Ecotourism receives new impetus to development

Kazakhstan will be developing eco-hubs. Such environmentally friendly sites will appear on the basis of visit centers in the country's national parks already next year. In total, there will be 14 of them. This was announced by Samal Ibrayeva, head of the ecotourism association ‘Yelim-Ai’. According to her, eco-activists, scientists, state and business representatives will be involved in the work of eco-hubs with the common goal of developing ecotourism in the right direction, that is, without harming nature. In the past two years alone, the country's national parks have been visited by about 1.5 million people. Despite this, the potential for developing  ecotourism in the country remains untapped, experts say. To this end, the Yelim-Ai Association is promoting a number of initiatives. These include the drafting of a separate bill on environmental tourism, the development of uniform green standards for the construction of tourism facilities, and the development of ecopreneurship.

“First of all, we must now proceed with the legislative work. We will work with businesses to ensure that every national park has a basic eco-infrastructure. We also plan to work with children, we have a volunteer service with which we will organize tourist routes and events. We want to build a single business process in every national park. The work with businesses must be unified according to the green standards that already exist in international experience, so we should move according to them,” Ibrayeva said.

Translation by Assem Zhanmukhanova

Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova