english / portugues
   
 
  Pedro Felipe de Santana Leite ( Gaia Tour )
 
 
One of the principal aims of the World Tourism Forum was to invite young people like myself to participate and demonstrate the potential of tourism to positively help communities. By promoting the interaction of established projects with new sustainable development projects, the Forum brought together experienced professionals as well as people with progressive ideas to help where they live, and therefore the country as a whole. The forum showed that if tourism is carried out in a conscientious way then it is a very useful tool to combat the increasing number of problems, such as problems with the environment and biodiversity. The forum also dealt with the economic development that tourism tries to promote in the right ways, so that the communities can directly benefit from the local economic growth.
 
 

One good example that I saw having watched a few of the many speeches was the development that is happening in the cities in the interior of São Paulo state. The Terra Paulista (Land of São Paulo) project tries to undertake work to rescue history and culture in these towns, whilst also dealing with issues such as biodiversity. By working in this way these naturally and culturally interesting cities remain well conserved, which is a very important concept throughout Brazil as there are people who undertake sustainable development through tourism, but have little or no knowledge of other similar work.

 
 
The World Tourism Forum serves to bring together such projects, creating an “Environment of Sustainable Tourism”, where one project can help another. With all of this together we can promote sustainability in communities, towns, cities, states, regions, countries, and ultimately the whole world. Through my participation in this event I was able to expand my knowledge about sustainability, especially important seeing as I already work with sustainable tourism in Santa Teresa district in Rio de Janeiro. This neighbourhood is one that is growing a lot as a result of tourism, mainly because of a project that promotes development in the communities through the enabling and mobilising of young people. ‘Gaia Tour’, with the support of Sebrae, Embratur, Lunus and ‘Cama e Café’ (a Rio-based bed and breakfast network), has become an organisation that serves the needs of the district, along the same lines as what was discussed at the Forum. Gaia Tour had an ‘incubation’ period during which the structure of the organisation could be fully developed with the unconditional support of ‘Cama e Café’. Our company is another example of sustainable tourism born from a private initiative that grew and has become structured in such a way it can help another company to develop.
 
  Gaia Tour develops links with the communities, working directly with people there to achieve growth in a highly sustainable way through tourism, which is in my opinion the solution to many problems.