CBN Entrevista - Julio Kuller, pré-candidato a deputado estadual pelo PL - 31/07/2026

I don't know about you, but it can feel really overwhelming listening to all the negative news around us. That's why I think more people should be listening to people fixing the world. It's an opportunity to be inspired by individuals who have dedicated themselves to change our world for the better. So go ahead and share some positive news with someone today. We live in an age of mass tourism. Last year alone more than 1.5 billion people travelled abroad. While this brings income and jobs to host countries, it also puts pressure on housing, transport and local services. As Europe remains the world's biggest travel destination, today we're looking at how two cities there are trying to strike a better balance between welcoming visitors and protecting local communities. From the BBC World Service, I'm Maira Anubi and this is People Fixing the World. This is today smoothly speeding away to the sunshine at 500 miles an hour, 30,000 feet above land and sea. The new holiday pattern brings the nations and peoples together, which is in every way a good thing. Over the last few decades, affordable travel such as cheap package holidays have transformed trips abroad from a luxury enjoyed by a few into a mass phenomenon. Every year millions of people discover new cultures and broaden their horizons, and according to the World Bank, travel and tourism support around one in 10 jobs globally. However, all this has created a new problem over tourism. Many destinations are now receiving more visitors than they can handle. Everyone has increased, waste has mounted up and some local communities are now pushing back against the crowds. The last year, the city has turned completely for tourists and what we want is a city for citizens and not in service of tourists. That was an anti-tourism march in Barcelona a couple of years ago, where local protesters find water pistols at visitors. Demonstrations have also taken place in Mexico, Italy, Bali, just to name a few. But tourism is also worth billions to local economies. So what's the answer? How can tourism be done in a better way? Well our reporter Claire Bates has been to Dubrovnik, a city in Croatia in southeast Europe that's become pretty good at balancing the benefits and the drawbacks of tourism. Members with me now in studio and I have started by saying I am jealous, Claire, because I've always wanted to visit. Oh, I mean honestly, Mara, it was a beautiful city. Dubrovnik sits on these really blue waters of the Dalmatian coast and has these medieval palaces and streets and of course it enjoys Mediterranean weather as well. It makes you understand why everyone's visiting. Yes, it's a very popular place and actually tourists at times outnumber residents 27 to 1. It became such a problem a decade ago that it appeared in this major US travel guide company's list of places to avoid because it was just too crowded. But today is actually being held up by the European Commission as a model of best practice when it comes to managing mass tourism, which is a big turnaround. So I went on a visit to find out how they'd achieved it. I'm standing on top of the old city walls. It's quite a steep climb to get here. And on one side of me I have the glorious ocean. The sun is just reflecting off it and on my other side I've got the old city nestled in an inlet. It was my first time to Dubrovnik and I was amazed by the old town. It was surrounded by these massive limestone walls that seemed to rise from the sea and they changed colour in the light. I wasn't quite prepared for the stairs though. This UNESCO World Heritage site draws 1.5 million visitors every year. But tourism was turbocharged a decade ago when the city became a key filming location for the TV fantasy series Game of Thrones. Fans flocked to the sites featured in the show, creating these pinch points in the old town. I met former Deputy Mayor Jelka Tepsych to find out more. So we're standing now at the bottom of the Jesuit stairs. It's a beautiful, large white stone staircase and it looks very similar to Spanish stairs in Rome. And it's very famous, you know why. Well, that's what I'd like to talk about because a lot of people will be familiar with these stairs because they featured in a very popular TV series called Game of Thrones. And this is the work of Ceyn Dubrovnik was playing the King's Landy. And I guess, I mean, obviously in one way it's good it's bringing tourism in but also can it be quite annoying to locals that you've got all these people who are just here for a TV series and that taking up space and getting in the way. I didn't see them personally but I know that there were people going down the stairs yelling shame but that was more or less a war. Okay, because that was a scene because they were recreating the scene. I headed over to Dubrovnik City Hall to meet the current mayor, Matto Frankabitch, as he's a key part of this story. He came to power in 2017 when Dubrovnik was almost drowning in tourists. There were a thousand and a thousand people within the city but they couldn't walk, they couldn't look, they couldn't enjoy. They were just, you