Our top twelve destinations, hotels, and outfitters in the world of ecotourism—one of the best ways to preserve the environments and cultures that make this planet worth exploring. Brook Wilkinson reports

The Green movement has arrived. Want proof? Americans buy organic, locally grown produce. We drive hybrids. We spend $10 to watch not a Hollywood superhero but a politician with a PowerPoint presentation. And travelers are increasingly looking for options that keep the earth and its occupants in mind: More than 75 percent of Condé Nast Traveler readers recently surveyed deemed it important for hotels near impoverished areas to help local people obtain education, clean water, food, and health care.

In this, our twelfth annual tribute to ecotourism, we present a smorgasbord of choices that can make you feel downright virtuous about your next trip. Covering every continent, these hotels, tour operators, and destinations are the best of more than 80 candidates who applied this year. Our panel of judges gave each of the top candidates a score (out of a possible 100) for their environmental initiatives, their contributions to local communities, and the quality of the guest experience. The overall score is an average of the three.

LODGES/RESORTS: Nihiwatu, Indonesia
Environmental Initiatives: 80
Local Contributions: 89
Guest Experience: 74
Overall Score: 81
"Surf slums" is what Claude Graves calls them. Places where an outsider discovers the perfect wave, builds shoddy accommodations, disregards the natural surroundings, and shares the wealth from the venture with foreign investors and workers. The first part of that scenario—the perfect wave—applies to Graves himself, but after that his story veers off in a different direction.

In the 1990s, Graves built Nihiwatu on the remote island of Sumba—among the poorest in Indonesia, and one where the people only recently gave up head-hunting. The resort is famous among surfers for the fat left-hander that breaks off its beach. But Graves's proudest success is the Sumba Foundation. Helping his neighbors was always part of Graves's plan, but this nonprofit organization became possible only when Sean Downs arrived at Nihiwatu for a two-week stay. Transformed by his experience and by the people he met—147 of the resort's 150 employees are Sumbanese—Downs left a lucrative software job to establish the foundation in 2001.

Visiting Nihiwatu, I get an idea of the powerful forces that drove Downs to reprioritize. After a flight from Bali and a 90-minute drive, my first view is of a mile-and-a-half-long crescent of sparkling sand, bordered by dense forest on one side and a curl of foamy sea on the other. I'm led past the yoga studio, the infinity pool, and the spa villa to my air-conditioned bungalow—one of just ten on 440 acres. Soon after, I meet my fellow guests over lunch in the sandy-floored open-air dining area. Most are here primarily to surf but also to experience the local culture (several attended a funeral—complete with a water buffalo sacrifice—the day before I arrived), to work on foundation projects, and also to disconnect from the twenty-first century. Indeed, no one here seems to mind being cut off from world events, but the South Pacific surf reports that come with every new batch of guests are eagerly anticipated.