Should tourists be responsible for the local culture and environment? 20170720 IELTS Writing Task 2 Responsible tourists can preserve the local culture and environment. Some people think it is impossible to become responsible tourists. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Nowadays, people are easier to travel all over the world. The increasing number of tourists brings more influence to the daily life of local residents. Some people think it is impossible that the tourists would take responsibility for their effect on local culture and environment. However, as far as I concerned, it might be possible that the tourists would protect the environment. Since the idea of environment friendly has been applying in every aspect in our life, the majority of people would like to accept it. So there might be two reasons that some tourists don’t preserve the environment. First, they don’t see the importance of protecting environment. In this light, it is government’s responsibility to make more effort to remind the public to pay more attention on the environment like making non-commercial advertisement about protecting environment. Secondly, the tourists might not think they should protect the local place where they only spend a few days. To solve this problem, the local government should take measures to punish tourists who do harm to the local environment. When it comes to culture, the situation is more difficult. Because the culture varies as the areas, races and religions change, there might be some unpredictable misunderstandings between the people with different cultural background. For example, making noise while eating noodles is regarded as the compliment to the chef in Japan, but people would think it is rude in other countries. In this case, improving communication might enhance the cultural respect gradually. To sum up, it might be very difficult for the tourists to know and respect every detail of the culture. But for the environment protection, by taking effective method, everyone would be more and more responsible for that.