know, like, serdins and then when you think about the citizens of Dubrovnik, especially old city, if they want to go into grocery store, if they want to go in a pharmacy, it took them an hour. The first thing they did was work with local academics to collect tourist data. They installed cameras at the town gates to count all the people going in and out. We discovered that during a day we have around 250 buses that are coming just on daily visit. And at the same time we had four to five, sometimes even six cruise ships. All of them were concentrated, third days, Friday's and Saturday's. And that was, you know, crazy, absolutely crazy. Every side of the day we do not have a problem with the number of tourists, we have a problem with the flow. The team worked out that the old town could safely accommodate around 11,000 people, but at peak times they were seeing 13,000 visitors. So the mayor showed some video footage of Dubrovnik to some of the cruise ship companies. When I showed them, I know thousands of tourists and they could not walk around freely and I asked them, "Do you know who guessed these people are?" and they asked, "Who?" I said, "You're." And this is the service that you are providing as well as us. So we have joint problems, not just our problem. So jointly we found the solution, not more than two cruise ships at the same time and not less than eight hours. Now when they are staying eight hours, they are not just visiting the historical site of the city of Dubrovnik. They go to the restaurants, they go to the coffee bars, actually their experience of Dubrovnik is much higher. Cruise ship arrivals are now more evenly balanced across the week. Meanwhile, coaches must book a time slot to drop off holiday makers and these are spaced across the day. And tourists are also encouraged to visit in late spring and early autumn when it's a bit quieter. Back with Yelka, the former deputy mayor, she took me around a few more of the sites to show me some of the changes they've made. So we're outside the Rector's Palace which is according to a little sign in front of me on the Dubrovnik pass. Can you tell me about the Dubrovnik pass and why it was brought in in the first place? It's actually created to encourage people to visit more attractions than Dubrovnik Wars because there are museums which are not located at the central points of the old city in that way people can move around a little bit and also discover other beauties and heritage of Dubrovnik. The Dubrovnik pass is the same price as entry to see the walls but it gives you extra access to other museums as well as a 24 hour bus pass. This has made it a lot easier for visitors to use public transport and travel further from the old town. This year the Dubrovnik pass made $19 million in profit and it goes towards things like renovating the monuments and I saw quite a few buildings being restored during our walk. We also pass lots of people enjoying the sunshine in the streets and squares. Yelka said there used to be far more tables and chairs on the pavements but they cut them by 30% to free at walking space. She added that the numbers are now closely monitored. We have very strict controls by our communal police. Just ten days ago three of the restaurants were closed for seven days because they put too many and if they repeat with that mistake then you bend them for 30 days and if they do that again they lose the possibility to have tables or chairs. Are they quite strict rules? It's quite strict rules yes but when you have rules people obey you more. What does some of the locals think about this? Well walking through the world city I passed a primary school. This had been an old palace which was donated by the church and restored by the city. teacher is Sylvana Bila-Witchitch. We live all school year with the tourists. It's not easy, but if we have a problem, we're talking to Mayor directly. And he's always there to help us and to hear us. Because around our school is the restaurants. The mayor make a decision. We don't need to put the table around the school until 3pm that we have a space to go and go out and. What are the benefits of having the school here in the old city? Because every museum, every institution of culture is our classroom. We spend a lot of time all over the old city. But with Yelka, we head down one of the cobblestone streets. It's called Ulitsa Od Bocha. Which is great for the well. Obviously, there's quite an arrow. There's stone floors, there's stone walls. The noise bounces around. So, what are things being brought in to help deal with noise, especially in the evenings, I guess? Yeah, there is a special group within the communal police when they are measuring the level of noise. If the levels are too loud, what do they do? They knock on the door and say, turn it down? Yes, they turn it down. They even call the police if they have problems with the owner of the coffee shop or restaurant. Right, so we're just turning a corner here. I think it's me. What street are we on now? We are now on the main street called Stradun, which is very wide and very beautiful street. The place where everyone needs. So, a large group of teenagers just come