jobs and preserving the ecology of the area.

Twenty five years ago practically nobody understood the meaning or concept of ecotourism, although there was a vague feeling that travel and visitation to beautiful, pristine areas could somehow provide some economic benefits to the countries and local peoples involved in this process, and that perhaps conservation could also benefit from this. So Héctor spent the majority of the mid and late 1980s spreading the concept, characteristics and constraints of ecotourism to a wide audience around the world.

He is particularly interested in the interrelationship between ecology, tourism, regional development, local communities, conservation, and environmentally-responsible architecture. At present, there are around 40,000 references to his work on the Internet.

In 2003, his architectural design for an ecolodge in Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve (carried out for SEMARNAT—the Mexican Ministry of the Environment—and CONANP-National Commission for Protected Areas) was selected by the Mexican architectural and construction magazine OBRAS as one of five “Intelligent Buildings” of that year, appearing as cover story in the July 2003 issue.

At present, he is developing architectural projects related to ecotourism, ecolodge development and ecological housing in several localities in Mexico, Colombia, and Borneo.

Click here for details on the IRHA.

LEAVE A REPLY