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Summary Chapter 8 The environmental impact of tourism
Summary of 'Tourism principles and practice', John Fletcher, sixth edition, Chapter 8 The environmental impact of tourism.
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Chapter 8The environmental impact of tourism
Introduction
All forms of production (goods and services) will have impacts on the physical environment in which
they take place. Because tourists must visit the place where the services are provided in order to
consume the output, it is inevitable that tourism activity will be associated with environmental
impacts. The need to ensure that tourism is developed and operated in a way that minimises its
environmental impact is now into its fourth decade but in spite of the fact that environmental issues
are high profile, little has been achieved to ensure that future developments are environmentally
sound.
Environmental impact
At the end of the 1970s the OECD set out a framework for the study of environmental stress created
by tourism activities. This framework highlighted four main categories of stressor activities including:
permanent environmental restructuring
waste product generation
direct environmental stress caused by tourist activities
effects on the population dynamics
In 1992, the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, held in Rio de
Janeiro, added further impetus to a debate that was growing stale and a new maxim emerged where
‘Only whatever can be sustained by nature and society in the long term is permissible’. This new
impetus was given the title Agenda 21 to reflect the fact that it was a policy statement aimed at
taking the world into the twenty-first century. What made Agenda 21 significant was the fact that it
represented the first occasion when a comprehensive programme of environmental actions was
agreed to be adopted by 182 governments.
Tourism and environment
The environment, natural or man-made, is a vital component of the tourism product. However, as
soon as tourism activity takes place, the environment is inevitably changed or modified either to
facilitate tourism or through the tourism production process.
However, relatively little research has been undertaken within a standardised framework to analyse
tourism’s impact on the environment. The empirical studies that have taken place have been specific
case studies. But the diverse areas studied, the varying methods used to undertake those studies and
the wide range of tourism activities involved makes it difficult to bring these findings together in
order to assemble a comprehensive standardised framework within which to work. In order to study
the physical impact of tourism it is necessary to establish:
the physical impacts created by tourism activity as opposed to other activities;
what conditions were like before tourism activity took place in order to derive a baseline
from which comparisons can be made;
an inventory of flora and fauna, together with some unambiguous index of tolerance levels
to the types of impact created by different sorts of tourism activity; and
the secondary levels of environmental impact that are associated with tourism activity.
, Positive environmental impacts
On the positive side, the direct positive environmental impacts associated with tourism include:
the preservation/restoration of ancient monuments, sites and historic buildings;
the creation of national parks and wildlife parks;
protection of reefs and beaches; and
the maintenance of forests.
Conservation and preservation may be rated highly from the point of view of researchers, or even
the tourists. However, if such actions are not considered to be of importance from the hosts’ point of
view, it may be questionable as to whether they can be considered to be positive environmental
impacts.
Negative environmental impacts
On the negative side, tourism may have direct environmental impacts on waste production, the
quality of water, air and noise levels. Physical deterioration of both natural and built environments
can have serious consequences:
hunting and fishing have obvious impacts on the wildlife environment;
sand dunes can be damaged and eroded by over-use;
vegetation can be destroyed by walkers;
camp fires may destroy forests;
ancient monuments may be disfigured and damaged by graffiti, eroded or literally taken
away by tourists;
the construction of a tourism superstructure utilises real estate and may detract from the
aesthetics;
the improper disposal of litter can detract from the aesthetic quality of the environment and
harm wildlife;
the erosion of paths to the Pyramids at Giza, Egypt by the camels used to transport tourists;
the dynamiting of Balaclava Bay (Mauritius) to provide a beach for tourist use; and
the littering of Base Camp on Mount Everest, Nepal by tourists and the erosion of the
pathway to this site.
The building of high-rise hotels on beach frontages is an environmental impact of tourism that used
to achieve headline status.
Tourism activities can put scarce natural resources, such as water, under severe pressure.
Tourism is responsible for high levels of air and noise pollution through the transportation networks
and leisure activities. Tourists can be responsible for high levels of littering and this can present
significant dangers to wildlife as well as being unsightly and expensive to clean up. Similarly, solid
human waste disposal, if not undertaken properly, can be a major despoiler of the environment in
coastal areas, rivers, lakes and roadsides. Such pollution can also give rise to serious health risks, to
humans as well as wildlife.
Nowhere is this type of direct environmental impact more obvious than with respect to cruise ships.
It is also important to note that many environmental factors are interdependent – often in ways that
are not yet fully understood. Damage to coral reefs by divers, cruise ship anchors, or through the
construction of coastal developments will reduce the local diversity and population of fish and other
creatures that may feed off the coral. This, in turn, may reduce the numbers of birds that feed on the
fish and so on. In order to determine the full impact of environmental changes accurately, the
ecological system and the way in which it responds to environmental stress must be understood.
The effect of any loss to biological diversity is an increased threat to the food chain, can imbalance
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