Tourists arriving on Cousin Island

Nature Seychelles and partners raise the bar

A momentous decision to improve global ecotourism standards was endorsed with overwhelming support at the 2016 IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) World Conservation Congress, held in Hawai’i in September. Proposed by Yale Tropical Resources Institute with 9 other organisations including Nature Seychelles , Motion 65 (now Resolution 60) “Improving standards in ecotourism” aims to redefine and tackle the challenges of ecotourism vis-à-vis conservation.

Nature Seychelles typically hosts tourists, school groups and green yoga members at The Sanctuary in Roche Caiman on a regular basis. However, a visit by members of the Cancer Concern Association (CCA) of Seychelles to the site for a health walk is worthy of note.

Scouts Club members in a past event exercising at The Sanctuary which is managed by Nature Seychelles

A year after the Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs - were launched, Seychelles has been ranked as the top performing African country in meeting various health related targets of the SDGs. Seychelles is number one in Africa and number 40 in the world with a total score of 71. Of African countries, Mauritius comes next in the world list at number 48 with the third, Cape Verde at number 123. This list is part of a study entitled “Measuring the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries: a baseline analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015” and has been published in the leading journal The Lancet. 

 President Barack Obama delivering his remarks at Our Ocean 2016 Conference. Source - US Dept. of State

“We have to do things smarter and we have to do things faster”

Those were some words from John Kerry the United States Secretary of State as he opened the Our Ocean conference at the US State Department in Washington D.C. last week. Secretary Kerry was referring to the dire straits our ocean is in and the actions needed to reverse the trend.