past us. They're a tour group and they all have headphones and little walkie-talkies. What's that about? That was all the groups more than 20 people need to have a headphones and tour guide has to have a little microphone to reduce the noise. They're reduced the noise. Well, Claire, there were certainly plenty of noise with those chat bells. There was, especially in the middle of the day. But it was quite atmospheric. And there's also a lot of monitoring with everything from buses to cruise ships to also the number of seats and tables and restaurants. I mean, they seem to be counting most things and that's because they're using AI to process the information and predict when the city will be busy. And that's really helpful for things like, should they put on more waste collections on a particular day. Plus, there's a website that tourists can look at so they can avoid the most crowded times. What about the people with businesses that really rely on tourism? Yeah, so I spoke to a market holder who's been selling fruit and veg inside the city walls for 30 years. And he said he'd actually like to see more tourists in the city because his local customers rely on them to make a living. So, Claire, what's the sort of impact that they started to see after all these changes? Yeah, well, the mayor told me the city now receives more visitors than it did in 2017. But he said the daily, weekly, and monthly arrivals were all far better balanced. Also, traffic has massively improved since they created this special zone around the old town. In fact, the number of cars dropped by nearly 300,000 from year to year. And when I visited in June, it was the start of the high season. So, it was pretty busy, especially in the middle of the day. But I never got stuck like a sardine, which the mayor described. And I could always move around groups of tourists. You don't want your being a sardine here. But in places like Barcelona, right? People have protested against overtourism. Take housing, for instance. Many places are rented out to tourists, meaning that there aren't enough spaces for locals to live in. Is this the same situation in Dubrovnik? Yeah, it is. There's no avoiding it, really. I mean, especially inside the old city walls, the number of locals living there has actually dropped to just 1500. And there are almost three times as many tourists living there in peak season. But they are trying to tackle it. So, a few years ago, they stopped new people from being allowed to rent out their property to tourists in the old town. And they then went on a spending spree. Here's Mayor Matto Frankavitch again. We are buying houses within the city walls. And then we are refurbishing those houses and giving those houses to the young families. We have around total third in new citizens of the old city. This is a start of the vision, but it takes much more time. That seems quite an expensive way of doing it, because presumably you're buying them at market rate, and it's very expensive in the city. So, is that really the best use of money? It is expensive. There is no house within these old city walls less than 1 million euro. And then you have one family there. But you have a live city. At the end of the day, if all of those people that are living within the city walls, if they leave the city, we will have a museum. But without children, you know. And for me, the most beautiful thing is when the children are playing football here in the front of Sunblaze. Well, I have to say, Claire, it's made me want to visit even more. But I do promise when I do go, I will be a good tourist. Excellent. Thank you, Claire. Thanks, Maira. This is People Fixing the World from the BBC World Service. And today, we've grabbed our passports and our beds, heading out to visit destinations and have found great ways to deal with over tourism. Now, we're going to a different country and a different city to find out about greener ways to travel. Globally, tourism has a negative impact on our planet, mainly because of all the emissions caused by flying around, but also because of the waste left behind from plastic bottles to food wrappers. So we're now heading to Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark, where the tourist board is using incentives to encourage visitors to care for their environment. Journalist Adrian Murray, who lives in Copenhagen, joined a group of tourists cycling around the city to see if this scheme could persuade visitors to make better decisions. So I've come down to the centre of the city. I'm just outside Tivoli, the famous theme park, where the road is closed off. And there's about 30 visitors all on rental bikes who are practicing cycling up and down the cycle lanes here and learning the road rules. You cannot have your phone, you have to have a ride to bike, and go through a crowd of pedestrians. When I go, "I'm on Instagram." You who? That's the voice of cycling instructor, Jule. A tour German in his 60s, it also works as a guide here in Copenhagen. As he gathers the group together, he runs through some do's and don'ts and shows the key hand signals will need on the road. And then we have this one, what does that mean? Right, we do this