Ecotourism is often regarded as a form of nature-based tourism and has become an important alternative source of tourists. In addition to providing the traditional resort-leisure product, it has been argued that ecotourism resort management should have a particular focus on best-practice environmental management, an educational and interpretive component, and direct and indirect contributions to the conservation of the natural and cultural environment (Ayala, 1996). Couran Cove Island Resort is a large integrated ecotourism-based resort located south of Brisbane on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. As the world’s population becomes increasingly urbanised, the demand for tourist attractions which are environmentally friendly, serene and offer amenities of a unique nature, has grown rapidly. Couran Cove Resort, which is one such tourist attractions, is located on South Stradbroke Island, occupying approximately 150 hectares of the island. South Stradbroke Island is separated from the mainland by the Broadwater, a stretch of sea 3 kilometers wide. More than a century ago, there was only one Stradbroke Island, and there were at least four aboriginal tribes living and hunting on the island. Regrettably, most of the original island dwellers were eventually killed by diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox and influenza by the end of the 19th The second ship wreak on the island in 1894, and the subsequent destruction of the ship (the Cambus Wallace) because it contained dynamite, caused a large crater in the sandhills on Stradbroke Island. Eventually, the ocean broke through the weakened land form and Stradbroke became two islands. Couran Cove Island Resort is built on one of the world’s few naturally-occurring sand lands, which is home to a wide range of plant communities and one of the largest remaining remnants of the rare livistona rainforest left on the Gold Coast. Many mangrove and rainforest areas, and Malaleuca Wetlands on South Stradbroke Island (and in Queensland), have been cleared, drained or filled for residential, industrial, agricultural or urban development in the first half of the 20th century. Farmer and graziers finally abandoned South Stradbroke Island in 1939 because the vegetation and the soil conditions there were not suitable for agricultural activities.
Being located on an offshore island, the resort is only accessible by means of water transportation. The resort provides hourly ferry service from the marina on the mainland to and from the island. Within the resort, transport modes include walking trails, bicycle tracks and the beach train. The reception area is the counter of the shop which has not changed in 8 years at least. The accommodation is an octagonal “Bure”. These are large rooms that are clean but! The equipment is tired and in some cases just working. Our ceiling fan only worked on high speed for example. Beds are hard but clean, there is television, radio, an old air conditioner and a small fridge. These “Bures” are right on top of each other and night noises do carry so be careful what you say and do. The only thing is the mosquitos but if you forget to bring mosquito repellant they sell some on the island.
As an ecotourism-based resort, most of the planning and development of the attraction has been concentrated on the need to co-exist with the fragile natural environment of South Stradbroke Island to achieve sustainable development.
South Stradbroke Island has groundwater at the centre of the island, which has a maximum height of 3 metres above sea level. The water supply is recharged by rainfall and is commonly known as an unconfined freshwater aquifer. Couran Cove Island Resort obtains its water supply by tapping into this aquifer and extracting it via a bore system. Some of the problems which have threatened the island’s freshwater supply include pollution, contamination and over-consumption. In order to minimise some of these problems, all laundry activities are carried out on the mainland. The resort considers washing machines as onerous to the island’s freshwater supply, and that the detergents contain a high level of phosphates which are a major source of water pollution. The resort uses LPG-power generation rather than a diesel-powered plant for its energy supply, supplemented by wind turbine, which has reduced greenhouse emissions by 70% of diesel-equivalent generation methods. Excess heat recovered from the generator is used to heat the swimming pool. Hot water in the eco-cabins and for some of the resort’s vehicles are solar-powered. Water efficient fittings are also installed in showers and toilets. However, not all the appliances used by the resort are energy efficient, such as refrigerators. Visitors who stay at the resort are encouraged to monitor their water and energy usage via the in-house television system, and are rewarded with prizes (such as a free return trip to the resort) accordingly if their usage level is low.We examined a case study of good management practice and a pro-active sustainable tourism stance of an eco-resort. In three years of operation, Couran Cove Island Resort has won 23 international and national awards, including the 2001 Australian Tourism Award in the 4-Star Accommodation category. The resort has embraced and has effectively implemented contemporary environmental management practices. It has been argued that the successful implementation of the principles of sustainability should promote long-term social, economic and environmental benefits, while ensuring and enhancing the prospects of continued viability for the tourism enterprise. Couran Cove Island Resort does not conform to the characteristics of the ResortDevelopmentSpectrum, as proposed by Prideaux (2000). According to Prideaux, the resort should be at least at Phase 3 of the model (the National tourism phase), which describes an integrated resort providing 3-4 star hotel-type accommodation. The primary tourist market in Phase 3 of the model consists mainly of interstate visitors. However, the number of interstate and international tourists visiting the resort is small, with the principal visitor markets comprising locals and residents from nearby towns and the Gold Coast region. The carrying capacity of Couran Cove does not seem to be of any concern to the Resort management. Given that it is a private commercial ecotourist enterprise, regulating the number of visitors to the resort to minimize damage done to the natural environment on South Stradbroke Island is not a binding constraint. However, the Resort’s growth will eventually be constrained by its carrying capacity, and quantity control should be incorporated in the management strategy of the resort.
