Induction into to the Cricket Hall of Fame may seem an unlikely start for a landscape architect, but Hitesh Mehta has rarely taken the most obvious path in his career, and its beginning was no exception. Born in India and raised in Kenya, Mehta studied landscape architecture in the United States between stints as captain of the Kenyan national cricket team in 1987 and 1993. His life of travel sparked an interest in the impact of tourism on both societies and environments, and he quickly set about defining — and advocating for — the fledgling "ecotourism" industry.

Today, ecotourism is on the rise and major hotel chains such as Ritz Carlton and Starwood (NYSE: HOT) are creating offshoot “eco-brands.” Mehta, a landscape architect with the southern Florida planning and landscape architecture firm EDSA, is now the longest-serving member of the International Ecotourism Society and generally considered the world’s foremost expert in ecotourism. He is the primary editor of the International Ecolodge Guidelines and the author of chapters on site planning and architectural design, as well as a respected academic.

When Mehta first took an interest in ecotourism, the term “ecolodge” was defined as a nature-dependent tourist lodge that met the philosophy and principles of ecotourism.

Since then Mehta has refined the definition to 10 overarching principles that are widely used as ecolodge guidelines, three of which he deems essential to any development claiming to be an ecolodge:

1. Some portion of any money made by the hotel from tourism must go toward protecting the local environment;
2. The establishment must be doing something beyond employment to benefit the local population; and
3. The lodge must provide tourists with a rich, interpretive experience that introduces them to local culture and ecology.

In addition to the three core principles, an ecolodge must incorporate at least two of the seven remaining principles to qualify as an “authentic” ecolodge, Mehta says. A hotel calling itself an ecolodge must also be located in nature. “You can’t have an ecolodge in downtown Manhattan,” Mehta says, “and you can’t have one between a Sheraton and a Marriott (NYSE: MAR), even if it’s on a beach.”

Mehta spoke with Sustainable Industries Journal from a locally owned resort in Antigua, where he was working on a new book about authentic ecolodges and watching the World Cup of Cricket.