ECOCLUB SA
Worldwide vacancies (jobs, internships, consultancies) in the fields of Ecotourism, Sustainable Tourism, Community Tourism, Adventure Travel, Wildlife Conservation, Park Management, Environmental Management and International Development.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations
- Business Type:
- Service provider
- Industry Type:
- Environmental
- Market Focus:
- Internationally (various countries)
- Year Founded:
- 1999
- Employees:
- 1-10
- Turnover:
- less than 1,000,000 €
ECOCLUB.com - International Ecotourism Club is a g...
ECOCLUB.com - International Ecotourism Club is a global, mutual aid network established in 1999 with the aim of promoting an Ecological & Equitable Tourism which meets the following criteria:
1. it is locally owned, managed and democratically controlled, including small family-owned businesses, the self-employed, cooperatives and worker-managed companies.
(POLITICAL Criterion)
2. it meets the real economic needs of the local community and eliminates poverty and exploitation.
(ECONOMIC Criterion)
3. it minimises its environmental impact in terms of its location, infrastructure and operation.
(ENVIRONMENTAL Criterion)
4. it respects all individual and collective human rights and contributes to the elimination of inequality, injustice, oppression, prejudice & exploitation of all types.
(SOCIAL Criterion)
5. it promotes knowledge, non-violence, mutual aid, freedom of expression, leisure & recreation for all, gender equality, internationalism & intercultural understanding.
(CULTURAL Criterion)
ECOCLUB.com - International Ecotourism Club is a global network comprised of individuals - tourism practitioners, academics, students and travellers, coordinated by a small team based in Athens, arguably the world's oldest continuously inhabited capital city, the city of Direct Democracy, Epicurus, Aristophanes and Diogenes the Cynic. With a non-sectarian, mutual aid approach, trying to avoid the 'narcissism of small differences' we try to develop, improve, support, promote, propagate and popularise ecological & equitable (socially just) tourism from below.
There is no doubt that we need to constantly identify and resist the ecocidal, undemocratic and oppressive aspects of the currently prevailing, globalised socioeconomic model. The current, recurring, economic, social and environmental crisis is a direct product of the historic evolution of humans and in particular of the current system (globalised capitalism) and of the choices of dominant actors ruthlessly competing for control and concentration of finite natural resources.
Most people and governments claim to be in favour of Freedom, Equality and Solidarity, yet this is rarely so. There are still many basic human rights and freedoms lacking or under threat in nearly every part of the world. In the context of Travel from the global south, freedom of movement is currently largely limited to investors and wealthy tourists, while immigrants/refugees perish while trying to cross deserts and seas in search of a better future, usually in the form of a menial job in the global north. Freedom of expression is constantly being curtailed or threatened by increasingly intrusive and authoritarian states, religious fanatics, terrorists and extremists of all hues. The concept of the 'free market' is little more than propaganda as small businesses are being crushed by giant chains, malls and outlets and permanent unemployment is growing in an era of concentration, international and national oligopolies. Equality also suffers at the same time, with rising unemployment, job insecurity and widening income disparities within and between countries. Public health and education for all are retreating worldwide, replaced by expensive services for self-reproducing elites. In multi-crisis-ridden times Solidarity often becomes a luxury for ordinary people, a hypocritical CSR exercise for otherwise exploitative corporations or a haphazard and erratic service offered by NGOs incapable of covering huge social and international policy gaps.
The mass tourism industry despite its seemingly (due to geographical and cultural reasons) fragmented and innocuous character, can be described as a pyramid dominated by a few large corporations at the top (hiding behind numerous brands and/or exploiting small local companies) interested in maximizing profits through the exploitation and commodification of human, cultural and environmental resources. Despite its theoretical interest in preserving, or at least not totally destroying, the environment, the tourism industry is also a key player in the ongoing and accelerating land-grab and enclosure of the commons, in order to create affluent enclaves, mega-resorts and holiday home developments, often funded through tax evasion and money-laundering. The world's last remaining natural (and socioeconomically independent) areas are of course also threatened by the unsustainable expansion of highly exploitative and polluting extractive industries such as Oil, Mining, Forestry and large-scale livestock and farming. Yet, Tourism also has a great potential as a platform for peaceful progressive and/or radical grassroots change as a sizeable constituency of small, locally-owned businesses and the self-employed has survived.
Resistance to the forces of ecological & social destruction and the implementation of progressive reforms at the top are necessary but not sufficient conditions to bring about real progress: they must be supported and refined on a daily basis through the creation of viable and practical (rather than just romantic or dysfunctional) alternatives, including (particularly in areas that have no other resources) ecological and equitable tourism alternatives, organised at and by the grassroots. The emergence and proliferation of such alternatives (in the form of cooperatives, worker managed businesses, small family businesses and the self-employed) will hopefully contribute to gradual, peaceful, local transitions to genuinely free, stateless & classless communities where mutual aid prevails and individuals thrive, as no one is exploiting or oppressing anyone else, while at the same time all the real needs of all people are covered. The proliferation of and voluntary cooperation between such equitable & free communities, and between their respective individual members could create a better and more peaceful world where the well-being and the individual & collective rights of all people and other animals are respected, or at least respected considerably more than they are today; a world where Pyotr Kropotkin's 'All is for All' (imagine health, education, leisure and travel for all and being free for all!), the French Revolution's 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' do not sound as impossible or romantic as they sound today. As the triple possibility of a major refugee crisis due to climate change, another financial or economic meltdown and of a major peripheral war is lurking, it is clear, even to the most ardent proponents of the status quo, that they cannot continue on the same business-as-usual path. For real progress and a more equitable diffusion of civilization's current and future achievements to all, the people must work for change (i.e. find alternative, practical solutions) by themselves, today and every day rather than wait for charismatic leaders, one-size-fits-all dogmatic and totalitarian solutions. There is also no point (it would be self-defeating and a contradiction) for anyone really interested in the progress of humanity to resort to any form of violence, to sacrifice human rights, animal rights, environmental standards or human happiness to any distant, impossible construct. History has proven that classes can be only temporarily abolished through force and hatred, they can only be made irrelevant (to the extent possible) through love and genuine cooperation. The means are the end. Such a grassroots, peaceful path may seem slow in the light of the seriousness of the current situation and hard to explain to the underpriviledged, the exploited and the 1 billion people who still lack basic sanitation, but in fact it is a quicker, more effective and civilised path as it is a steady, peaceful, deeper and a voluntary one. The full humanisation of humanity, may take another 10,000 years (since the first settlements based on agrarian surpluses emerged) but we should remember (Lao-Tzu) that 'a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' and (Cavafis) that 'when you set out for Ithaca ask that your way be long...'
Our Logo: The colour (teal) combines green and blue, key colours of the earth. The smiling sun symbolizes an optimistic, non-violent, non-sectarian, non-dogmatic, philosophical attitude to life which combines the Epicurean 'LATHE VIOSAS' ('ΛΑΘΕ ΒΙΩΣΑΣ' - get through life without drawing attention) and 'ATARAXIA' (ΑΤΑΡΑΞΙΑ - tranquility) with the will to assist others, solve real problems, rise up every day, in a peaceful, daily revolution in all our individual and collective dealings; it also symbolizes solar power - renewable energy in literal and figurative terms and light - the light of science, enlightenment. The '.com' stands for Community.
Getting involved: ECOCLUB.com welcomes as Members everyone who broadly shares our philosophy and aims as stated above and who is prepared to cooperate with other Members in order to realise these aims.
Services