Bicycle touring and the environment

Cycling is a form of active transportation, sport, fitness, and recreation. Bicycle is first thought of as a sustainable mobility driving element and mostly for the urban environment, but it can also play an important role as a catalyst for sustainable tourist activities in protected and rural areas.

In addition to the obvious health and wellbeing benefits of cycling, the contemplative pace of cycling provides cycle tourists with the opportunity to enjoy the journey as much as the destination and promotes a deeper connection with the territory and the local community.

For cycling tourists, the bicycle is a means of transportation, a motivation for travel, and a way of doing tourism. Engaging with this active mode of transportation becomes an important part of the tourism experience and an alternative to the dominant model of tourism.

Cycle tourism is aligned with the slow tourism philosophy, which is characterised by shorter distances between destinations, less environmental impact, and more emphasis on quality over quantity of tourist visits. Due to these characteristics, cycle tourism is considered an expression of sustainable tourism.

Choosing a bicycle in place of other modes of transportation for the holidays is a decision that can have many positive impacts on nature and on the local economy of rural areas. And as cycle tourists get away from traditional mass tourism destinations, these economic benefits can empower rural areas, also constituting an incentive to take care of protected areas as those are points of interest for many cycle tourists.

The cycle touring routes Acolhida na Colônia and Rota da Baleia Franca are two bottom-up initiatives to develop bicycle tourism in the State of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. These two success stories are presented below to illustrate the point made here.

The Acolhida na Colônia is a cycle touring route created in 2006 by Agreco, the local association of family farmers of Santa Rosa de Lima in partnership with Caminhos do Sertão, a cycle tourism agency located in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina’s capital city. Santa Rosa de Lima is considered the Land of Agroecology and a pioneer in agrotourism in the south of Brazil.

The 145km cycle touring route connects the agrotourism sites and also includes waterfalls, streams, caves, woods, bird-watching viewpoints, flour mills, distilleries, and colonial houses. This cycle touring route offers visitors a contemplative pace for touring and deeper interaction with their hosts, who are local family farmers themselves. The Acolhida da Colônia business model that integrates agrotourism with bicycle tourism has already been replicated in two other regions in Brazil. 

Rota da Baleia Franca is a 172km cycle touring route along the south coast of Santa Catarina. It was designed in 2007 by Caminhos do Sertão and implemented in partnership with the local community and the governmental agency for nature preservation (ICMBio). This cycle touring route is inside a protected area also called Baleia Franca, the natural nursery of the endangered Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis).

The Southern Right Whale breeds on the Brazilian coast and stays for long periods very close to the waves, near the beach and shores, and can be watched during the months of June to November along this protected area, which is a territory of exuberant beauty formed by inlets, dune fields, lagoon complexes, small islands, hills, and rich biodiversity of the Atlantic Forest.

The Rota da Baleia Franca cycle touring route includes access to all the land-based whale-watching viewpoints, which has the enormous advantage of having almost no impact on the whales and their calves, compared to boat-based whale-watching tourism. This pioneer bicycle tourism initiative in protected areas in Brazil has been awarded the 2021 ICMBio Seal of Best Practice on sustainable tourism.

Both cycle touring routes take four to five days each, covered at a contemplative pace. They allow access to natural and cultural resources of the territories, generally neglected by traditional tourism. They also help to reduce vehicle traffic in their areas and increase the visitors’ stay, which provides deeper interaction with the local community and a greater increase in the consumption of its services and products, unlike tourists in vehicles, who usually cover this distance in just one day.

The bicycle tourism development initiatives presented here have helped rural areas to make the best use of their territorial capital and have contributed to the enhancement of the environment, both by the cycle tourists and by the local community.

It is worth noting that in 2018, the United Nations General Assembly declared 3 June as World Bicycle Day, recognising that cycling is directly linked to 11 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 17. 

BikeTour was established in 2022 to study the post-pandemic cycling revolution phenomenon, promote cycling advocacy, and contributes to the development of cycling tourism in urban, natural, and rural areas in Brazil.

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About the author

Marcos Bosquetti, PhD. is a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina UFSC, Brazil, and coordinates the Bicycle Tourism Research Group (BikeTour).