when we stop unexpectedly to warn oncoming traffic, right? So don't do this when you stop in a red light. They will make you look like a tourist. Cycling is huge in Copenhagen. In fact, the city has five times more bikes than cars. More tourists are choosing this green way of getting around. But as a local resident, I can tell you, many of them struggle with the busy cycle lanes. And it can cause as commuters a lot of frustration. To help, the city is holding cycling safety workshops and offering a free bike rental session for visitors who take part. Don't forget to look over the floor. Otherwise, you'd blindly go into a corner. It might be too many coming. The sessions are part of a city wide scheme called Copenhagen, which essentially rewards tourists for good behaviour. Visitors can earn perks like a free drink or a museum tour by doing some volunteering or travelling around by bike or public transport, rather than by car. Rika Horn Peterson from the local tourist board says the scheme has encouraged tourists to move around sustainably. Yeah, so we've been running Copenhagen for two years now and we've seen bike rentaling for you. So 59%, which is huge. And for sure, we need to make sure that people are safe. So it really become a great experience both for the visitors and the locals. I got chatting to a few of my fellow cyclists to see what they thought, starting with both. Who was visiting from New Jersey? I stumbled across it online. Didn't it occur to me that we could do this in Copenhagen? But now that I'm doing it, I'm definitely going to rent a bike and see the city that way. You cover a lot more grounds. It's great. I'm Sheffali Sushteva. I belong to India. And I'm here with my family for a three-week vacation, exploring the Scandinavian region. When we checked into our hotel yesterday, we saw a poster in there. And we found it interesting because we wanted to experience the bike culture here. And it was a very pleasant experience, I would say. Yeah. But do you think it's a good approach that Copenhagen, the colour of rewarding tourists, the thing positive thing? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it is a great thing. I mean, you know, rather than restricting places for tourists, which you know some of the cities do. The Copenhagen scheme still works. started in 2024, with 24 local partners. It's now expanded to more than 100 partners, and they range from cafes and restaurants to museums and even a ski slope. Another partner that's been involved since the beginning is Go Boat, a Danish company that rents out battery-powered boats on Copenhagen's canals. - That's a bit wobbly, though. (laughing) - I met up with Go Boat co-founder Casper Eich rummer to try out their activity. - Their good deed in Copenhagen is to come out, help us clean up the waters, and the reward is to get a boat ride in return. That's basically what it is. - Casper says Copenhagen sustainable aims align with their own, but it's also been good for business. The company uses this scheme to fill quite a morning slots and says it's become a valuable marketing tool. Now it's our third year, and so far it's been sold out for the two other years, so we've had plus, I think, 1200, I think, guests out helping cleaning up the waterways. So that's a remarkable and nice. - Should we get ready with these nets? And we go the bag here for collecting the rubbish in. - Let's do our best. - Go some other one. - Good. - We've got a wrapper? - Yes. - Okay. My rubbish in, and it's bag. Rico from Copenhagen's tourist board says all the activities are shaped to help tourists think a bit more about their impact. - I mean, the reason why we did it was creating awareness about the choices we make when we travel or when we are at a destination. So making people reflect and think about the choices. I think that's really important. So when we've been interviewing our visitors and asking them about Copenhagen, three out of four say they want to change, they will change behaviour when they go back home or when they are back home. We've had 30,000 participants doing Copenhagen during the past two years. And of course we hope a lot more participants or people will join. The one thing we've been hearing over and over again is like every city should have this. Rico says that since Copenhagen was launched two years ago, 100 other tourist destinations have been in touch to find out how it works. Last month, Germany's capital runner pilot called Berlin Pay, with more than 40 organisations and a thousand visitors taking part. Rico hopes this is just the start. We cannot save the world here in Copenhagen, but imagine if we next year see 40 cities having implemented this, then we sort of started a global movement. Adrian Murray, without report from Copenhagen in Denmark and with that we've come to the end of our solutions journey today. We've been hearing about ways to make sure tourism works better for everyone. And I wonder, what's the one thing you think we should all do to be good tourists? Let me know by sending me a WhatsApp message or voice note to the number plus 4408321721. I'm Maira Anubi and from this edition of People Fixing the World. Thanks for listening.