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A.
The advisability of humans participating directly in space travel continues to cause many debates. There is no doubt that the presence of people on board a space vehicle makes its design much more complex and challenging, and produces a large increase in costs, since safety requirements are greatly increased, and the technology providing necessities for human passengers such as oxygen, food, water must be guaranteed. Moreover, the systems required are bulky and costly, and their complexity increases for long-duration missions. Meanwhile, advances in electronics and computer science allow increasingly complex tasks to be entrusted to robots, and unmanned space probes are becoming lighter, smaller and more convenient.
B.
However, experience has shown that the idea of humans in space is popular with the public. Humans can also be useful: there are many cases when only direct intervention by an astronaut or cosmonaut can correct the malfunction of an automatic device. Astronauts and cosmonauts have proved that they can adapt to conditions of weightlessness and work in space without encountering too many problems, as was seen in the operations to repair and to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. One human characteristic which is particularly precious in space missions, and which so far is lacking in robots, is the ability to perform a great variety of tasks. In addition, robots are good at reacting to situations they have not been specifically prepared for. This is especially important in the case of deep space missions. While, in the case of the Moon, it is possible for someone on Earth to tele-operate a robotic device such as a probe, as the two-way link time is only a couple of seconds, on Mars the two-way link time is several minutes, so sending instructions from Earth is more difficult.
C.
Many of the promises of artificial intelligence are still far from being fulfilled. The construction of machines simulating human logical reasoning moves towards ever more distant dates. The more the performance of computers improves, the more we realise how difficult it is to build machines which display logical abilities. In the past it was confidently predicted that we would soon have fully automated factories in which operations were performed without any human intervention, and forecasts of the complete substitution of workers by robots in many production areas were made. Today, these perspectives are being revised. It seems that all machines, even the smartest ones, must cooperate with humans. Rather than replacing humans, the present need appears to be for an intelligent machine capable of helping a human operator without replacing him or her. The word ‘cobot’, from ‘collaborative robot’, has been invented to designate this type.
D.
A similar trend is also apparent in the field of space exploration. Tasks which were in the past entrusted only to machines are now performed by human beings, sometimes with the aim of using simpler and less costly devices, sometimes to obtain better performance. In many cases, to involve a person in the control loop is a welcome simplification which may lower the cost of a mission without compromising safety. Many operations originally designed to be performed under completely automatic control can be performed more efficiently by astronauts, perhaps helped by their ‘cobots’. The human-machine relationship must evolve towards a closer collaboration.
E.
One way this could happen is by adopting the Mars Outposts approach, proposed by the Planetary Society. This would involve sending a number of robotic research stations to Mars, equipped with permanent communications and navigational systems. They would perform research, and establish the infrastructure needed to prepare future landing sites for the exploration of Mars by humans. It has also been suggested that in the most difficult environments, as in Venus or Jupiter, robots could be controlled by human beings located in spaceships which remain in orbit around the planet. In this case the link time for communication between humans and robots would be far less than it would be from Earth.
F.
