Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
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Damascus, SANA –Ecotourism is the most important type of tourism in Syria which embraces the coast, mountains and deserts, as it is considered one of the pillars of the Syrian economy and it highly affects the tourists culturally speaking.
Endowed with a magnificent environmental diversity, Syria seeks to benefit from ecotourism in supporting local economy as it has exerted all possible efforts to spread the environmental awareness among citizens.
Director of Homs Environment Department Bushra al-Hasan told SANA that ecotourism consists of a number of activities which are related to natural, cultural and artistic heritage of society that work on enhancing the sense of responsibility and enthusiasm towards the environment among citizens .
Al-Hasan said.. there are three types of ecotourism, mainly tourism of nature reserves, cultural reserves tourism and the tourism of fairs, theaters and the cultural and social centers.
She added that maintaining the environment is a humanitarian responsibility that requires increasing research on the environment protection pointing out that Syria enjoys marvelous environmental and tourist sites.
Al-Hasan underlined the importance of ecotourism as a main factor in achieving the environmental protection, indicating that the design of the services provided in it such as folk dance, music, drama shows, arts, traditional handicrafts, folklore, customs and food make the country a distinguished destination for ecotourism.
She added that one of the main factors of the success of ecotourism is spreading awareness in this domain among the locals, enhancing their environmental and tourist knowledge and encouraging the handicrafts.
Al-Hasan said.. the unplanned exploitation of the natural resources, the irrational energy waste, expanding the urban area at the expense of the green areas and the migration from the countryside to cities play negative role in damaging the environment.
H. Zain/ Ruaa al-Jazaeri