But if space is to be more than a place to build automatic laboratories or set up industrial enterprises in the vicinity of our planet, the presence of humans is essential. They must learn how to voyage through space towards destinations which will be not only scientific bases but also places to live. If space is a frontier, that frontier must see the presence of people. So the aim for humankind in the future will be not just the exploration of space, but its colonisation. The result of exploring and living in space may be a deep change in the views which humankind has of itself. And this process is already under way. The images of Earth taken from the Moon in the Apollo programme have given humankind a new consciousness of its fragility, its smallness, and its unity. These impressions have triggered a realisation of the need to protect and preserve it, for it is the place in the solar system most suitable for US and above all it is the only place we have, at least for now.
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A
One consequence of population mobility is increasing diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten pupils come from homes where English is not a language of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this diversity for years, but educational policies and practices vary widely between countries and even within countries. Some political parties and groups search for ways to solve the problem of diverse communities and their integration in schools and society. They see new positive consequences for the host society and worry that diversity threatens the identity of the host society. Consequently, they promote uniform education, including uniform language, to facilitate assimilation. If students retain their culture and language, they are viewed as less capable of “identifying” with the mainstream culture and learning the mainstream language of society.
B
The challenge for educators and policy-makers is to shape the evolution of national identity in such a way that the rights of all citizens (including school children) are respected, and the cultural, linguistic, and economic resources of the nation are maximized. To waste the resources of the nation by discouraging children from developing their languages and using their multiple talents would be a poor use of national self-interest. A first step in providing an appropriate education for culturally and linguistically diverse children is to examine what the existing research says about the role of children’s mother tongues in their educational development.
C
In fact, the research is very clear. When children continue to develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout their primary school, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in both. More than 150 research studies conducted during the past 35 years strongly support what Goethe, the famous only one language does not truly know that language. Research suggests that bilingual children may also develop more flexibility in their thinking as a result of processing information through two different languages.
D
The level of development of children’s mother tongue is a strong predictor of their second language development. Children who come to school with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger literacy abilities in the school language. When parents and other caregivers (e.g. grandparents) are able to spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue, children come to school well-prepared to learn the school language and succeed educationally. Cultural knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue to the school language. Transfer across languages can be two-way: both languages nurture each other when the educational environment permits children to access to both languages.
E
Some educators and parents are suspicious of mother tongue-based teaching programs because they worry that they take time away from the majority language. For example, in a bilingual program where 50% of the time is spent teaching through children’s home language and 50% through the majority language, surely children’s won’t progress as far in the latter? One of the most strongly established findings of educational research, however, is that well-implemented bilingual programs can promote literacy and subject-matter knowledge in a majority language without any negative effects on children’s development in the majority language. Written Europe, the Power program in Belgium, which develops children’s speaking and literacy abilities in three languages (their mother tongue, Dutch and French), most clearly illustrates the benefits of bilingual and trilingual education (see Cummins, 2000).
F
It is easy to understand how this happens. When children are learning through a minority language, they are learning concepts and intellectual skills too. Pupils who know how to tell the time in their mother tongue understand the concept of telling time. In order to tell the time in the majority language, they do not need to re-learn the concept. Similarly, at more advanced stages, there is transfer across languages of other skills such as knowing how to distinguish the main idea from the supporting details of a written passage or story and distinguishing fact from opinion. Studies of secondary school pupils are providing interesting findings in this area, and it would be worth extending this research.
G
Many people marvel at how quickly bilingual children seem to “pick up” conversational skills in the majority language at school (although it takes much longer for them to catch up to native speakers in academic language skills). However, educators are often much less aware of how quickly children can lose their ability to use their mother tongue, even in the home context. The extent and rapidity of language loss will vary according to the concentration of families from a particular linguistic group in the neighbourhood. Where there is less. However, where language communities are not concentrated in many young children will be less. However, where language communities are not concentrated in many neighbourhoods, children can lose their ability to communicate in their mother tongue within 2-3 years of starting school. They may retain receptive skills in the language but they will use the majority language in speaking with their peers and siblings and in responding to their parents. By the time children become an adolescent phase. Pupils frequently become alienated from the cultures of both home and school with predictable results.
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